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Star Ocean EX will likely make a lot of Star Ocean fans mad. And since fans of the games (especially The Second Story, specifically) will probably be the main audience, choices made by the creators of the anime will drastically reduce the enjoyment of this series.

What exactly are these choices? First of all, the anime follows only the story of Claude, rather than Rena. Though most people do choose to play Claude's scenario in the game itself, people who preferred Rena's perspective are alienated - besides, changing the media from video game to anime could have allowed them to show BOTH aspects of the story, ... giving people who have already played the game an extra reason to watch the series.

Even more seriously, though, is the decision to portray only part of the story; the anime only covers pretty much only the first disc of the game. This leaves loads of unanswered questions and loose ends, and with virtually no hope of a second season (since the game is over a decade old), the cliffhanger ending is truly frustrating. This fact becomes especially annoying since the story doesn't really get good until the second disc. The makers of the anime did add in lots to the story, which sounds like a good idea since, in the game, the first disc really only amounted to somewhat tedious traveling; however, the new scenarios in the anime are equally as pointless and not all that interesting. The worst part comes near the end of the anime, where the story from the game is completely thrown out the window and replaced by a new (and, in my opinion, lesser) version of events.

Another problem is that the anime arbitrarily chooses a main party of Claude, Rena, Celine, and Ashton, leaving the other characters in the dust. With the exception of Noel and Chisato (who aren't even mentioned), all the other characters don't have too much airtime and barely fight with the group. With a game with so many characters and so many group combinations, it seems silly to choose a particular four-person group and go with that for the whole anime, rather than featuring the entire cast. There are, however, new characters added for the anime, but they are all generic and uninteresting, adding nothing to the enjoyment of the series. Luckily, Ashton is one of the main characters chosen for the anime, and he is portrayed hilariously - in fact, Ashton is basically the only reason I stayed with this anime to the end.