STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R

The way Square Enix remakes and re-releases their old games is really bizarre and inconsistent: sometimes you get functional but really barebones ports, other times full 3D remakes that may as well be a whole new game. Among the remakes, some of them, like the Front Mission games, seem really slapdash and low effort. Others, like Secret of Mana, use a weird chibi-ish 3D style that really doesn't appeal to me at all. Thankfully, this new version of Star Ocean 2 is quite good. In a nutshell, they cleaned up the 2D sprites, and combined that with all new 3D backgrounds and levels. It seems weird at first, but it works quite well. The new character art during dialogue is well drawn, and helps give all the characters (especially Rena and Claude) a bit more personality. Rather than random battles, enemies appear on the map, and can be fought or avoided as you like. This is a welcome change, since the enemy encounter rate in dungeons could be a bit high and kinda messed with the pacing. The battles themselves have also changed for (mostly) the better. Encounters are no longer just decided by mashing, but now counter attacks and guard breaks make positioning a lot more important. The game rewards good play with restoring a bit of HP and MP, or raising attack. Since save points now restore life as well, and you can immediately retry any battle that you lose, the game can be a bit easy for people who played the original back in the day, so you might want to up the difficulty. That's right, multiple difficulty levels are now selectable at the start, and no longer dependent on the pointless "collecting" of voice clips. Speaking of which, the laughable English voiceovers have been completely re-recorded and are actually listenable now, as well as two Japanese voice tracks (one is a holdover from the PSP version, and the other is brand new!). Of course, if you find it annoying you can just mute the voices and not worry about it. You also have the option between the original OST and a new arranged soundtrack, which sounds pretty good. Most of the new QOL stuff is fine, especially actually having a friendship meter now instead of just having to guess like the old game. I do wish I could turn off the minimap, however. The script has been completely retranslated and is much less awkward than before, though also deviates somewhat more noticeably from the Japanese at times. On the whole though, any change that can make the main protags less boring and lifeless is undoubtedly a good thing. It seems like there are also new cutscenes, endings, as well as a new character to recruit. On one hand, they could have added so much more to flesh out the story, but in a way I'm glad they kept the game more less the same. There are all sorts of other small things I could probably nitpick, but on the whole this is a nice remake that looks and plays well. If you liked the playstation original, it is a pretty easy recommend. Newcomers may want to watch a bit of early story and gameplay bits first.

I haven't played the original but I'm mostly left with the impression this is a really good remake of a really average JRPG. Regarding the remake itself: The updated graphics are the now common "HD-2D" style but unlike e.g. octopath traveller they do this just by putting character sprites in normal 3D environments without any low res pseudo 16-bit environment textures or abuse of post processing. It all looks pretty tasteful and coherent, and runs smoothly on steam deck (save for negligible hitching on the world map). The new sound work is commendable but I opted for the original soundtrack and voice work. The former is just my personal preference as I like synthesized video game music over orchestra work. But for the voices it's hard to overlook that many of the actors from the Second Evolution remake have just aged out of their roles and sound out of place. A little depressing. The actual game: Combat is real time with pause, similar to Tales of Phantasia from the same era. On Universe difficulty, battles generally all play out the same by alternating regular attacks, crowd control or shield breaking skills, and recovery items while my allies spam magic spells automatically. The only battles I can remember involving tailored strategies were boss fights where I equipped status or attribute blocking gear before diving into the usual button mashing and healing. Probably more than any fifth gen JRPG I've played, the gameplay seems really heavily weighted toward min maxing and messing around in menus outside of battle. There are literally dozens of passive and active battle skills, and crafting skills. Crafting will get you a basically limitless reserve of overpowered recovery items that are only limited by your carrying capacity, as well as most of the strongest weapons. The most lasting memory I have from playing this is standing around in item shops duplicating items and re-rolling weapon customizations. All the complexity in the game's leveling and crafting was apparently carried over from the original from what I've read. It's shockingly modern, but all the design work behind it would have been better spent developing more on the actual battle system. The story is standard JRPG fare. The pacing is bad. It does a pretty typical JRPG thing in the beginning of giving you a singular goal (go from point A to point B and investigate the horrible apocalyptic monster spewing evil relic) and then diverting you on a world tour for 30 hours through bad luck and circumstance while you go everywhere except where you're meant to be, while the plot goes nowhere. Others have pointed it out but Claude and Rena are the only real meaningful protagonists, as every other character is swapable for someone else. They're both pretty plain. All the other characters have their own introductory segment and then disappear into the background, just tossing in throwaway lines once in a while. I was hopeful the light sci-fi elements would shine through better but throughout the game (even in the end parts) the setting outwardly seems like the average fantasy backdrop with a touch of modern technology, while at the other extreme, all of the game's crazy doomsday devices and high technology are so unexplained and miraculously powerful it's all basically magic. Weirdly then, even with background references to space travel and clashes of interplanetary civilizations it's all for naught as it all somehow seems to end up at a pretty typical fantasy setting and story. In terms of themes or atmosphere or plot devices, this really is just another JRPG. I guess in total this left no real impact on me and the time I spent playing it feels like an empty void.

