Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (2025)

In 1995, the famous Namco-published JRPG series 'Tales' began life with Tales of Phantasia. It was the start of something great, but Namco's flurry of demands for changes mid-production eventually led to the bulk of the game's core staff walking out to form their own company - tri-Ace. Thus began the Star Ocean series, with some noted similarities to Tales but a preference toward a sci-fi backdrop.

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Today, it's hard to deny the Tales flag flies higher than Star Ocean's. But Star Ocean's still seen a fair measure of success, with eight games and counting. Some are, well, far better than others. In fact, it's that wide gulf in quality per entry that likely contributes to the IP's relatively niche status. Still, if you're looking for a new JRPG series to marathon, Star Ocean's a pretty savvy pick.

Updated November 28, 2023 by Quinton O'Connor: When we first wrote this list, Star Ocean: The Second Story R was on the horizon. Now, it's readily playable worldwide. We've made some minor adjustments to the article to reflect this most excellent of changes.

9 Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness

Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (1)

For a while, it felt like the divisive reception to 2009's Star Ocean: The Last Hope might have spelled an end to the series. Then, in April 2015, tri-Ace and Square Enix announced a fifth mainline entry, Integrity and Faithlessness. Weirdly wordy subtitle aside, fans were hopeful the developers had learned valuable lessons from the rough character writing in The Last Hope, but maintained that game's stellar battle system. The result would have been fantastic. If only.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness launched in 2016 to justifiably middling reception. The cast wasn't as dire this time around, but the decision to let all seven playable characters participate in every combat encounter crippled the potential complexity of these fights, hampering them with an execution too chaotic to give enemies the strength they needed to ever really turn the tables.

Worse still, there are few cutscenes in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, the vast majority of the game's story is told as the characters move about, turning so much that might have had an emotional impact into the sort of low-rent walk-and-talk that just can't be as engaging. Ultimately, that's Integrity and Faithlessness' cardinal sin - it's all so painfully low-budget.

Launch Year

Platforms

In Fewer Than Five Words

2016

PS3, PS4

Painfully cheap

8 Star Ocean: Anamnesis

Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (2)

Say what you will for Integrity and Faithlessness, but at least you can still play it. Star Ocean: Anamnesis, a mobile gacha, launched in Japan a few months after and shut down in 2021. Elsewhere, it didn't arrive until 2018, and the servers went dark just past a single year later. That's the thing about gacha - they've either gotcha or they don't, and if they don't, they're not making money. And if they're not making money, they die.

It's hard to deny the fact that Star Ocean: Anamnesis engaged in some of the usual predatory practices that have made these gambling-like RPGs so maligned, but for what it's worth, we've seen far more egregious examples. Anamnesis had a pretty passable real-time battle system that even allowed for up to four-player co-op. The plot was little more than your garden-variety excuse to gather a who's-who list of iconic characters from earlier entries in the Star Ocean series, but it was an OK enough diversion during lengthy commutes.

Launch Year

Platforms

In Fewer Than Five Words

2016

iOS, Android

Literally unplayable now

7 Star Ocean

Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (3)

Star Ocean is worth checking out, at least to see how it fits in with its superior sequel. One of Star Ocean's playable characters, an Earth Federation captain named Ronyx, will go on to father one of The Second Story's dual protagonists. The story introduces the series' tendency to riff Star Trek's 'Prime Directive' - the idea humanity has evolved to become an advanced spacefaring race who avoids interfering with relatively primitive cultures for fear of tampering with their natural development.

Needless to say, this ideal is botched even more frequently in Ocean than in Trek, and we see those consequences play out here in the debut entry. A foreign race sends a deadly disease to the 'pre-warp' (if you will) civilization of cat-like folk on planet Roak, and there are some fine enough narrative moments strewn throughout about learning to trust your adversaries, not to mention the importance of decent healthcare.

We'd hesitate to call the original Star Ocean one of the best 16-bit JRPGs around, but then, that's more the fault of just how many amazing 16-bit JRPGs are out there. It feels like a sci-fi tinged early Tales game, which, all things considered, makes a lot of sense.

Launch Year

Platforms

In Fewer Than Five Words

1996

SNES, PSP, PS3, PS4, Switch

Not a bad beginning

6 Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (4)

Have you ever loved a game for one thing despite knowing full well at least one other thing about it is dreadful? Star Ocean: The Last Hope, the fourth mainline entry, contains one of the cheesiest, worst-delivered, genuinely embarrassing scripts in the history of JRPG localizations. And no, the native Japanese script isn't really much better. At least the voice direction's better? You're going to cringe your way through this game's every cutscene, or maybe you'll skip them all. It's that bad.

The Last Hope, however, is also the Star Ocean with the most refined, in-depth, and moment-to-moment flat-out fun battle system. Heck, it gives its contemporaries a run for their money, and remains fabulously snappy to this day. It's tough where it should be, but fairly forgiving. It makes full use of every party member, offering a wide array of potential play styles. Rush Gauge, Blindsides, proper positioning, thoughtful character growth systems - it's all here.

Give this game a shot for its gameplay. And. Just. The. Gameplay.

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Launch Year

Platforms

In Fewer Than Five Words

2009

Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Windows

Play this subbed, 'kay?

