The Musings Of The Consensus

 This part follows up from Part 2 to explain some things that make the writing bad in more detail. All warnings since Part 1 still apply 1. The Muah being plot relevant at all is lore breaking The mere fact a lot of key plot twists hinge on the Muah is a massive canon breaker in and of itself. The Muah were part of the big series reveal in SO1 and SO2 that humanity, via their common ancestors the Muah, inadvertently seeded many of the races they would later encounter. Further, the fact anymore more than scattered records of their existence were available in SO4 is canon-breaking. The whole point to them being a "lost civilization" is that their continent Mu (an archaic term for Atlantis) and the Muah themselves were essentially yeeted across time and space, leaving nothing but apocryphal records of themselves behind, which matches how Atlantis is portrayed IRL, which is what they were based on. However, in blatant defiance of canon backed up by SO1 and SO2 and even SO3, SO4 d

 The first part of this review of the plot of Star Ocean 4 covered general issues with the story and the characters and their story compatibility with the plot itself. This post will cover the plot in more detail up to the end of the Alternate Earth arc. All notices applied to the prior post still apply, including this including spoilers. This will not be a line-by-line breakdown of the plot, but more an overview and pointing out the flaws where applicable. 1. The Backstory As a prequel to the rest of the series, Star Ocean 4 is set in SD 10, quite early on. It's set a few decades after a nearly apocalyptic World War 3, after which humanity not only realized they needed to lay down their arms lest they destroy themselves, they looked to expansion to the stars as a means of saving themselves. That said, it's worth mentioning Star Ocean 4 is a bit inconsistent. Early games mentioned Earth was somewhat dirty but livable, and Star Ocean 3, set at the end of the known timeline, is a