Primeiro game que joguei de star ocean (provavelmente o último).

Os personagens e a dublagem tem muita personalidade ( é raro pro gênero de JRPG ter estes dois ao mesmo tempo ), dito isto , o plot não compartilha da mesma qualidade.

Ótimos visuais, gameplay sólida mas que deteriora com o tempo, porque, bem, você sabe, JRPGs não sabem quando parar.

O jogo é bom, mas eu teria dado uma nota maior se tivesse umas boas 6 horas a menos de conteúdo, a longevidade do jogo prejudica o pacing e o combate, que sofre de desbalanceamento nas partes finais. Nota: 6,5

Starved Ocean

Star Ocean is a franchise that remained largely out of my view for most of my life as I didn't make the crossover to JRPG's formally until I played FFX after it hit the Switch in 2018 or so. As a result, many famed series' borne from the Golden Age 90's flew under my radar and I didn't have a chance to experience them until fairly recently. Over time I've tried to dabble into many of these in an attempt to understand gaming history and get a taste of the genre as it grew. I didn't "play" my first Star Ocean until the Divine Force demo release on PS5, immediately confused by the plethora of mechanics going on and monotonous combat I dropped it. I'd only gotten into it because of name recognition, knowing that Star Ocean was one of the "big" Square/Enix titles from the SNES/PS1 era, but dropped it because I figured it wasn't going to be up my alley. I didn't want to remove Star Ocean from my lexicon though, because I'd known that a unanimously "good one" had to exist out there somewhere, and with The Second Story getting the remake treatment... I figured it was time.

Upon launch of Second Story R, I immediately fell in love with the science fiction setting and incredible HD-2D visuals. As a big fan of the graphical direction of the Octopath/Triangle Strategy team, Star Ocean's graphical sheen was an immediate reward to my eyes. I paused every few moments of meeting characters, running through villages, and existing within the world to take screenshots and send friends images from my playthrough. Enamored I was by the world and the plot leaving your imagination of what could happen next to a pilot landing in an unfamiliar world. That's kinda where the praise stops unfortunately, as the curtain fell pretty quickly after that into my Second Story R playthrough... along with my rating.

The bad wasn't necessarily as grating as a lot of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's bad was for me (which I reviewed recently,) it was just confusingly grating. To start is the seemingly random difficulty spikes and settings of Star Ocean: The Second Story R. I played on the "normal" difficulty equivalent for a majority of the game and it felt, fairly hard. I figured with some time dedicated to grinding that I could make the experience easier for myself and breeze through what I considered to be the "tougher" dungeons at the time. I found out after about two hours of grinding and gaining some thirty plus levels that there was no different "feel" in my strength levels. Enemies could still one shot you and perma stun your party with remarkable ease, your characters didn't feel like they did any better damage per hit, and the game didn't actually get any easier. Now this changed a bit later on as I grinded north of level 100 and gained new abilities for my secondary party members because they gained access to new spells that seemed to disrupt more and do more damage, but they got one shot just the same. All the way from world enemies to dungeon encounters to the final suite of bosses, I found myself furiously mashing resurrect items and healing spells to get through encounters that felt like they should have been a breeze with how much I grinded. I spent hours effectively AFK just listening to my own music while I ran around in circles soaking free exp, and nothing actually felt easier. I tuned up my stats across the board, which mediated issues I had with the difficulty, but I was still dying with 9999 hp from petrifications and paralysis' all the same.

