Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

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Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Region NTSC-U:
Serial numbers: SLUS 20488 (disc 1) SLUS 20489 (disc 2)
Release date: August 31 2004
CRCs: 23A97857
Windows Status: Playable
Linux Status: Playable
Mac Status: ?
Region PAL:
Serial numbers: SLES-82028 (disc 1) SLES-82029 (disc 2)
CRCs: E04EA200
Windows Status: ?
Linux Status: ?
Mac Status: ?
Region NTSC-J:
Windows Status: Playable
Linux Status: ?
Mac Status: ?

Developer(s): tri-Ace
Genre: RPG
Wikipedia: Link

Test configuration on Windows:

PCSX2 version: 0.9.9 r5127
Graphics by GSDX: r5125
Sound by SPU2-X: r5112
Pad plugin is LilyPad: r5112
DVD plugin is Linuz Iso CDVD: 0.9.0

Comments: The orginal NTSC-J version has an ingame bug that could cause the game freeze. NTSC-U version is same as Star Ocean 3 director's cut which has the bug fixed and some additional in game stuff. Older version of GSdx for the director's cut may have speed issue due to the crc is not captured.

The PAL version also have speed issue because the CRC isn't yet included in GSdx. To fix the abnormal high GPU usage manually add

allowhacks=1

to your GSdx.ini (found inside the "ini" folder of PCSX2 directory), then open GSdx Configuration Window and set the new option "Skipdraw" to 1. This fix works only in newer revisions of GSdx.

The "Direct3D10" can erase the black dots on the character's faces.

The "EE Cyclerate" speedhack can break the cutscene.


Test configuration on Linux:

PCSX2 version: untested
Graphics by ZZogl: untested
Sound by SPU2-X: untested

Comments: speed hacks may break the game's cutscenes


PC specs used to test the game:

CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K 3.4Ghz
GPU: GIGABYTE NVIDIA GEFORCE GTS 450 OC. GV-N450OC-1GI


Known Issues

Dragon Flute button press problem

There is a section in the dungeons of Barr Mountains that requires you to "play tunes" by pressing the circle button to activate a tune. The game has 4 tunes mapped to the button, differentiated by tap/hold and light/hard pressure. However, the gamepad plugin is programmed to send a fixed pressure setting, therefore if you attempt playing tunes normally you will always get the hard tap/hold tunes.

To get around this an additional button needs to be mapped to circle as well but configured to deliver "light" pressure. This is done by opening the gamepad plugin configuration and choosing a rarely used key - for example the lower shoulder button L2 - and remapping it to the circle button, and setting the sensitivity to 0.500 or thereabouts. In the game, merely use the remapped L2@circle button to deliver "light" tap/hold tunes while the regular circle button can be used normally to deliver "hard" tap/hold tunes.

After you are done with this dungeon you can restore the normal setting for L2/whichever key you remapped.

Savestate errors

Playing on the Windows version of the emulator (build r3878, plugins also 3878), occasionally when entering battle the emulator will hang. Worse, the player will discover that the last (most recently made) savestate would hang the emulator when loaded, even after restarting - effectively, that savestate is no longer valid. This has been observed to apply especially to savestates made where an enemy is visible onscreen, and on lower spec systems where the emulator shows a framerate drop. If the logging window is open, a slew of errors can be observed (brown-colour text); they mostly compose of "TLB Miss" errors which have been mentioned as issues in some other games. Worst of all there appears to be no way to verify whether a savestate is corrupt in this way until the game actually hangs.

Oddly, the error only occurs fairly soon after a savestate is made and a battle is attempted. One solution would be to never make savestates except exclusively during peaceful town sequences. Obviously this will not be acceptable to many. Another solution, although there is no 100% guarantee, is to try savestating when no enemies are in the immediate vicinity and the emulator is not experiencing any slowdown in fps. In other words don't savestate when there is a lot going on. If on a battle map try to limit savestates in cleared regions only or face the camera away from any enemies so that there is a minimum of moving things needing to be rendered by the emulator. Another way is press triangle to open the menu and save, I have tried and it work perfectly.

It is strongly advised that players alternate between multiple savestates in order to have backups to rely back on, or keep savestating to a minimum and use the game's actual memcard save function instead. Just be aware that if you reload from a memcard game save you'll have to rebuild your bonus battle gauge.

Additional comments

An "undub" patch was released by fans which applies to the US-NTSC version (Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time). Basically it replaces all of the dubbed voices with the original Japanese voices. The latest version of the undub patch fixes nearly all spoken game text, compared to an earlier version which still contained portions of the English dub.

Additional comments 16.04.2012

I have played this game (the undubbed version) for several days and finished it. I used Pcsx2 0.9.9 r5127 and latest plugins. I have used savestates everywhere, in battles outside of battles in menus and during animation scenes and cg. The game did not get stuck once or crush! and it worked in full FPS and above! I also used the memcard once in a while. I used a lot of cheats that I put inside the pnach file and the game worked fine.