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* [[Awesome Art]]: Chibi as they are, the sprites are appealing and expressive, and the environments are full of color.
* [[Cargo Ship]]: Ashton. [[Overly Long Gag|Barrel barrel barrel BARREL barrel BARREL barrel BARREL barrel.]]
* [[Demonic Spiders]]: The game has a handful of these.:
** The Wizard series of enemies can cast powerful magic from afar, but approaching them at close range will cause them to phase out as they teleport to another location. Not only are they invincible to everything except for spells as they do so, they can quickly regain form and blast you with a fireball, stunning you long enough to turn invisible again. An entire group of them can be a problem if you don't have a mage to dish out spells to break up their chanting and teleporting.
** The goofy-looking hourglass enemies can completely freeze the entire party, and the attack that causes this only takes a full second to start up and doesn't use any MP. If you're fighting a group of them, they can repeatedly chain these attacks together, leaving you utterly helpless as they decimate your party. Thankfully, at least in the [[PlayStation]] version, the freeze timer keeps going even if you open the menu, letting you recover from their attack much quicker.
** The Salamanders and their [[Palette Swap|palette-swap relatives]]. They have fearsome strength, HP to burn and their breath attacks are capable of inflicting [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|poison, paralyze AND stone]] in one fell swoop. They're bad enough with a full party, let alone solo runs or coliseum fights.
** Gulper type enemies. These slime-ish enemy you first encountered at Linga Sanctuary as optional bosses has the ability to devour anyone attacked by it with high chance of success. That's treated like stone status or dying, therefore, close ranged fighters risk on getting killed instantly. This wouldn't raiseva stinker, except for the fact that they can ambush and instantly eat you. Like the Salamanders, these type of enemies are nightmares for solo or coliseum runs.
** Easily the worst ones of all are the Live Flayers in the [[Bonus Dungeon|Cave of Trials]]. They are extremely fast, come in large packs, and attack with unparalleled viciousness. There is pretty much nothing as likely to make you want to break your controller as making it almost all the way to the bottom of this long and difficult dungeon (in which you cannot save your game) only to have your level 180 characters [[Curb Stomp Battle|destroyed in seconds]] by these nightmares, losing hours of progress and possibly several dozen levels of experience. The only chance you have is to have maxed-out Parry stats and spam Killer Moves which keep you airborne, and spend as little time on Floor 11 as you can possibly manage.
* [[Ensemble Darkhorse]]: Leon. When the manga adaptation conducted it's first popularity poll, Leon took 4th place (behind Ashton, Claude, and Rena), despite the fact that he hadn't even been introduced to the story yet.
* [[First Installment Wins]]: In a funny way. As this was the first ''Star Ocean'' game released outside of Japan, it was the first most Anglophones had any experience with, and to this day it is more or less considered the cornerstone experience of the entire franchise and considered to be the best game of the lot. While there are similar feelings about the game's quality in Japan, it's amplified in America and Europe simply because it was released "first".
* [[Fridge Horror]]: Anybody you choose not to recruit {{spoiler|''dies''... though, at least, the ones living on Expel get to come back to life.}}
* [[Game Breaker]]: Several exploits and facets of the game can render it very easy, especially on the lower difficulties:
** Note what was said in the spoiler: {{spoiler|Did you already have eight characters before Nede, eg you got Welch? Well consider this: ''Chisato and Noel BOTH die''. only got one? Then guess what, the other one dies. If this was Noel, the last thing you said to him was "who's going to watch over the animals?"}}
** The Customize skill can grant party members access to powerful weapons well before the enemies' strengths increase to balance. An noteworthy example is that Claude's ultimate weapon Eternal Sphere/Aeterna is customizable just over halfway through the first disc, a weapon that is only truly outclassed after completing the [[Bonus Dungeon]].
*** It's actually a lot worse than it seems at first: {{spoiler|''Every living creature seen in the entire game dies'', and it is only at the very end that ''some'' of those deaths are reversed.}}
** Eternal Sphere/Aeterna is itself a [[Game Breaker]]: beyond an impressive 1600 ATK stat, granting several elemental resistances, and other stat increases, the weapon also shoots out multiple stars with each successful hit. Each star can also damage an enemy, and it is very easy to stunlock any enemy sans the [[Final Boss]] and the last boss in the [[Bonus Dungeon]] by spamming normal attacks with it.
