Live in your world, play in ours

It’s my first “traditional” JRPG in a LONG fucking time, can’t even remember the last one I played tbh but whatever, it’s a wee bit of a breath of fresh air or like riding a bike again, it feels so great and I have this sense of ancestral connection to it cause like OG JRPG’s are my childhood (Grandia, FFIX & Breath of Fire 3 were my crutches back in the day).

Yet I’m really fucking annoyed about it.

Not the game, but the negativity that surrounded it before I played it. IAF is my first entry into the Star Ocean series and it feels like an entry point from what I’ve heard and by how the game plays; it’s feels quite rudimentary with it’s features and story-telling and characters. And I have or see a problem in that at all, lord knows Final Fantasy did this shit for years and nobody batted an eyelash, but for some reason Star Ocean fans have done everything in their power, in my opinion anyways, to steer people away from this like, how fucking dare you! Even my close friend *name redacted* instead of encouraging me to play it or asking if I’d played any of the other just dove in with his first opinion being, “it’s so fucking shit don’t play it” like why is this such a problem in the video game industry today? If it doesn’t appeal to you then it doesn’t appeal to anyone!? Give me a fucking break, it’s not about you it’s about me! And if the shoe was on the other foot, then it WOULD be about you! I personally don’t care what games people like or don’t like, that’s for them to decide, but once they try to force that opinion on me to try and skew my view on whether I want to play a game or not then that’s out of fucking order. My friends ridiculous bashing of this game could have turned me away from it and I would have been done out of what so far has been quite a fun and relaxing gaming experience and one that actively is making me want to play the other entries in that series and that’s just fucking WRONG.

Shit on a game all you want, more power to you! But don’t force that on other people man, that shit is nasty! 

Games that push shady practices like micro-transactions and RNG loot boxes on people and force them to buy them on a slot machine pay-to-win basis DO deserve the hate they’re getting. Properly BAD games (like Life of Black Tiger) SHOULD be getting the bashings they do. Not games like Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness, come on dude!

By all means say it’s a bad game, but try still to be respectful or encouraging towards those who might actually want to play it. Maybe someone is new to these games and may actually enjoy it, not everyone whose going to play these games are die hard fans and may not have had the chance previously to play any of the others.