This brings up another issue I had with Star Ocean... information and skill overload. I joke a lot about how Persona 5 effectively tutorializes the player for the first like, fifty hours of gameplay, but hey nothing feels confusing or rushed at that point in the game. Within the first few hours of Second Story R, the entire skill tree and IC/Speciality suite is opened up to the player to understand and dive through. It's more than just levelling up your attack, magic, and defense. It opens up the Pickpocketing, Crafting, Music, Writing, Alchemy, Cooking, list goes on trees that the player is supposed to fully understand. From what I knew with my experiences with these tertiary skills is that they accented the player and made it easier for me to level and be strong... but outside of training and scouting I had absolutely no idea. I couldn't tell how worth my time it was to construct books to level attack or perform songs to summon certain enemies because the tradeoffs were completely unclear and the materials necessary to do so were obfuscated or gated behind currency. This resulted in my levelling up train (sacrificing damage for exp gain) and scouting (populating more enemies on the world map) so I could stand still and let my characters go to town on consistently spawning enemies. I'm not sure if this was the best way to go about it, but I didn't want to have to study Star Ocean tactics for longer than I did to understand it. Grinding is pretty much never fun in games, especially in older JRPG's where the heal/save options aren't as desirable as they probably could be, but Star Ocean's levelling systems felt like watching paint dry, but the paint occasionally personified to get up and slap you in the face before going back to the fence it was being applied to.

Combat was bad, voice acting even worse, and the plot was lukewarm at best. Star Ocean: The Second Story R was an ultimately milquetoast experience that I'm not really even glad I got to play. It lands and bombards the player with lots of great visual fidelity (and the cutscene work/character portaits are rather impressive throughout) but lacks the sticking power to create a compelling experience worthy of note. I cannot recommend Star Ocean: The Second Story R to anybody except maybe fans of the old Action JRPG genre.

Second GOTM finished for March 2024. For the amount of effort put into this remake alone, this game is phenomenal. I can't remember the last time I played a "remake" or "remaster" and truly felt myself in awe while playing. Not only is it stunning to look at, but the QOL and accessibility features are outstanding. The gameplay loop, while easily broken, was also really fun and diving into the skills and combat mechanics was enjoyable. Top-to-bottom excellent remake!

However, this one isn't without its faults. The story felt pretty weak at times, especially since the main antagonists aren't introduced until about halfway through the game - briefly - and then you don't really see them again until the final dungeon. Some of the story beats felt truly geared towards the Claude and Rena interacting and being together, and every other interaction that might've deviated from that goal felt mechanical and forced. While I enjoyed interacting with many of the other characters (especially with the great voice acting), none of them really felt all that necessary to the plot and the story did its damndest to remind you of that fact. It wasn't a bad story, but it was certainly the weak spot of this game for me.

A really great game with an excellent remake, but when the core story of a game comes off this weak there isn't a whole lot a remake can do without fundamentally changing the game. I really enjoyed it, and will eventually play it again for the other protag's storyline, but it lacked just that little bit extra to make it something truly special.

It was OK. I like Sci-Fantasy and this hit that mark for me. Very funny to just break the game over your knee once you can get all your crafting skills cooking.

I think I like Star Ocean Til the End of Time more still, but overall, this was a decent RPG to pass the time.

I do want to talk about the soundtrack. I played mostly on the Original score, but swapped to the Arrangement towards the end. The Arrangement isn't bad, it's just not as forward as the original music is. It plays at a slightly softer volume, even if everything else is the same. It has some cool work with weaving through multiple instruments, but it definitely faded to the background more than the original.

This feels a bit weird to say about a JRPG, but I think this game was absolutely carried by it's gameplay. I just couldn't bring myself to care about the story. You don't even meet the main villains until you're over halfway done with the game. And then they don't even reappear until the final dungeon. Aside from Rena and Claude, no party member ever felt relevant to the plot past their introduction, even though most of them had a lot of potential.
But, with all that been said, the gameplay was great enough to make up for it. The amount of options you have to absolutely break the game into pieces at every turn, was truly incredible. Every option felt overpowered in it's own way, and yet the game still felt really well balanced.
One other praise-worthy aspect of the game is just how wonderful of a remake it is. It includes all the quality of life features you could dream of, and graphics that bring the most out of the HD2D style.
Overall, I think I would recommend this game, as long as you don't go into it expecting some grand, incredible narrative.

