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The Star Ocean sequence has all the time occupied a bizarre spot in Sq.’s huge catalogue. This sci-fi-focused JRPG sequence began off comparatively robust, however the previous couple of entries have been middling at finest and simply plain not good at worst. Nonetheless, these earlier video games had been actually one thing on the time, and 1998’s Star Ocean: The Second Story has been broadly seen by followers as the head of the sequence. Although Sq. gave it an enhanced remaster on PSP, it’s now determined to revive this basic as soon as extra as Star Ocean: The Second Story R, a remake constructed from the bottom up with trendy options, and we’re thrilled to report that this revisit is an entire success. Star Ocean: The Second Story R manages to protect every part that was nice in regards to the unique whereas including tons of additional options and content material to make this the definitive model.
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The story of Star Ocean 2 is about 20 years after the occasions of the primary sport and follows twin protagonists Claude and Rena, considered one of whom you decide as your lead character in the beginning of a brand new file. Rena is from a distant planet named Expel, whereas Claude is a member of the interstellar Earth Federation, which travels the celebs and contacts new civilizations. Claude and his father, the admiral, are investigating a mysterious disturbance with a floor workforce on a just lately found planet when Claude foolishly approaches an alien object that teleports him throughout the universe to Rena’s planet.
The 2 meet shortly after his arrival, and Rena and the opposite members of her village consider Claude to be the fabled Hero of Mild spoken of in native prophecy and superstition. The legend goes that this hero will free the land from the blight of hordes of monsters introduced on by the current influence of a meteor referred to as the Sorcery Globe. Clearly, Claude has no thought what any of this implies and simply needs to discover a method again residence, so he units out on a journey with Rena to seek out the Sorcery Globe and hopefully put an finish to the monsters whereas discovering himself a technique to get again to Earth.
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It is a compelling story, one which manages to straddle an attention-grabbing line between fantasy and science fiction. Expel is a quaint and never very superior planet, however we view it to a sure extent from the attitude of Claude, who has all kinds of fancy tech on his particular person and hails from a vastly extra superior civilization. So, whilst you’re sleeping in inns and shopping for new swords to make use of to combat creatures in lantern-lit dungeons, there are delicate reminders positioned all through that not every part is as low-tech as it could appear. One thing that locals suppose is ‘magic’ could also be revealed to be nothing greater than superior alien expertise.
The twin protagonist system provides some attention-grabbing wrinkles, too, notably in the way you get to view scenes from an alternate perspective. To get the complete image of Star Ocean 2, you might want to play it no less than two occasions—most occasions occur no matter which character you picked, however there are some scenes and even complete social gathering members which might be unique to 1 path. This provides a variety of replayability to a sport that already feels prefer it’s designed to be performed a number of occasions, which makes this already expansive JRPG journey really feel that a lot grander.
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We additionally appreciated how Star Ocean 2 doesn’t skimp on the quiet character interactions that fall between main plot beats, but this depth is solely non-compulsory in the event you simply wish to get a transfer on. The “Non-public Motion” system might be activated at any time in cities and allows you to discover and set off cutscenes with social gathering members that flesh out their historical past and showcase a deepening bond between them and your character. Not solely does this assist to make every character greater than only a 2D caricature, nevertheless it provides to a Persona-esque relationship system that impacts which ending you get.
Gameplay follows the standard JRPG construction of exploring a grand overworld, shopping for tools in cities the place you’ll be able to chat with locals and decide up sidequests, and delving into dungeons stuffed with tempting loot and harmful creatures. It’s not something that you just haven’t seen earlier than, however what’s placing right here is how properly Star Ocean 2 manages to deal with its pacing. It follows a considerably ‘episodic’ construction, your narrative normally pushed by no matter hijinks are happening within the subsequent city you go to, and it does a powerful job of successfully splitting time between gameplay and story-driven sections. This isn’t the sort of sport the place it feels such as you’re hammering the ‘A’ button for hours as yet one more verbose cutscene drones on — Star Ocean 2 is a sport that strikes.
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Nowhere is that concentrate on motion extra noticeable than within the fight system, which has been tweaked a bit right here to make for an much more action-packed and thrilling expertise. Random encounters have been tossed out and changed by roaming enemy blobs that you could evade and, in the event you’re tough, sneak up on from behind to realize the benefit when the combat begins. When you’re taken into battle, issues observe a typical action-focused fight system you’d discover in one thing like Kingdom Hearts the place you dodge enemy assaults, mash out combos, and forged spells and skills if you’re given some respiration room.
It’s impressively fluid, partially as a result of more practical lock-on system for this remake, and you are feeling slightly extra in charge of the motion now with the introduction of the ‘Break’ system. With this, each enemy has a separate Guard bar that may be chopped down with varied assaults, and as soon as it empties, they’re briefly shocked and take much more injury from all sources. We appreciated how this provides slightly extra technique to fight than merely bashing away with the hardest-hitting assaults, as there are various conditions the place it’s in your finest pursuits to give attention to beautiful some enemies reasonably than specializing in uncooked injury.
