If you've ever played Star Ocean: Til The End Of Time, I'm very, very sorry. Maybe we can start a support group.

I played this game with my wife and we felt obligated to finish it. Now, there were plenty of things to hate in this game but it's not hard to pick my most hated thing. Let's talk about my minor hated things first:

Minor Hated Thing One : Where is the Star in Star Ocean

Everything about this game -- from the name, to the opening part of the plot, to the cinematic trailer before you start the game -- screams "sci-fi". So at the beginning of the game you're travelling around on a spaceship, and you immediately end up on this ... planet still in the middle ages where you get to have old-fashioned fantasy battles (yaay).

Pretty soon you leave that planet and go to another medieval planet -- and you start to think "well maybe I'll just hop from planet to planet in this game, that could be cool."

Nope. You spend 80% of the game on that second medieval planet. This is about the biggest "f*** you" moment I've ever witnessed in a game.

Minor Hated Thing Two : There's Nothing Useful In The Final Level and You Can't Go Back

I realize this is a staple of Japanese RPG's but it was my first time and I didn't know. There's still no excuse.

OK, Now What I Really, Truly Hate And Despise About "Star Ocean: Til The End of Time"

Star Ocean has this really nifty real-time combat system. A neat change for an RPG, right?

They also have this neat bonus system that removes some of the grind and repetition from a typical RPG. You can get something called a "Bonus Chain", and if you fill up this combat meter, and then go four or five matches without "breaking the chain", you get a neat bonus -- like all battles will start giving you double exp, or triple money, or better items (etc.). As long as you keep doing battles and don't break the chain you'll eventually get all the bonuses.

So, obviously, the goal is to have as many battles as possible where you have this "bonus chain" activated. Obviously, losing the "bonus chain" is a bad thing, as it can take you 20 battles or so to start it again and accrue all the bonuses.

So, how do you lose a "bonus chain"? Well, you lose it by taking a critical hit.
And how do you avoid taking a critical hit? Well, any time an enemy hits you it can be a critical hit.
So how do you avoid being hit? Well, you take the character in the fight you control (you also have two allies) and you ... spend the entire battle running away from the enemies so they can't hit you!

Yes, that's right. Make an RPG with an awesome combat mechanic, and then make the player choose between either experiencing the mechanic or advancing quickly through the game.

We still spent thirty or fifty hours beating this game. Three years later my wife and I still joke about what an awful game it was. It is infamous.