A Fantastic Remake of a PSP Remaster of a PS1 game.

Let's start with the obvious, this game is gorgeous. What a vast improvement. The character sprites are super pretty. The environments and magic are great too. My favorite is the new character portraits though. They are so well drawn. So much better than the PSP anime style. I liked them at the time, but now I feel like they are the worst portraits of the three.

The battle system has been updated to bring it in line with Star Ocean 3 and up. It's fine. I kind of liked the old PSP/PS1 simplicity. It was more brain off than this version. But I understand why they did it. It's a good change. I just wasn't looking for it.

Now, something that they slightly improved is the PA system. IDK why they didn't just remove it. It was bad back then and even worse now. The PA events are very finnicky. Sometimes they don't ever show up. Sometimes you gotta leave the town to trigger more. Do that over and over until no more show up. I missed out on a character I wanted because the PA event never showed up despite me walking in and out of the area many times. Under no circumstances should characters be linked to PA events. It's stupid and bad design. I'm still mad I missed the character to no fault of my own. This is the biggest flaw of the game. Stupid mechanic. I refuse to ever back down from that.

Combat is mostly fine. except I had one character throughout my gameplay always get melted. IDK if she is just isn't great or what. But if that is the case, then they needed to balance characters better. I ended up replacing her. But in general characters can just get melted at anytime, even on easy. You can get stunlocked easily too. All kind of frustrating.

All the bosses in the final area are just kind of infuriating. Endlessly spamming mega attacks killing your characters that are at least 20+ levels above what they are needed. Spamming status effects that stop characters from doing anything. It's just annoying. I felt like I was babysitting the CPUs instead of playing the game. All I was doing was healing and using items. Not a fun way to challenge the player.

There is a lot of menuing and micromanaging. It can be very overwhelming. It's not for everyone. They didn't do much to improve it.

They did make the game less of a grind though. You can essentially make it so your characters run up and kill enemies that are too weak without entering battle. It's great. I wish it would continuously happen. Often they will just stop doing it. You will have to reset it by entering a battle normal. There are quite a few extra things just meant to make the game less grindy.

One last flaw is how late you get some characters. You get them so late that they are 20+ levels behind you. You have to spend all their points and at that point, you just ignore them because it isn't worth your time. You just get them too late and it's not worth using them.

The story meanders. It's not bad. It just exists. It's fine. It's not long. It's nothing special. You don't really get enough time with certain characters to really feel their impact. It is disappointing the PSP voice acting wasn't replaced for the English version. Oh well though. It was fine.

It's a great game. Don't expect it to be on par with new JRPGs. Especially the story. Remember, it's a remake of a PSP that was a remaster of a PS1 game. It's old. But still good.

I think as far as a remake goes, they pretty much did everything right. However I also remembered the plot and characters being better and boy was my memory wrong.

Overall gameplay wise, it's pretty fun, simple action-lite combat where your characters have two skills equipped at first and then you can have access to 4 in total. Magic users can just cast any spell equipped via menu. I found the combat generally easy on the normal difficulty. Though there were times when an enemy would just wipe you easy if you didn't pay attention, very much a game where everyone tends to be glass cannons.

There's also the crafting system which while it's optional is pretty fun (and can be very busted) it's actually cool in that you can control your experience if you want to make the game easier by engaging into it early on. Though it can be RNG dependent which compelled me to save scumy so I can get what I wanted without wasting materials.

Graphics look great, they kept the sprite based look and while I don't know if this qualifies as 2D-HD like Octo, it's got that similar vibe. Overall it was a good decision to keep it like that. Music is also great and I liked the newer arranged tracks.

Which leads to QOL, they added a fast travel system and where you can see the pending personal actions or side quests which is handy. Enemies are now visible on the map so you can avoid/fight easier. And they made it so skill and crafting points are separate and easier to get which means you can break the game easier if you wish. You can also swap back to the older art in the menu of the other releases or the original sound track.