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Although you’ll be able to solely management one character at a time, there are a number of settings you’ll be able to activate for every social gathering member dictating the way you need the AI to behave, resembling specializing in therapeutic or being conservative with MP spending. The AI general does a strong job of working your different social gathering members in battle in line with your directives, and in the event you ever need extra management over them, you’ll be able to both swap to them immediately or you’ll be able to pull up a menu that pauses the motion and allows you to order characters individually to forged sure talents or use gadgets.
Some new mechanics have been added that make issues much more dynamic, with the brand new Assault Motion system headlining. With this, you’ll be able to ‘equip’ benched social gathering members (and even visitor characters from later Star Ocean video games) to the D-Pad and tag them in for a fast assault, buff, or heal on the faucet of a button. These might be fairly highly effective, particularly in the event you time your drops properly, although they’re ruled by a cooldown that forestalls you from spamming. Assault Motion naturally provides to the fight system with out feeling unreasonably shoehorned in, though we discovered that the majority fights are over lengthy earlier than we ever thought-about utilizing this function.
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A brand new Bonus system on this remake rewards skillful play with additional stat advantages. Each time you defeat enemies, they’ll drop a number of golden orbs that go into your Bonus Gauge, and as soon as this hits sure thresholds, you’ll get new passive buffs like increased protection or assault. The Bonus Gauge carries over between battles, nevertheless it goes all the best way again all the way down to zero in the event you make sure errors, resembling poorly timing a dodge and getting hit by a telegraphed assault. It takes some time to construct it again up once more from the beginning, which might introduce a welcome little risk-reward system to drive you to be slightly extra picky in the way you strategy enemies.
Fight on the default problem possibility is laughably simple in the event you’re following the anticipated energy curve, and it’s damaged fully in the event you grind as much as be just some ranges above the place you need to be. Even when not working grinded-up characters, we encountered many fights in opposition to trash mobs that had been over in lower than three seconds, which is usually a bit disappointing when a lot of your encounters go this manner and also you’re not even actually getting to interact with the fight system. This may after all be mounted by going as much as the next problem stage, however we want that the default (and clearly supposed) problem stage felt slightly extra well-balanced.
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Out of battle, character progress takes an attention-grabbing and barely complicated strategy whereby you manually distribute talent factors throughout varied abilities and specialties which have a passive impact on stats. Basically, there are a sequence of specialties that permit characters to do issues like craft or smith gadgets within the overworld, cook dinner meals, or fish, and every of those is comprised of a small handful of abilities (resembling ‘Knife’ being a talent you want for ‘Cook dinner’). If you wish to stage up your Cook dinner potential so you can also make extra superior dishes, you might want to stage up Knife and all the opposite abilities beneath Cook dinner first. But not each talent solely applies to 1 specialty. Mineralogy, for instance, is a key element of the Appraising, Crafting, and Alchemy abilities.
Elevating sure abilities will typically immediately elevate an identical stat, however specializing in simply elevating the talents that provide you with desired stats signifies that you would possibly miss unlocking new specialties for that character. And given that you just want a number of characters within the social gathering to know (or have a minimal stage in) sure specialties to unlock party-wide Tremendous Specialties, you thus must put a variety of thought into the way you distribute abilities and specialties throughout workforce members so that you just’re serving each that particular character and the wants of the social gathering normally.
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To be frank, this talent system feels needlessly complicated contemplating the tip product after taking the time to check it, although we will see what the builders had been going for right here. It’s not like you can also make any improper selection, particularly as you’ll be able to ultimately max out each character anyway, however typically it feels such as you’re simply going by a variety of confirmations and menus to get a stat and talent bump that might’ve simply been tossed in if you final leveled up. All the identical, problem apart, this talent system provides replayability given that you could begin out with completely different builds for characters every run, and that is helped by their innate beginning skills being randomized every time.
As for its presentation, Star Ocean 2 makes use of a brand-new engine that seems to take greater than slightly inspiration from Sq.’s fashionable HD-2D engine. Right here, reasonably than the entire world being expressed as pixel artwork, the world itself is introduced in a 3D photorealistic model that includes dynamic lighting, whereas characters and enemies are sharply drawn as pixel sprites interacting with it. In some ways, we might say that we choose this look to HD-2D, Star Ocean 2 does an impressive job of making this hyperreal and ultra-stylized tackle the basic visuals that appears beautiful in each body.
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We particularly appreciated the best way that the digicam is usually directed to maneuver round and provide cinematic angles in linear sequences, whereas exploring huge environments and constructions within the overworld evoked a way of awe that solely video games within the Xenoblade franchise have managed to seize. Even the smaller particulars have been attended to right here, resembling how Yukihiro Kajimoto designed brand-new character artwork for dialogue sequences. Suffice it to say, Gemdrops completely knocked the visuals out of the park; Star Ocean 2 is likely one of the most visually spectacular retro RPGs on the market.
In the meantime, Motoi Sakuraba reprised his position as composer. The soundtrack has been completely remixed and even options a number of new tracks. Many of those items had been additionally recorded with a stay orchestra, including a richness and high quality that MIDI may by no means hope to match. All of it sounds nice, notably the principle battle theme, making this soundtrack a becoming companion to the fully overhauled visuals.