well i know the remakes of star ocean 1 and 2 are good
as for 3
3 can be good, but playing on normal or above can be difficult as its pretty hard to get chain exp when enemies critical hit you a lot, makes leveling a hell of a lot harder
playing on easy for awhile though can get you the grip of the game
anyway star ocean 3 is fairly good, decent plot, good twist, a fairly good action battle system with lots of comboing and chain moves to add to the mix
star ocean 3 also has passive skills such as stat increases, cast reductions, but among other skills it allows you to create items or even upgrade equipment. All this is deeply explained later though, as there is a lot to it.
The game itself can be pretty hard though, especially later on, as its perfectly normal to be fighting bosses as pure random encounters(of course by then you're a lot stronger mind you).
The game also has a variety of different endings, as when you're near a town, city, etc. you can have the option of doing a private action, each character in the game(well aside from the protag who you mainly control) has certain events through private actions. This leads to friend points or fp if you like, building up enough can get that characters ending.
Unlike star ocean 2 though there are no romance points and there are far less endings(star ocean second evolution for example has 86 endings).
i should also note that a lot of characters in the game are actually optional, you can get a variety of different characters on your team and it should be noted that you only have 8 slots, so you cant get all the characters in one run, but ya know, more replay value i suppose.
There is a lot of side content too, usually the main game is around 40 hours to complete without side quests, with doing everything in the game i think i did everything and had about 200 hours of gameplay(so essentially 160 hours of side stuff).
The massive downside to this game though, is the fact that your mp being emptied can actually kill you. There are even enemies and bosses that strike your mp instead, but you can work this to your advantage as well. As you can make mp grenades and just toss them at the enemies to kill them, this strategy is actually highly recommended against the hardest boss in the game, as taking down 1 mil hp is quite difficult, especially considering how hard she is.
so to summerize it for you, crackin.
star ocean 3 can be compared to tales of games in turns of fun, but the character development isnt quite as strong because of no skits, but there is generally more content to be held with at least star ocean 2 and 3.