What didn't age well for me though was the plot and characters. While the character's aren't bad, they all have some interesting points, they tend to just fade into the background due to the fact that you can only recruit so many. So once you pass their important plot function they rarely say or do much of anything. And there wasn't any private actions added which means that affinity control has to be artificially done via items if you're going for certain endings.

The plot was kind of all over. It starts out simple enough but then it just kind of jumps the shark without smoothly transitioning from point to point, and the fact that the characters just roll with it just didn't make it believable within the context of the game or make it come together.

Overall though it's a fun JRPG and I mostly played a bit before bed. But it's not one you play for the plot but the gameplay and vibes.

A very unique and fun experience with a handful of little flaws. This was my first experience with the Star Ocean series, and I'm glad I gave this a shot. I loved all of the characters, the combat was super fun, and the story was engaging for the most part.

I knew I would like it when I saw the trailer and artwork, but I knew I would love it when I opened the menus. This is one of the crunchiest JRPGs I've ever played, next to the Octopath Traveler series and Xenoblade Chronicles series, and this is a good thing. There is SO much customization for your character builds, and a ton of different crafting menus to create new gear. You get 2 level up currencies, one to spend on battle skills that trigger during combat, and another to spend on field skills that add overworld abilities and give stat increases. Figuring out what to specialize each character with was super fun and added a lot to the game. It was overwhelming at first, but once I got used to it I loved it.

The combat rules- it's fast paced and has extremely volatile momentum swings. I played as Rena, and using her in combat was actually pretty enjoyable. She's a healer/support character, but they made it fun to kind of be the taskmaster of your other offensive characters and manage the battle from a distance.

I loved seeing the party members interact in the private actions mode. It reminds me of the Xenoblade Chronicles heart-to-hearts. Each time I progressed in the story, I would check for new cutscenes and back track to watch them all. This really made me fall in love with the cast.

The story is fine, pretty typical for a JRPG. It was good, but was predictable aside from the end of act 1, which was a good twist. My first critique is that I feel like it meandered a lot though, especially in the second act. I had more fun doing side stuff than the main quest, which usually isn't the case for me. Felt a bit like a DnD campaign rather than a tightly-woven narrative in that sense. My second critique is that Rena's route felt a little unpolished. The tournament arc felt like an afterthought and was the least enjoyable part of the game. It felt incomplete, and two party characters addressed me as Claude during this stretch of the game. That took me out of the experience but Rena's story really shines in act 2 which mostly made up for it.

There are some things about this game that are just a little bit annoying, but they stack up. Firstly, combat can end up being shorter than the victory screen, which is annoying if you're in a dungeon packed with enemies. I also wish you could swap equipment in battle, because a lot of end game bosses have immunities that can make a party member useless if they have a specific element on their main weapon. The AI also does not recognize weaknesses very well, and I once had to tell Claude to run around and do nothing so that the rest of the party could beat something that absorbed fire without him negating our damage. The last annoying thing is that the final boss is insanely difficult, and I cheesed the fuck out of the last two fights with bloody armor and healing spam. Felt a little anticlimactic, but it basically required immunities I didn't have.

Overall this is an extremely good JRPG, and any fans of the genre should play it. I had a great time with this game, and I will definitely come back and play it again as Claude in the future.

I had never played a Star Ocean game before this, and needless to say I was pleasantly surprised by it. I knew of the series but wasn’t sure where to start and this remake gave me a perfect entry point.

First of all, the game is just gorgeous. Everything about the HD-2D style employed here combined with the diorama-esque environments easily make this one of the best looking games to come out of 2023 and arguably the last decade depending on your feelings on the style. The lighting is great, and exploring the world is just a treat knowing every time you find a new area you can see how the art brings it and its inhabitants to life.