* [[Genius Bonus]]: It isn't ''that'' hard to tell, original English version aside, that the Wise Men are named for angels; more specifically, the ethnarchs of the nine angelic choirs ([[Odd Name Out|Lucifer]] is the obvious outlier). Not so easy to notice: Their ranking is in the ''reverse order'' of their namesakes. Metatron, ethnarch of the seraphim, is the highest ranking in Jewish lore; in the Wise Men, he's one of the three ''least'' of them, along with Jophiel and Zaphkiel (themselves named for the cherubim ethnarch and thrones ethnarch, the second highest and third highest). Meanwhile, Gabriel is the ''leader'' of the Wise Men{{spoiler|, not to mention the vessel of their creators' soul}}. But according to angelology, he's the ''lowest''-ranking of the ethnarchs, heading the...um...angels (contrast to archangels, principalities, etc.). This is important because the lower-ranking ethnarchs are considered to be the ones closer to humanity, the higher-ranking ones closer to the divine. {{spoiler|In other words, Nede was implicitly appropriating divinity, and all the [[Above Good and Evil|impunity typically associated with it]], themselves with the creation of the Wise Men as galactic enforcers.}}▼
** Bloody Armor can be this: it grants invulnerability at the cost of rapidly draining the character's HP, which is easily solved by including Opera or Noel in the party to spam Healing Star or Fairy Light, ideally while equipped with a Fairy Ring and a Ring of Mental Power so they can't run out of MP.
** The "Scientific Ability" and "Kitchen Knife" skills are this in the early game, granting +10 and +20 Strength bonuses per level of the skill: at low levels, they can easily triple Claude's damage output.
▲* [[Genius Bonus]]: It isn't ''that'' hard to tell, original English version aside, that the Wise Men are named for angels; more specifically, the ethnarchs of the nine angelic choirs ([[Odd Name Out|Lucifer]] is the obvious outlier). Not so easy to notice: Their ranking is in the ''reverse order'' of their namesakes. Metatron, ethnarch of the seraphim, is the highest ranking in Jewish lore;: in the Wise Men, he's one of the three ''least'' of them, along with Jophiel and Zaphkiel (themselves named for the cherubim ethnarch and thrones ethnarch, the second highest and third highest). Meanwhile, Gabriel is the ''leader'' of the Wise Men, {{spoiler|, not to mention the vessel of their creators' soul}}. But according to angelology, he's the ''lowest''-ranking of the ethnarchs, heading the... um... angels (contrast to archangels, principalities, etc.). This is important because the lower-ranking ethnarchs are considered to be the ones closer to humanity, the higher-ranking ones closer to the divine. {{spoiler|In other words, Nede was implicitly appropriating divinity, and all the [[Above Good and Evil|impunity typically associated with it]], themselves with the creation of the Wise Men as galactic enforcers.}}.
* [[Hilarious in Hindsight]]: at one point, Claude mentions having a dog at home named ''Roddick''. What makes it even funnier is that you realize ''who'' named it, making [[Ho Yay]] in the previous game.
* [[Ho Yay]]:
* [[Ho Yay]]: Ashton in both a Private Action with Claude and his ending with Noel.
** Ashton in both a Private Action with Claude and his ending with Noel. Ironically, that Private Action also unlocks one of the bigger [[Ship Tease]] scenes between Claude and Rena.
** Noel also is a victim of this, especially in some of the Private Actions in {{spoiler|[[Lotus Eater Machine]] Expel.}}.
* [[Moe]]: Rena's very likable and cute.
* [[Joke Character]]. ERNEST!
* [[Narm]]: Nall briefing the heroes on the Ten Wise Men. We see the Ten Wise Men brutally massacre people in monochrome shots. These scenes would be actually gruesome if it weren't for the deformity of the figures while the Ten Wise Men are realistically proportioned.
** However, some will get him anyway because you can steal a [[Disc One Nuke]] from him at two points.
* [[Narm Charm]]:
** [[Lethal Joke Character]]: While Ernest is considered a [[Joke Character]] due to most of his Killer Moves sucking ass, a few of them (most notably Broken Heart) are actually pretty good, turning him from a waste of space into a viable fighter.
** The characters' dialogue during battle sequences (such as Chisato's exaggerated "Oh no!" upon seeing a group of enemies) can come off as this, due to their (to modern audiences) weak audio quality. Some fans even complained because the voice acting was fixed for the ''Second Evolution'' remake.
