Star Ocean: The Second Story R (2023)

Star Ocean is one of the few games where I can say I enjoy living in menus and finding new ways to get distracted. I was drawn to this one because of the new art, and admittedly, a fair bit of the English voice acting was alright. That said, I couldn't quite shake that Ashton sounded like an NPC.

I can't remember whether it was the PSP title for this game (that I never finished) or Til the End of Time/SO3 that was my first Star Ocean title, but suffice it to say, I already knew story and dialogues were never Star Ocean's strong suit. This one was a bit worse in the latter half than I expected. After a point, I wished I could scrap Rena, a co-MC/romantic interest, from my journey entirely. I see a lot of parallels between the story formats in Star Ocean: The Second Story and Tales of games. I feel that Tales pulls off character dynamics and overarching stories much better.

In general though, I can say I appreciated the work put into this game as well as the quality of life upgrades that separate it from the original. It was worth the time I put into it and I had a good time. :)

Amazon has this one for half off in Canada right now has anyone played it? I had the original on PS1, but I remember I bounced on it after several hours because the plot wasn't going anywhere. Does this one improve the story at all (or perhaps simply the way it's told), or is it strictly a visual upgrade?

I've heard it's great, and the price is right.

Played on PS4, approximately 35 hours. Picked Claude and then the rest of my party was: Rena, Celine, Bowman, Leon, Opera, Ernest, Chisato.

I was super disappointed in many aspects of First Departure R when it came out. There was so much backtracking, horribly high encounter rate that made it miserable to do so, etc. I did the bare minimum and didn't bother with PAs or other sidequests because it was such a chore to traverse the world map.

This remake made so many improvements from the previous entry's remake--monsters on the field, fast travel, etc. This is the first version of this entry in the series that I've played, so I don't know how much was new to the remake offhand, but getting through this game was so much nicer.

Overall, I had a great time. I enjoyed the characters, the combat, and the vibrant landscapes and backgrounds. The water in this game looks fantastic, and while I still prefer more realistic character models to the pixel ones, the juxtaposition with the detailed backgrounds was interesting. Leveling up my skills and crafting items and such was fun. There are some RNG aspects to it, but it's a solid enough system. I didn't really utilize pickpocket, but I did have some fantastic luck with a goodie box when I was around level 30, and landed the Sword of Marvels for Claude, which comes up short only to his ultimate.

The story was pretty good up to the halfway point, where it just switches gears, introduces all these bad guys, and then that barely develops anywhere (unless you read data in the library/university). It never felt high stakes because they were dropped on us, major events happened, we're given all this lore at a halfway point, and then we just kind of handle it. The motivations of the Wise Men were barely addressed and none of them had much screen time at all, so they were just kind of there. So that fell flat for me.

I'm planning to do my Rena playthrough eventually, just not right now.

While I like almost everything about this game, I think what stands out most is the setting and world building. Sci-Fi can be a rare setting for a JRPG, and a blend of fantasy and Sci-Fi even more rare. Yet this remake delivers, providing added flavor with the new highly detailed portraits for major characters. I felt like these gave a lot of personality but also really helped make this setting feel real.

The other stand out is the skill system that allows you to improve non-combat abilities for each party member to aid your journey in a number of ways. This system is fun to mess with, and gives the player a way to break the game balance in a way that still feels fun and earned.

The music is also very serviceable, with the added touch of allowing you to swap between a new arrangement or original music at any time.

I greatly enjoyed the characters and main story and fun side events, especially with how your choice of protagonist gives you their specific perspective and backstory as events unfold. One small issue would be how some dialogue doesn't make much sense or is just worded confusingly. An example being NPC dialogue clearly describing game mechanics that were changed for this remake, but there are other instances that probably made more sense in a previous version of the game. There are also a number of occasions where character dialogue falls into a couple tired tropes, such as putting off important or complex conversations because 'there just isn't time right now', or repeating character names back and forth dramatically as a substitute for any more meaningful kind of reaction.

My only other issue with the game is the combat, which normally would be a potential deal breaker, but the rest of the game is so enjoyable that it's quite easy to look past. The action combat system where you control one party member and have settings and a pause menu to select spells or items isn't bad, it's just lacking in dynamic shifts and the kind of satisfaction I have grown used to in turn based systems. 90% of the game combat flies by quickly, mostly with your party sweeping the enemy in a matter of moments, and occasionally you'll get wiped out in seconds instead. But a few tweaks to the party later and then it'll be no problem. With momentum being everything, I felt like I was missing the challenge and tension of drawn out battles with a lot of decision making.

Battles are also so chaotic with everyone attacking all at once that it's hard to tell what's even happening or even see the enemy through all the special effects and numbers on screen sometimes. It also doesn't help that besides a handful of settings you can't give your party members more nuanced commands or tactics based on the situation. There is a harder difficulty option but that just seemed to make bosses into huge HP sponges that just made battles feel tedious instead of more engaging.

All in all, this was a fun and unique experience with a lot of charm that is easy to recommend. The lack of great experiences in combat, and missed opportunities to dig deeper into the plot or characters being my only real hang-ups.

Last thing I'll say about this game is that the post game is kinda neat. The extra dungeon was a good mix of simple puzzles and somewhat gimmicky boss fights, testing your knowledge and your ability to switch up equipment and tactics properly. Unfortunately, the final boss of the dungeon was quite disappointing. My memory is really vague on the Ethereal Queen in SO4, but her counterpart here, the Iseria Queen is incredibly dull. Considering all the fights in this dungeon tried to mix things up, she doesn't really... do anything. She has quite literally two attacks. She does have some spells but I won't count those cause by now you're fully expected to have all your party member's elemental resistances covered. And out of her two attacks, only one matters; the one where she beyblade spins across the arena really fast for way longer than is necessary. It wasn't difficult in the slightest, it was just annoying. By now you're expected to more or less be near max level as well as have good crafted gear with passives, so even at max difficulty, there was no real challenge here. There was no prep to be done, no gimmick to look out for, absolutely nothing. You just kinda... beat her. Even if you for whatever reason try to hinder yourself or place some limits to "Challenge" yourself, there's no challenge here to begin with. All you'd be accomplishing is giving her number advantage in regards to stats. It was honestly quite disappointing.