5 Star Ocean: Blue Sphere

Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (5)

Star Ocean: Blue Sphere is a Game Boy Color sequel to The Second Story, featuring much of that game's cast embarking on a new galactic adventure. How exactly some of them met each other, considering this big group includes characters who were exclusive to specific routes and/or player choices in The Second Story, is a matter only a keen imagination can solve. But whatever, right? It's more time to spend with old friends, albeit in early Nintendo handheld form.

Considering the limitations imposed upon the development team in moving from the PlayStation to the Game Boy Color, Blue Sphere makes for an impressive feat. It's lush and colorful, with core systems that, while not as deep or engaging as The Second Story's, are plenty deep for the level of hardware involved. Even combat's survived more or less intact, just simplified.

Alas, despite the popularity of the game it spawned from, Star Ocean: Blue Sphere has never been officially localized for Western audiences. Rumor has it the game's fairly easy to find translated through unofficial channels, mind you, but we wouldn't know anything about that...

Launch Year

Platforms

In Fewer Than Five Words

2001

Game Boy Color

Ashton and Opera? How?

4 Star Ocean: The Divine Force

Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (6)

Star Ocean: The Divine Force is the best the series has been in nearly 20 years. Its cast and story are leagues ahead of The Last Hope's, its production values are a sizable step up from Integrity and Faithlessness', and while its battles aren't quite as captivating as The Last Hope's, they're serviceable enough. What's more, the crafting elements - once heralded as a big reason why Star Ocean stood apart from most other JRPGs - are back to a decent degree for the first time since George W. Bush's first term as US president.

The sixth mainline game's 2022 release date makes its plot points about a certain virus and the need for proper contamination protocols feel rather timely. The villains are a bit undercooked, though that's hardly an issue unique to The Divine Force in this series. Most importantly, human everyman Ray and royal princess Laeticia are the best leads the series has seen since Claude and Rena.

There's even a weird little board game featuring figurines representative of classic Star Ocean characters. What's not to, if not love, then at least like, about this game?

Launch Year

Platforms

In Fewer Than Five Words

2022

PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Windows

This is actually decent

3 Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time

Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (7)

Depending on who you asked back in 2004, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, the third mainline entry, was either a natural step up from The Second Story in every way, or a somewhat charmless transition to stilted 3D and questionable voice-acting that actively hurt the presentation. There are valid arguments on either side, though we suspect if the fandom had known at that point what the next two titles would look like, they might have unanimously decided to love Till the End of Time for what it is.

And what is Till the End of Time? It's a PS2 RPG through and through, as tri-Ace taps into the console's improved specs to offer totally three-dimensional cutscenes, improved animations, and a battle system that feels simultaneously wider and denser, though sometimes just as cumbersome. Hero character Fayt Leingod (we're not kidding) lands on an 'underdeveloped' planet, gets entangled in local politics, discovers those local politics have alarming ties to intergalactic affairs - it's a Star Ocean, all right.

Crafting continues to rule, and there's so much side content to engage in that Till the End of Time rightly earns its moniker. This is a pretty great game, and one of Star Ocean's finest. Just brace yourself for an odd late-game plot twist.

Launch Year

Platforms

In Fewer Than Five Words

2003

PS2, PS4

Albel is great

2 Star Ocean: The Second Story

Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (8)

Boy from outer space meets girl who looks sort of like an elf in a sleepy high-fantasy village. Player gets to choose whether to see the story from either boy's or girl's perspective. Boy and girl may fall in love by game's end, or they may not, because there are nearly as many potential romance permutations as there are complex and highly rewarding item creation systems. It's a tale as old as... er, Star Ocean: The Second Story.

This game's a masterpiece. Ask ten fans of Japanese role-playing games who were raised at least in part on the PlayStation era, and at least seven will tell you they played this one. Six will say they adored it. They probably came around with the remake... which we'll talk about in greater depth here in a sec.

As a long-running JRPG franchise, Star Ocean has never entirely escaped Tales' shadow, never mind the giants like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. But taken on its own, Star Ocean: The Second Story is this incredible exception, this single chapter within a greater whole that utterly eclipsed its predecessor, and continues to be replayed and revered more than any of its successors. Now, if you'll excuse us; we're about to spend the next three hours farming ore to forge a spiffy new sword.

Launch Year

Platforms

In Fewer Than Five Words

1998

PS1, PSP

Barrel, barrel, barrel, barrel

1 Star Ocean: The Second Story R

Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (9)

Is it cheating to count this 2023 remake of the fantastic game we've already raved about? Maybe. The argument can be made that Star Ocean: The Second Story R isn't a full-fledged remake, although we'd chafe at that - so many systems have been enhanced, so many new things can be done, and the quality-of-life improvements are off the charts. Gemdrops nailed this, and it stands as a testament to how to give beloved video games a fresh lease on life without messing anything up along the way.

From fishing (a modern JRPG must-have, it seems) to a beautiful overworld revamp, to a vibrantly revived soundtrack, 'R' marks the spot. It also sports fabulous new character art and the single most in-depth fast travel system we've ever seen in a JRPG. If you're new to Star Ocean, this is where the fun begins in full, and this is the best way to play it.

Launch Year

Platforms

In Fewer Than Five Words

2023

PS4, PS5, Switch

Top 10 JRPG

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Every Star Ocean Game, Ranked (2025)
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