I admit. I really just wanted to leave this to rot because the game was so bad doing one more post on it was something I dreaded, but I figured I might as well close off with one last post giving an itemized list of the remaing stupid mistakes SO4 made that follows up on my prior posts.
1. The Grigori were a total fail as a faction and their defeat was a blatant copout.
The Grigori had a decent start and initially made logical sense in the context of the series as a villain. Around the Roak Arc, they picked up a bizarre death cult fetish and since they just degenerate into further incoherence.
It gets really bad by the time of the EN II (Star Ocean 2 nostalgia arc, that's short for Energy Nede) arc, where they establish the "leader" of the Grigori is less a being and more a non-Euclidean entity right out of Lovecraft from another dimension that is essentially unkillable by any conventional means. Instead, all we can do is kill off its spawn point and hope it never comes back.
Bear in mind SO3 made clear the SO universe the characters exists in is a constructed world by another dimension, and thus the Grigori would destroy that creation and logically, given SO3 established said beings in SO3 did not want their created world going off the rails, the Grigori should not even EXIST, they obviously would have shut down the Grigori from day one as a rogue element.
Even if we ignore this, the way the Grigori are stopped in the finale is a copout. Supposedly, killing their "avatar" means they just go away. Literally. Despite the fact they very well could return because this is not a permanent solution.
All other SO threats were either organic to the SO universe, the SO3 villains excepted, and even then they obeyed consistent logic. The Grigori did not and thus they got yeeted from the canon after SO4 and no future game ever visits them again because they break the canon by simply existing at all.
2. The aborted "Earth accused of genocide" arc and why it was a fizzled out joke
The Grigori manage to make fake clones of Earth troops and vessels and mass use them to screw over our space elf bros, accelerating the decay of their sun and nuking their solar system, more or less. Initially, they think we did and Shimada, the fat coward introduced at the beginning, he wants to have all of Earth's expeditionary forces mothballed so he can pretend we had nothing to do with it.
They even send out Stephen Kenny to try and make this work, but he let your team go because as a force that "doesn't exist", he can't give you orders anyway, because even he and the writers knew this angle was going nowhere.
Sure enough, it craps out in no time flat and the space elves (Eldarians) show up in the grand finale to help us out because it's obvious post-WW3 Earth never had the combat power or feasible ability or motive to screw anyone over, and the whole angle is forgotten.
3. Shimada's death and the logical flaws in it.
Around the time of the final, the Grigori manage to show up on Earth's doorstep. We barely manage to stop them before they waste Earth, but they do manage to kill Shimada and the lunar base. Shimada was a fat moron who no one will ever weep for, but his death raises two huge logic holes that do not mesh with the rest of the series.
He's shown eating a huge meal as he ignorantly ignores the looming threat until he gets blown to space atoms, which raises the question of how he can eat so well when it's established fact Post WW3 Earth was a wasteland with very little arable land left.
Sure, I get the writers wanted to make him as unsympathetic as they could before killing him, but CONSISTENCY WITH PRIOR ESTABLISHED CANON WAS VIOLATED WHEN THEY DID THIS.
The second flaw this scene established is that the grease spot leftover left a VERY considerable divot in the Moon. You get to revisit this area in SO3, I should have seen this sizable gash in the lunar surface in SO3.
4. The final battle is full of dramatic cliches and set up something totally asinine.
The writers really liked Crowe and basically slobbered his knob (pardon the crude expression) whenever they could. It gets so bad despite him getting a chance to die a perfectly sensible hero's death, there is an unlockable stinger that reveals he somehow wound up on Roak, married Elyane Farrence, and would be Roddick's ancestor.
He could have died a hero to Earth and they could have left it at that. Making him the ancestor of Roddick is pointless, it added NOTHING to the canon except a chance to add a super weak explanation for why Roddick can have a lightsaber as one of his best weapons (hinted to be Crowe's by implication). There was no need to do this. SO1 showed advanced tech that was out of place due to the involuntary migration of the Mu would have set up a perfectly logical reason to find a lightsaber on Roak somewhere, but NOOOOOO, the writers just had to turn Crowe into a Gary Stu they want to cram down our throats.
5. EN II was a wasted plot point.
EN II (Energy Nede II) merely exists to pad out a plot that would have otherwise stalled without somewhere else to resume the story. That's it. Literally, it yeets itself from the lore after this game and never shows up again, despite them being known to Earth in the finale, a fact that is never followed up again.
At least Roak tried, however badly, to feel relevant, even if it was forced, but the writers obviously knew EN II would never get referenced again and thus wrote it in a way it can drop off into a black hole without anyone noticing. For a series that is fond of recalling its own lore, that's just sad.
6. The ending makes my head hurt
The ending established two things make my head hurt.
First, the Eldarians migrate to the planet Lemuris and decide to go anarcho-primitive and start over from Square One on the tech tree and be written out of the canon. They try to use the excuse they don't want to pollute the natives with advanced tech like the Grigori as an excuse, but the problem was not the tech, it was the irresponsible handing it out without good judgment that was the problem. The writers just wanted to make sure they could shove the Eldarians into a black hole and it was badly obvious this was the best way they could think to do it.
Second, the big twist is that SO4's entire plot was the reason the Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact (UP3) is a series element.
This was a twist any fool saw coming a mile away and I don't have a problem with that in and of itself. My problem with it is that it was established for reasons that are backward.
True, the basic intent of the UP3 is to avoid doing to underdeveloped worlds what the Grigori did, which is fair enough, but somehow this means that Earth has to cut off all contact with the tech they got outside of what they already have, and learn it all themselves again?
Why? You can't unring the bell, all you can do is be more mindful to use that tech, regardless of the source, with good judgment and moral boundaries. SO4 is the only game where the good guys decide to punish themselves for getting advanced tech beyond their own tech tree. No other game does this because they wisely realized you can't just pretend it never happened, all you can do is to make sure future generations are more responsible.
Star Ocean 6 did something similar, but in a more reasonable way, where a medieval society had the option to make full use of the knowledge of advanced tech, and they did keep some of it that they couldn't obviously undo (like the knowledge of firearms), but wisely refused the temptation to leapfrog the tech tree and figure out the rest on their own with their own skill and wisdom.
The hacks who wrote SO4 just said everyone should get brain damage and forget they ever learned anything instead.
Finale: Conclusion
STAR OCEAN 4 WAS A TERRIBLY WRITTEN GAME, THE END.
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