This regarded by a lot of people as the best Star Ocean to play if starting out. This was indeed my first game and I loved almost every part of it. I definitely see why many regard this as one (if not the best) Star Ocean games in the series. Excellent gameplay (really makes you think in the harder difficulties), a nice story but takes a while to build up, and a fun variety of characters to fight and interact with, the soundtrack really shines at certain points, and some nice replayability. Solid recommend.

IDK why, but I am a sucker for HD-2D Pixel art games.

Dropped after 10 hours — neither the story nor the gameplay managed to hook me. The characters lean heavily on tired tropes, and the sheer volume of dialogue that doesn't add much value to the story can be sleep inducing. In its defense: this game is a pretty good and faithful HD-2D remake of a PS1 classic, If you have nostalgia for the original, that alone might make it worth revisiting.

Very boring and overrated. People gassed up this game so much over the years but the story is just awful, voice acting amateurish and character aside from the main duo protagonists might as well not exist.

Good Shi Square Enix, this was such a beautiful HD/2D jrpg to play through, probably the most enjoyable Star Ocean out!!! The music is nice, the story is decent, the characters are loveable and the gameplay is pretty nice. Worth It!!!!

Easily the best in the series and one of my favorite JRPG, also brings me back to when I watched my brother first played the original on Playstation 1 :")

Full disclosure: yes, I am an old fan with nostalgia. Also full disclosure: I've started this game five or so times, and have gotten a decent bit in, but for one reason, lost my save (PS1 memory card lost, emulator saves messed up, my emulator handheld's battery exploding, etc). I was quite committed to never trying this game again due to my bad luck, but then I saw the remake version. Even then, I still held off, wondering if it was worth it to start that hour+ long slow-ish start. Yes, it's worth it! This version of the game is everything that I've ever wanted and more. So many quality of life improvements, so many ways that it explains mechanics that I've never understood before, so many ways that it gives you options on how you want to play your game. Plus, the presentation is fantastic. I will admit: if you're not an old fan and don't know some of the tricks, it may not hit as hard. But the thing about this game is that the more you get to know it's INSANELY high level of customization and crafting, the more that you'll feel so empowered. Level up the right skills (like Cooking and Smithing) and the more that you're actual combat stats will go up. "Chef Knife" (now just "knife") makes your attack go up immensely. Learning Herbs and minerals makes your mages more effective with their magic. Etc. But then, you can actually crafting food, herbs, armor, weapons, etc, and you'll start to create items that are better than what you can find in the stores. Even better, there are certain skills and items that basically find items for you as you walk around the world. And if enough party members have a shared skill set, they can combine into "Specialties" and "Super Specialties" where you're really changing your game in a variety of deep ways. For example, if you learn "Writing," you can create books based on skills. When read, your party can level up skills that you have unlocked (up to a certain point). If you have the money and penmenship skill high enough, you can basically level up your whole party's basic skills in no time. But then you can also unlock Publication, where you can sell special books based on your party...and you can actually receive royalties from them, over time, that give IMMENSE money back. At this point in my playthrough, I have so much money and so many items that I don't know what to do with myself. And most of it is just me experimenting when I have time. Combat-wise, it's a bit of a simple real-time action battler. But, this version adds some new complexities that make combat slightly more complex. Plus, you can eventually unlock special guest characters in a way that sort of summons them temporarily, and between that and parrying/countering, I feel like I have enough to keep me engaged. And, the last thing is how much I adore the Private Action feature of the game. You not only recruit characters and follow a JRPG story...you get little vignettes and side-interactions where your characters can split up as a team in a town, run into each other, and have small moments. They're mostly for humor, but some actually share lore or backstory content that is meaningful to the overall world and plot. A lot of it is, admittedly, anime crush humor, with the two main characters constantly dancing around their being paired as a couple by nearly everyone they meet. But overall, I've really enjoyed this feature, and I'm glad the remake allows you to easily track and revisit locations so that you don't easily miss any of them. I started this game as a tween shortly after it debuted, not understanding most of the systems. I replayed it as an adult, understanding some of the systems. Now I'm playing it approaching middle age, and I finally feel empowered to understand all of its systems, and play the game at a fast pace in a way that makes sense for my life right now. I can't recommend this enough; if you are love classic JRPGs but don't have the time to wander aimlessly around trying to remember the quest you were on when you played two weeks prior, this is your game. It values your time and wants you to value your time playing. So do just that. Play this game if you like classic JRPGs. And thank me later. And thank the studio, Gemdrops, for their amazing job!

8/10 from me. Only downsides for me were: - The latter half of the game the story goes odd and feels forced by the writers. - The combat mechanics means some fights can be more a game of cat and mouse than a fight. - The design philosophy in the final dungeon changes in that the mobs feel like bloat and are there just to disrespect your time Other than these three points, the game is definately a fun 25-30hr experience: - Characters are lovable and bounce off each other well - Combat at its core is generally fun for the majority of the game - Fishing is fun - They done a great job with visuals and audio