** Broken Heart is, well, quite broken if you level it up. It traps the enemy in place enabling the others to use attacks with longer setup times and such. YMMV indeed.
** The voice acting in the remake isn't perfect. There's just something incredibly hilarious about Claude shouting an overblown "Dammit!" if he fails at item creation.
** YMMV much? Noel could be a joke character too, considering he comes with spells that do less damage than those of Celine and Leon by that point, and heal less HP than Rena. Add to that the fact he considers "I don't like fighting, you know!" to be a taunt...
* [[Player Punch]]:
* [[Player Punch]]:* {{spoiler|The death of Ronyx. Not only does this send the protagonist into a rage at Indalecio, but Ronyx was a pivotal and well-liked player character from the first game.}}.
** {{spoiler|Expel getting destroyed. Sure, [[Unexplained Recovery|it gets better]], but holy crap}}...}}
** {{spoiler|Nede sacrificing themselves to save Expel. Consider that Nede's a little closer to home.}}.
* [[So Bad It's Good]]: The voice acting in the PSX version of the game is just so terrible at times, namely [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCvnUeXUHZE Claude], that it's actually humorous. The PSP remake has completely redone voice acting which, for good or ill, is much more competent.
** [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks]]: Some people ''really'' liked the hokey voice acting, similar to ''[[Castlevania]]'' fans who liked ''[[Symphony of the Night]]'s'' [[Narm Charm]] laden dialogue.▼
* [[That One Boss]]:
** Notably, this game has been held up, along with ''[[Resident Evil]] 1'', as a prime example of how ''not'' to do video-game voiceovers.
* [[That One Boss]]:* There is a boss battle where you fight this pair of Egyptian apes called "Harfainx" ("Halfynx" in the PSP remake) who have 50% parry rates, know ''exactly'' when to counter-attack to push your characters back, and - in the half-second gap while you're running back towards them - can drop a spell that takes off half your hit points. Later in the game, when you're searching for the local [[Unobtanium]], they [[Degraded Boss|show up as random encounters]]. ...As ''90%'' of the random encounters. ...In packs of three.▼
** "Lame Launcher"-Opera
* [[Tear Jerker]]: One of Rena's death cries is a delirious, soft "...Mother?"
▲* [[That One Boss]]: There is a boss battle where you fight this pair of Egyptian apes called "Harfainx" ("Halfynx" in the PSP remake) who have 50% parry rates, know ''exactly'' when to counter-attack to push your characters back, and - in the half-second gap while you're running back towards them - can drop a spell that takes off half your hit points. Later in the game, when you're searching for the local [[Unobtanium]], they [[Degraded Boss|show up as random encounters]]. ...As ''90%'' of the random encounters. ...In packs of three.
** Haniel and Michael. They're able to chain cast spells to the point where you ''can't do a thing'' and have your party dead. Oh yes, did we mention that they love firing multi-hit attacks when you're trying to deny the other one from casting?
▲** [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks]]: Some peoplefans ''really'' likedprefer the hokeyoriginal voice acting over the remake's, similar to how ''[[Castlevania]]'' fans who liked ''[[Symphony of the Night]]'s'' [[Narm Charm]] laden dialogue.
* [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character]]: Only two of the Ten Wise Men get any notable characterization, and most of them are taken out all at once. Considering they're the [[Big Bad Ensemble]] of the game, it's rather disappointing that we learn next to nothing about them.
* [[Viewer Gender Confusion]]: Likely Jibril/Raphael since the robes heavily darken his/her face.
* [[The Woobie]]: Rena.
** Rena. {{spoiler|Seriously...How, how would you feel knowing you were adopted, and that your real parents died like...Hundredshundreds of millions of years ago?}}?
** {{spoiler|Claude gets toafter seeseeing his father's ship {{spoiler|getting blown to pieces by the tenTen wiseWise men.Men Withwhile his father inwas thaton said ship.}}.
** Philia is an even bigger one.as {{spoiler|What with her dad beingis the [[Big Bad]] and all.}}.
** {{spoiler|Noel and Chisato will die if you don't recruit them. You can rest easily knowing that the people from Expel you didn't recruit (including Welch) are revived at the end of the game... but not either of them.}}.
* [[Woolseyism]]: In the original [[PS 1]] version, the names of the ten wise men were changed from the archangel-references and given much more original sounding names like Indalecio. The 2009 remake is obviously ''way'' better, but this was one of those things that some people actually ''do'' like better about the [[PS 1]] version.
 
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