Levels of Shame: The Sphere Company in Star Ocean 3

I have a confession to make.

When I picked up Star Ocean 3, I first thought that it was one of my favorite RPGs of all time. However, one of the final dungeons includes the most astronomically unfair enemies in the history of JRPGs.

I really enjoyed the entire story of this adventure. Star Ocean 3 is one of the few epics that manages to break the fourth wall. The sudden plot twist made me feel painfully sad that the heroes were not even part of the human world. It even forced me to question my own video gaming habits in a prolonged economic recession.

As the journey progresses, the difficulty level raises exponentially. The first boss in the Sphere Company building, Azazer, gave me a reasonable challenge by sapping away my party's magic points. Unlike other RPGs, Star Ocean 3 kills a character when his or her MP reaches zero.

The battle was tough, but bearable. As the Sphere Company tower extended onward, the dungeon quickly raised the stakes. My party now had to fight four-legged mechs that buffeted my characters with missiles. To make matters worse, the missiles sapped magic points. This allowed them to kill me twice as quickly, because their MP levels were not as high as their HP.

Around the fourth floor, the dungeon decided to slow my team's movement. Now the heroes plodded around like molasses, while the enemy soldiers buffeted them with MP-sapping gunshots. I really started to lose my patience with this system.

Finally, the protagonists reached a save point on the fifth floor. Unfortunately, this floor included two extraordinarily powerful bosses. Although both of them were tough cookies, Belzeber was the worst. He blasts a massive rocket launcher to slaughter each individual party member with missiles. To make matters more terrifying, each attack always inflicted damage levels of about 60 percent of each teammate's hit points.

"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFCsUgombFc"

I only found one possible strategy for this battle. I had no choice but to control Maria Traydor for the entire battle. For some reason, she is the only character toting a laser gun. She was the only one capable to stunning Belzeber with an Aiming Device attack.

If that wasn't bad enough, not every Aiming Device attack stunned Belzeber, because he assigned himself a "No Guard" ability onto himself. Thus, during many of his missile attacks, my own gun attacks had only a 50/50 chance of stunning him.

Maria had to spend the entire battle reviving her friends by using up our collection of fresh sage. She had to use up the magic berries and the perfect berries to heal the entire group. And when both of her teammates died, she had to desperately run away to escape from the extremely long-ranged missile attacks.

After two minutes of the most hell-raising patterns of healing and stunning, we finally defeated that stupid juggernaut, Belzeber. Sadly, I wasn't even close to finishing the entire Sphere Company dungeon. I reluctantly glanced at the Star Ocean 3 strategy guide on gamefaqs.com. Apparently, this tower is about 100 floors high.

I should feel glad that I can program the elevator to take me straight to the top. Instead, I feel disgusted that the developer of this game, Tri-Ace, is giving me very few choices in this final stretch. If I reach the top, will the boss annihilate my team? Will I miss out on any crucially valuable treasures if I skip to the 100th floor?

I'm glad that Tri-Ace provided an automatic healing spot, a save point and an item shop on the fifth floor. However, this is probably the most horribly designed tower that I ever had to play through. Most of the treasure chests are empty. My party still moves half as quickly as the other enemies. Even the elevators have programming glitches. I can't drop back to the floor of the save point unless I first raise the elevator one floor higher.

It's incredible that Tri-Ace always finds a shrewd way to ruin some of my favorite games. On the positive side, probably no other dungeon is ever going to turn out as painful as the Sphere Company tower. I just hope for my own sake that future Tri-Ace adventures will never cause as much agony as this one. Ugh.

Can you think of any dungeons that are more unforgiving than this one? If so, what are some of the annoying tasks that developers expect from gamers? Is this a fair hardcore challenge or a god-awful tower that is best left forgotten?

Tags: Star Ocean: Till The End of Time

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Danny Concepcion

January 05, 2012

I vaguely remember crawling through the optional Chrysler building in the first Parasite Eve. The enemies weren't difficult, but the repetitiveness of the levels kept me away from ascending the tower.

FFVIII's Bahamut Quest also comes to mind. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember getting sucked into a battle screen every 3 steps. The enemies weren't overwhelmingly difficult, but having"random" encounters every 3 steps was not fun.

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Jonathan Oyama

Repititious levels always ruin my enjoyment of certain RPGs. I really would have enjoyed Fallout 3 if Bethesda didn't repeat nearly the same map layout for every single subway station.

The PS1 FInal Fantasy games are notorious for the three-step battle rule. I literally couldn't get through the FF8 dungeon to recruit Odin unless my party equipped the "no enemy encounter" ability. I think the battle screen system is what kept me from ever finishing any of the PS1 Final Fantasies.

Chris Hoadley

I remember those annoying mechs, but I don't remember having that hard of a time fighting the bosses. I used Maria/Nel/Albel, which probably isn't the best combination, and I don't remember having to restart. It may have been very close, however, and the ease is probably because I have the strategy guide that tells me how to optimize my weapons through item creation. The next boss fight you have are against enemies you'll face in normal battles for the rest of the game.

By the way, the only floors you "must visit" (unless you want Synthesis Materials) are 13 (Silver Chalice), 16 (Trading Card, which gives you an alt costume) 18 (Intellect+ Berries) 30 (Book of Prophecies 4) 47 (Intellect+) 50 (Trading Card) 85 (Book of Prophecies 3) and 86 (Intellect+). One of the post-game dungeons is floors 101-210 and you have to go through every floor.

As for the plot twist, I always felt that it would have been better if 4D was more like the real world, though that would open up strange questions (why are there mechs in an office building?) and probably would have been too much like Digimon. I've heard that a lot of long-time Star Ocean fans hated the twist since the games all takes place in the same universe so that means all of the previous characters were also not "real."

I think the strategy guide really helps. The Belzebar fight actually wasn't the worst fight, but it still requires a lot more micromanagement than I'm used to. It really lost the intensity of a real-time action experience, because I had to open the item menu during many parts of the battle.

I really should have spent more time optimizing my weapons. I keep considering it, but then I usualy have to spend money doing other types of weapon research. It's a frustrating system that doesn't clearly tell me how to get the original inventions to work properly. It took me about two days before I considered watching my characters' faces.

I think the game would have felt more understandable if 4D was more like the real world. I actually don't worry too much about characters not being real in the previous games. Honestly, the series has a weird sci-fi culture to it, so I don't think the plot twist in one game would completely alter the story flow of the entire franchise. I suppose it would annoy the devotees of the fan base, though.

Thanks for marking all the floors that I need to visit. I'll probably go through the tower in five-floor increments anyhow, just to level grind. I still really enjoy this game, in spite of all the annoying missile attacks. I just wish that Tri-Ace would give quicker attacks to the other characters.

January 06, 2012

Actually, I think another thing that helped me out in general at least with my team was leveling-up Albel's "Vampiric Flash." At first the move takes up a considerable about of MP, but the move causes HP and MP damage and recovers HP and MP to the point that it will have little, no, or even positive meter cost.

The other annoying thing about item creation is that you have to hunt down NPC craftsmen because most of your characters' stats are awful. The only thing that I really worried about making was synthesizing Orachulium (or something like that, +500 attack) to weapons. By this point though you should look into creating and synthesizing Boots of Prowess (30% offense and defense buff though that might not be until the post game).