...enough juice to render round objects in 3D and calculate jiggle physics.
Jiggle physics like this certain upcoming jrpg game? ;P

Image courtesy of our fellow Aeolus from the Fire Emblem IF 3DS thread.
I like how magically incorrect videogame breast "jiggle" physics are. Anyways, with that said, that woman has marvellous hair (and the 'bounce' on her curls actually looks amazing[ly accurate]!!).
I'm still a fan of anime-styled games myself, I just don't like current (popular) anime trends. Maybe I'm just a nostalgic and cranky old man because I grew up on RPGs like the Game Arts ones, Lufia, Shining Force, Final Fantasy etc and the first Manga I really loved was Parasyte and I still prefer that 80s/90s anime art style.
Things like the porcelain dolls and mediocre voice acting in 4 were only a symptom of the bigger problem I had with it, though. I mean, they didn't help, but even if you fixed those things (Which International technically did for the latter at least) scenes like these wouldn't be any less obnoxious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNauq6_9iP0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p4uoeimMEM
And I don't think I need to remind anyone of EVERY LAST SPECK, EVERTHING
Star Ocean 3 had its share of stupid things as well but they weren't even close to the level of cringe that 4 provided.
I've said it a bunch of times, but once more doesn't hurt. SO4 had a ton of
competent voice talent (Matt Mercer and Laura Bailey make up the two leads, and they're hardly bad actors and hardly inexperienced). An interview with Matt said the game was rushed and poorly scripted (with barely enough time to do re-reads)... I mean really, could *anyone* or even the Meryl Streep's and Daniel Day's of the world make Edge's freakout during the Earth segment
sound good? I feel bad for the VAs getting the blame here, but honestly, I think the bigger issue was the person who wrote that garbage script to begin with... :S
I fully, fully agree that it's also a bad symptom of the 'in ideas' for anime and I never thought of it that way before. It also kinda translates awkwardly, maybe in a way that tries too hard, when you get mo-cap into the mix... then it literally looks like it's pretending to "do anime" with a lot less of the "visual flair" that anime's use.
Eleven years is a long time in videogame tems. And, I don't know, it feels like there's a perfect nostalgia storm brewing around tri-Ace as the result of their inactivity, new owner and so on. Everything Star Ocean 3 related seems weird lately. For instance, two weeks ago I posted this column about how I fucked up and overrated Star Ocean 3 (it was my first proper review for a magazine and I was a stupid teenager) and that game is basically the reason I give not so nice scores so often. The comment section devolved into jokes about how it's impossible to overrate Star Ocean 3, but the thick neon letters between the lines still read: man, that was a great game.
It's bad in a lot of ways. The dungeons are obnoxious and horrible for one and the characters are 'ok' (going through a full dungeon to get to the Shrine of Kaddan only to face that stupid fucking moving block puzzle is a bag of ass). I still think what the game got right it got extremely right: Environments are lovely (hell, despite the 10 years between them AND the different hardware, SO3 had a lot more inventive and interesting fields and dungeons than Tales of Xillia and Graces even bothered with), and of course, it's great to play a battle system meant for mature players. The game was hard, and people expecting to get through JUST on grinding were in for a bad time --- and I love that, and tri-Ace never gets enough credit for doing that.
I actually think the plot, and yeah the big twist
is stupid, is still somewhat ironically hated by
passionate gamers.
Still, I think if I liked it more I'd play it more. Fact is, the game is just a pain in the butt with some pacing issues, sometimes annoying difficulty (the battle system feels like it's often against you), and dubious plot (I actually hated the Ameena bullshit ark more than the 4D stuff). Um, I guess the point is: I'm really on the fence about this one. :O
Star Ocean 4 I think was better at "normalizing" the gameplay a bit better even if it toned down a lot of the unique concepts in SO4.