Written in 2006
This company is full of traditions and pays homages to their own games and characters a lot. Another very "repetitive" aspect in tri-Ace games is the return of many music tunes well-known among the fans. There is no other developer team that includes so many cameo appearances and other deja vu experiences in the RPG business than tri-Ace. This page is meant to give you a little overview what you can see where and from which game it originally was.
Most tri-Ace soundtracks have been composed by Mr. Motoi Sakuraba, and somehow it became tradition that some of the tunes he composed in one game are being used in the following games as well. Even in Radiata Stories, where Mr. Noriyuki Iwadare did all the scores, there were some of the well-known tunes. Here is a "top list" of tunes that were used in various games:
Tunes that also have been used two times are "Beast of Prey" (Star Ocean 2 and Valkyrie Profile), "Mighty Blow" (Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile), "Star Ocean forever" (Star Ocean 2 and 3), "Highbrow" (Star Ocean 3 and Radiata Stories) and "The True Nature of All" (Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean 3)
Claude C. Kenni
he was originally the 50% main hero of Star Ocean 2. However, he can be seen in later tri-Ace games as well. In Star Ocean 3, there's a costume sphere for the main hero, Fayt Leingod, which makes him look like Claude. In Radiata Stories, you can see his clothes worn by Gantz Rothchild.
Fayt Leingod
Fayt himself, being the main hero of Star Ocean 3 is a victim of tri-Aces cameo policy as well. He appears not only in his main game but also in Radiata Stories, where the main character Jack Russel wears the same outfit as Fayt does after a certain event. (Please excuse the poor image quality of Jack in Fayt's outfit, I got that from a YouTube-Video recoreded and put together by "Jaime".)
Lenneth Valkyrie
She is the main heroine of what is most probably the most renown tri-Ace game, Valkyrie Profile. She also appears in Star Ocean 3 where she acts as a bonus enemy (The bad ending of Valkyrie Profile tells you why), and in Radiata Stories, she wants to convince Jack Russel to become an Einherjar.
Lezard Valeth, who is some sort of hype character in Valkyrie Profile, has also various cameo appearances. A small boy in Star Ocean 3 is named Lezard - and people say about him that "he is a good boy beyond the surface". He is also a bonus boss in Radiata Stories.
tri-Ace is a very sadistic company. Often enough, even the standard enemies are hard to deal with, the final boss is pretty hard... and still there are bonus enemies in almost all the games being released after Star Ocean.
Bonus Bosses in Star Ocean 2:
Bonus Bosses in Valkyrie Profile:
Bonus Bosses in Star Ocean 3:
Bonus Bosses in Radiata Stories:
Bonus Bosses in Valkyrie Profile 2:
Bonus Bosses in Star Ocean IV:
Bonus Bosses in Star Ocean V:
Okay, now the small report of deja vu experiences in tri-Ace games has reached an end. I hope you liked it, and I honestly apologize that the article is far from complete - it does not cover all the games and I'm sure I missed out one or the other bonus goodie. Yet, I hope you had fun reading this.
When I rewrote this article in 2017, I researched what happened to the deja-vus in later tri-ace games. It seems that, aside of the one or the other Ethereal Queen and Gabriel Celeste, not many of their insider gags remained. Star Ocean V wasn't almost released and got a late release in 2016 for the PlayStation IV, for which it was clearly not made.
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