Review Kenchiin 3/5 · Nov 3, 2023
Stab the Sword of Justice
With the new edition being released on November I thought it was a good idea to get back and review this one.
The first time I heard of Star Ocean was because of Star Ocean EX, anime adaptation of this game – the series didn’t do much justice to the game -which I found later on- and it also had …
With the new edition being released on November I thought it was a good idea to get back and review this one.
The first time I heard of Star Ocean was because of Star Ocean EX, anime adaptation of this game – the series didn’t do much justice to the game -which I found later on- and it also had an abrupt ending with no resolution! Literally… a nightmare.
I did go through the first Star Ocean (retitled First Departure for the PSP) but honestly it was a little bit plain and I just couldn’t connect much with it.
I think this The Second Story/Evolution has a lol of strong points. To be honest I don’t think the story is that deep, but it does work on top of a very solid world-building ground – with anime trope-ish characters that go out of their tropes at the right time. The music is a work of its era, but to me it remains as one of the top works from Motoi Sakuraba even today.
The battle system suffered a little bit from its own design, but the action elements made the dynamic different to other more standard RPG stuff. the truth is that it was a fun game to play. The world of Expel succeeds at making you believe everything is alive. I spent hours and hours fighting enemies and I completely fell in love with the characters.
So the bad stuff… well, basically that you could summarize the game’s plot in very few sentences. You get to see some of that at the beginning, but then the game goes into “just go around and explore” territory for most of its length, with few plot points really mattering until you start reaching the final arc. Not saying an exploration game is bad per se, but it sets up an interesting world building to then just drop it and go the opposite way. Towards the end of the game you get to see what it really was all about – but it might be too late by then... which turns into a final arc with undeveloped characters and a bit of a messy writing/narrative.
Would I say it’s a perfect game? Not really, but there’s a high chance that if you are into classic J-RPGs this might be your cup of tea.