Anyway, I'd say I'm finished with the game now. Quite fun. I'm actually thinking about jumping into Divine Force while this game is still fresh in my mind. Mainly to see for myself if the recent games really are as "bad" as this series' fans like to preach or if they've somehow deluded themselves with nostalgia goggles or something. I also just really want to play more Star Ocean.

Well, I didn't expect this game to eat my time like it did, but I have completed the main game. Tri-Ace games really do scratch a very specific itch I have. The game wasn't very long as I clocked in at about 25-ish hours before defeating the final boss. It was actually surprisingly short, considering I definitely spent at least three hours just doing menu stuff and a bit of grinding.

This game's biggest strength lies in it giving you the ability to break the game fairly easily. I mentioned this before, but once you learn it's systems, breaking the game is only a matter of time and I say it's honestly encouraged. Star Ocean's combat treads on a very thin line of being really easy and stupidly frustrating. Which side you end up on depends on you as a player deciding to either take full advantage of the tools and systems given to you, or not. And I honestly can't see why you wouldn't take advantage of them. Enemies and bosses can be absolutely ruthless in their barrage of attacks and spell spam. At hardest difficulty, you either stunlock them into a break status or they will absolutely erase you. The game gives you a ton of exp multipliers to facilitate the grind, it lets you craft armors with a variety of effects, it lets you make copies of those armors alongside their effects as you'll need to cover resistances for each party member, you can pick formations with varying effects, make food for more effects, and play music for even more effects. The amount of stat stacking you can do is quite ridiculous, and even after doing all this, you're still liable to get deleted if you slip up or make a mistake. Menu-ing in this game is just as much gameplay as is the combat and I quite enjoy it. Some effects come with a caveat though so don't forget about them. I got frustrated at the last boss because they were the only boss thus far that was giving me trouble and I didn't know why. After I beat it, I shortly realized I had a 100% exp boost on that cut everyone's stats by like 30-40%.... oops.

My thoughts on the story remain mostly the same. It's OK at best, frustratingly dumb at its worst. There's nothing really special here. One thing I noted is that after a certain point, PA events thin out quite alot. Specifically after you've gathered most of your party. This was odd because I felt like there was extremely little to no interaction between some of the characters. The main story beats are all handled by the two protagonists with very little input from the rest of your party. In Rena's story, after Dias joins, he quite literally almost never speaks and has zero PA events with any of the characters. It feels so... weird. If you're looking for an epic space story, you're certainly not gonna find it here. A cheesy early 2000s jrpg story though? Yeah, maybe so.

Looking forward to tackling the post game now.

The only Star Ocean game I played was Star Ocean 4 International, and I quite enjoyed it. For the most part, I've always enjoyed the approach Tri-Ace takes when it comes to gameplay and combat in that they try to make things interesting, for better or worse. From my understanding, past SO2, people weren't very receptive of subsequent SO games. After putting in about 12 hours into this, I kinda understand the sentiment, but at the same time not really? Granted, I only played SO4, but I distinctly remember people hating that game.

The thing I enjoy the most so far is being able to tell immediately this is a Tri-Ace game, of course it is. Shortly after starting, I'm immediately hit with a bunch of systems(IC/Specialty Skills) that a glance made absolutely no sense to me in terms of what exactly their uses are or how to even approach leveling them up. I'm not gonna explain the system cause I'd have no idea how to succinctly summarize or describe it. The closest I can think of is "Life" skills that influence various aspects of the game. After about 5-6 hours into the game, I decided to try to grasp and learn the systems, not to mention I had a bunch of points not being used on account of being overwhelmed and not knowing what I should put them into. After about two hours figuring things out and allocating points, I'm honestly impressed with how intricate the IC/Specialty skills are. These things range from letting you just about anything you'd expect from a normal rpg, such as crafting, cooking, pickpocketing, and the like. But they also let you do things like increase exp at the expense of stats, adjust enemy encounters, increase SP and BP accumulation, and create loot boxes that give you random items that may or may not break the game from my understanding. There's quite alot more to that, but I'll leave it at that. This is Tri-Ace at its most Tri-Ace and I quite like it. They're not afraid to give you the ability to break their games and just let you have fun with it.

I understand why compared to SO4, many would prefer this game as far as gameplay/combat is concerned. But the story? The story is not... good? It's confusing? It's a little baffling? Some events are so abrupt and out of left field that I'm baffled as to how someone thought this was good writing. The main story itself is simple and straightforward, but it's the Private Action events that are so jarring to me. In the course of ten minutes I had one of the party members help a prince, have that prince profess their love to them AND propose to them, then find out it was the day of the prince's wedding to another nation's princess. This was followed up by my party member crashing that prince's wedding, and promising to marry him once the adventure was over. Never mind the political ramifications of what we just did, but ??????? PA events just don't feel well implemented at all. All of them are optional and some even time limited, and are undoubtedly how you see character development, but the way some of them are written and implemented is so baffling to me. Alot of them feel like events that should happen over the course of the game instead of something you can just decided to read in less than ten minutes. It feels way too jarring and I just don't like it.

That said, I'm only 12 hours in and my enjoyment of the gameplay far outweighs everything else so I'm still having quite a good time. I hope it gets better, but I'm not holding my breath on that.