VIDEO GAME REVIEW If you've got a lot of time, take a swim in 'Star Ocean'

The storyline involves a galactic war.
By BILL HUTCHENS
TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE
During the next couple of months, game companies will bring out their best titles to take advantage of the holiday shopping season.
Among other goodies, you'll be hearing about a game that lets you live an entire lifetime ("Fable"), a game with a state-sized playground and few rules ("Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas") and at least two of the most-anticipated sequels ever ("Halo 2" and "Half-Life 2").
It's the best time of the year to be a gamer, but it's also a time when some good games are overshadowed.
Enter "Star Ocean: Till the End of Time," a game as deep as the Milky Way is wide.
Created by Square Enix, masters of the role-playing genre, this newest game in the venerable "Star Ocean" series is bound to keep you busy for a long, long time.
Haven't scratched the surface
After 45 hours of game play (spread over many weeks), I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. In the interest of getting to other games, I've had to skip some features.
Here's what I won't be doing:
I don't have time to collect all 300 battle trophies (some of them require ridiculous tasks such as beating the final boss in a few seconds). I won't be able to unlock -- and then play through -- the "Universe" and "4D" difficulty levels after (maybe) beating the game on "Galaxy" level. I don't have time to find all of the trading cards and then deliver them to the correct characters. I won't be able to find all two-dozen inventors scattered around one planet and then figure out what it will take to convince each one to join my team. I won't even try to get them to invent the nearly 1,000 possible items.
What I will do is make my way to the end of story -- once -- with my main character, the grandly named Fayt Leingod.
The story
During a galactic war, an anti-Earth faction tries to capture the mysterious Fayt, who might or might not be a powerful weapon created by his scientist parents. At any rate, the boy finds himself stranded on a small out-of-the-way planet.
I should mention one drawback here. For a game whose fictional back story spans the Milky Way, "Star Ocean" doesn't involve much space travel. There is some warp driving, and the galactic war is always in the background, but the bulk of the game takes place on one continent of the third planet you visit. In an era much like Earth's medieval times, two countries on that planet are involved in a war, sort of a microcosm of the bigger war ranging beyond the planet.
Fayt teams with elite soldiers from one country. Together, they go on various war-related missions, but Fayt has to be careful about not using any technology that is ahead of the planet's level of development.
As your characters battle enemies, they'll learn new Battle Skills. These range from martial-arts attacks to the ability to imbue weapons with elemental energy (ice and fire, for example).
Unlike battles in many RPGs, the battles in "Star Ocean" offer direct combat instead of "turn-based" combat. Characters roam freely during fights. Press a button, and Fayt immediately attacks instead of waiting for his appointed attack time. It's more like "Mortal Kombat" than chess, but you will need to use plenty of strategy.
Though Fayt is bound by galactic law to avoid tampering with the flow of progress on backward planets, he can encourage others to invent weapons, potions, armor and other items and can even dabble a little himself.
I'm well into inventing things and synthesizing weapons now, and my team members own the patents on a few big moneymaking creations. Royalties are rolling in, so my plan is to forgo some of the more intricate operations of the game and just get on with the story. Otherwise, I could easily invest several hundred hours.
If you're hungry for a deep, time-consuming RPG, "Star Ocean" is a game you can't miss.