Star Ocean: First Departure

Star Ocean: First Departure is a reworking of the very first entry in the series, which came out in 1996 only in Japan on the Super Famicom and never made it to the West at the time - worldwide it was known only by word of mouth and import copies. For the PSP, studio tri-Ace completely remade it in 2007 - new graphics in the style of newer entries, reworked dialogue, added Japanese voice acting, and an updated interface brought the archaic title closer to a modern audience without touching the story's underlying skeleton. The story follows young Rocket and his friends from a primitive planet, who accidentally get caught up in a galactic conflict with an advanced alien Federation and must grow into a role that far exceeds them.

The combat system builds on the action-oriented, real-time battles the series became famous for - characters move freely around the battlefield and fights aren't separated from exploration by any transition screen, unlike the turn-based JRPGs of the time. The PSP version also includes the Private Action system, through which the player influences relationships between characters between chapters and unlocks side scenes that the mid-1990s original didn't have at all, since it was technically much more modest. This makes for a fundamentally different gameplay experience, not just a graphical coat of paint on an old game - the remake brought the gameplay up to the level of the series' later entries.

Since it's a handheld remake, it's ideally suited for travel - chapters are short, and the game can be paused and resumed at any time without losing context. Even so, it offers dozens of hours of content, several optional party characters with their own abilities, and Motoi Sakuraba's classic soundtrack reworked for the new hardware, sounding considerably richer than the original chiptune music from the Super Famicom.

Why play it: An ideal entry point into the whole Star Ocean series for anyone who wants to see where the story began but doesn't want to fight through 1996-era controls and graphics.