The story involves three friends who, while searching for the cure to a new disease, come into contact with a space-faring federation that is locked in a war with another galactic power.

The game was later remade by Tose for the PlayStation Portable under the title Star Ocean: First Departure,[b] and released in English-speaking regions in North America, Europe, and Australia in October 2008.

A remastered version titled Star Ocean: First Departure R[c] was released for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 worldwide in December 2019.

[6] Unlike games in the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest series, the battles are not turn based, but play out in real time.

[11] Players can equip characters with four special abilities with "ranged" and "distance" slots, whereas the remake reduced that number to two.

[9] Additionally, special techniques called Symbology can be used as well, which have the potential to deal more damage, but cost MP (Mental Points), of which each character has a finite amount.

[14] Item creation can allow for characters to be able to create weapons and equipment that are stronger than those available to be bought in stores and towns.

[15] Star Ocean has a game mechanic called "Private Actions" that plays a role in character development.

[10] However, one day, a neighboring town, Coule, starts contracting a terrible disease that turns people into stone.

[14] When they reach the summit, they are confronted by Ronyx J. Kenny and Ilia Silvestri, two crew members of the Earth Federation (Terran Alliance in the PSP remake) starship Calnus.

They learn that Fellpool blood could be used to process a special, invisible material which could give them a massive advantage in the war.

While the origin of the virus is tracked back to being on Roak itself, it is from Asmodeus, the King of the Demon World, who had been killed 300 years prior to the spread of the disease.

[23] Both Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean stretched the power of the Super Famicom to its limits, with a total of 48 megabits of data.

[25] Despite appearing in North American video game magazine Nintendo Power in 1996, the Super Famicom version was never officially released anywhere outside Japan.

[2] The English localization was handled by Nanica, Inc., with voice-over production services provided by Epcar Entertainment, Inc.[30] First Departure uses a slightly altered version of the engine used for Star Ocean: The Second Story with similar features, including prerendered backgrounds, 3D battle fields and hand drawn facial animations.

[40] Critics praised Sakuraba's progressive rock style, and highlighted his musical experimentation throughout the original Star Ocean score and First Departure.

[42] The First Departure remake features the theme song "Heart" performed by Japanese music group Asunaro, which accompanied the game's opening animation as well as the end credits, and was included in that version's official soundtrack in 2008.

[37] This theme was replaced for the First Departure R release with the song "Atarashī Ippo" (新しい一歩, "The First Step") by Yauchi Keiko of Shadow of Laffandor.

[49] While the editors thought the title's animation and characters were well done and the story was "charming" they lamented that players could only save their progress at certain points such as the world map, which they also felt too large and had a limited field of view.

[12] Andrew Fitch of 1UP.com, however, called First Departure an "overlooked classic" with "ridiculously engrossing crafting minutiae" and numerous character party combinations that increase its replay value.

[48] Dualshockers called it "an underwhelming port of an excellent but often forgotten Square Enix JRPG", remarking that any improvements to the PSP version were "mostly minor" such as the re-balance to the game's difficulty.

The website remarked that the character designs featured in the animated cutscenes originally created for the PSP version do not match the remaster's new artwork, adding that these scenes were rare, but they are emblematic of the fairly low-effort port that Star Ocean First Departure R is.

[57] PlayStation Universe called attention to the title's "simplistic gameplay" and repetitive combat, but commended the animation of its character sprites and updated portrait art.