STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R

An excellent RPG featuring incredible visuals, engaging gameplay, a good story, well rounded protagonists, acceptable to great voice acting, good music, plenty of reasons to replay the game (new game +, various characters to recruit), and forgiving battles. If you're looking for a challenge bump the difficulty up right away, and don't grind much.

Brilliant game and brilliant remake. The quality of life features have been perfected here. I wish every rgp remake was like this. Please remake star ocean 3.

Great RPG. Nostalgic and one of my favorites growing up. My only gripe, which seems to be a common one, is once you get to nede, the story kind of falls off. Its not bad but it falls victim to convoluted jrpg stories that japanese devs cant quite ever get rid of. Its still fun to play and eventually break with strong builds after your first playthrough. If you end up going for all 99 endings like I did, its quite easy and takes about an hour / 2 hours per run when youre beefed up. But if you dont want to, dont worry youre not missing much in terms of endings. Theyre all relatively short and variations of the same. However I do recommend getting Claude and Rena 1-3.

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I played the original way back in the day. I haven't touched it again until this remake. The remake is quite well done. That said, the game is still showing its age in departments past the visuals. The story, VA, and characters are charming. However, don't expect anything past being very simple. There are times when the game can make me laugh with its charm, but there are more times when the writing is just way too simple and bland. I say that, but I can still feel the passion that went behind the original creation process. There is love and care here which I can appreciate. The battle system is fun and you can certainly do neat things with the crafting systems, items, formations, team comps, etc. I played the game primarily on UNIVERSE mode. Not sure I'll bother to play the post game content though. Overall a blast from the past that has enough flaws that I would say be weary of picking up if you don't already know what you are getting into.

This was one of those games where after I finished the story I was left with a void of just wanting more of it. Well fortunately there is a lot more to do in the game and I will be but the core story is completed. I randomly decided to purchase this game when I saw it on sale and I had been interested in trying the star ocean series for a long time. I had little to no expectations but this game is now on the top of my list as one of my favorite JRPGs ever. From the story, the characters, the gameplay, how much there is to do, and the villains (I like to call them space god hand because they remind me of the god hand from berserk) it's amazing. I played on Universe difficulty, one below the hardest which is chaos, and it provided a really good challenge as well. And not the artificial kind either. It felt difficult but fair. I logged 53 hours before completing my first run with Claude, which was also me doing a lot of extra stuff too though. So now I got another playthrough to do with Rena and also to attempt Chaos difficulty. Also the other endings which there are 99 of but uh, I'll probably just knock out 15 for the achievement and call it idk lol. When I looked into the star ocean series I saw this one was almost unanimously considered the best across the fanbase and I can certainly see why. Anyways for the price point I absolutely recommend this game. You get so much content and such a great story with great gameplay at a value you just don't get with games often. It is absolutely worth it. Especially if you're a fan of JRPGs I would say playing this game is a must. ============================================= EDIT GAMEPLAY: I wanted to add this into the review since I didn't delve too deep into it. I was mostly just keeping it simple to why I enjoyed the game so others thinking about trying out the series could take it into account. However, I saw some reviews that are really inaccurate about the gameplay. "Just mash B and you win." just isn't a fair representation of the gameplay unless you're playing on the easiest difficulty and not using any of the many mechanics this game has that many JRPG's, even modern ones, just do not provide. The game has a complex system of tactics, strategies, and formations etc that are all utilized to get the most damage and damage reduction possible to win battles especially against later dungeons and some of the endgame and post game bosses which is super important to learn if you're playing on Universe difficulty or higher. Below that yes it can be a mash B button and win simulator I suppose. Was why I changed the difficulty myself very early on. Chaos was too difficult for me as I was still learning the game and its many systems. But Universe was just right for learning but still having a challenge. It also has an elaborate crafting system and alchemy for creating better gear should you need to. This, in my Chaos playthrough, has become extremely important as getting good equipment to get me through some fights just by finding it early game hasn't been enough. Compounding (A system for creating healing items and MP restorative items etc) and even cooking have also been extremely vital for being able to progress in chaos mode. It was good and helpful in Universe too but it is completely necessary on Chaos. TLDR: So my point is yes. If you lower the difficulty as much as you can it's going to be really easy and a mash B and win game but for people that don't know anything about the game. There is a lot more to it than just pressing a single button.

Really good remake of a game that is both true to the original and updates what's outdated. The counter system is jank but it can be completely ignored to have an almost identical combat experience to the original. If you never played before, it can be cleared in about 35ish hours (at least the main story) and has almost 100 different ending combinations, depending on each character's relation to each other, and more characters than slots available, so there's good replay value. SO2 also belongs to the category of games that let you crack them wide open, but still have really challenging super bosses. You can get -extremely- powerful, but to get through everything you're kind of expected to, which is fun and rewarding. Lots of replayability, good challenge on Universe difficulty, and plenty of post-game content to take a crack at. Can't recommend enough