The combat is enjoyable, with the game striking a good balance between casters and melee units all wrapped in a fun, action packed bundle. Every character has a unique playstyle giving the player plenty of options on how they want to tackle fights. It feels very Tales-like in the way battles play out with everyone having unique arts and attacks as well as gear to customize them.

I found the story to be decent, but the game really tries to sell its characters to you and mostly succeeds. You’re able to recruit various characters you find in your travels through interactions (most of which are missable), and doing so will often lock you out of recruiting others allowing for replay ability in the future. In theory, you could have a completely different party than another player barring the protagonists which I find to be a neat idea. The cast all has unique personalities and goals that make the game a fun time in in its reasonable 20ish hour runtime (give or take some hours depending on how much side content you do).

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention how much the game encourages you to completely break it with its crafting and talent systems. Characters earn points doing things like battling and completing quests which you can funnel into different skills like Art, Writing, Cooking, etc. Some of these can allow players who know what they’re doing (and honestly those who just mess around with the systems enough) to acquire high level gear, power level their characters and their talents, and plenty of other things that can completely trivialize the experience which most players recognize as a Star Ocean staple.

Overall, whether you’re a fan of the series or not, I’d urge any RPG fans to check this one out. It’s a solid game and one that I think is gonna be considered a modern classic in the coming years.

Probablemente el Star Ocean más sólido que hemos tenido hasta ahora. Clasicista en todos los ámbitos posibles en un guion y una narrativa que se aprecian tan conservadores a día de hoy como funcionales en su momento (tampoco vamos a engañar a nadie, tiene momentos muy chulos) y, eso sí, con una jugabilidad sencilla pero de hierro. Visualmente el remake puede parecer extraño de primeras, sobre todo para no avezados en el mundo del hd-2d, pero el trabajo artístico funciona y el resultado es encantador.

In the span of a week or so, I went from an apathetic “I should try that out sometime” stance on Star Ocean into a giddy little man grinning ear to ear with love because I took that plunge after all this time and was rewarded handsomely. Star Ocean Second Story is such a wonderful video game and I couldn’t be happier.

It’s been a while since I have played a game with a story that feels so vividly “golden age of JRPG”. The main plot kicks off and is so endearing and exciting, in large part due to the outstanding and incredibly lovable dual protagonists. I love the story setup, and even just in my first play session was fully on board with everything being presented, but that momentum just continues for the entire game. It paints an incredibly vibrant and detailed picture of the world of Star Ocean, yet is simultaneously paced brilliantly and always serves to grow the characters just as much. Midway through the game has a twist that brings it all together and really cemented this as an all time great for me. Such a great time.

The beginning couple hours were a bit confusing due to the wealth of mechanics tossed to you to play with, combined by battles so easy I was finishing them within seconds- not allowing me the breathing room to comprehend the aforementioned mechanics. However, once the game kicked into full gear and my learning increased alongside it- I had a blast. Combat leans a little bit into the “mashy flashy” side of things, but the depth in its systems and leveling don’t make it feel mindless. You are given an absurd amount of agency into growing your characters with different skills and abilities, and finding a way to use the many tools given to you effectively is where the game really shines. I love the battles- they’re fast, exciting, and still give lots of tactical decision making- but even more so was doing things like leveling up Rena to be an author so other characters could bypass using skill points on other skills, making characters good at pickpocketing and stealing amazing gear early, or giving everyone the option to nerf stats in exchange for experience boosts. Combine that with the character recruition (which allowed me two entirely different parties by the endgames for my two playthroughs) and I just think it's pretty damn cool that everyone can adopt their own ways to play and still be validated, challenged, and rewarded for it. I found it to be just as addictive as it was mechanically dense, and I did go out of my way to fight every superboss and reach max level.

Structurally the game is a little more linear than the rest of the mechanics might make you think, always having a destination you need to go to for progression, but it still gives plenty of agency in a way that feels liberating. I found myself wandering around the world map constantly, and finding extra hard enemies that rewarded me with extra experience and skill points was really cool- along with chests, new towns, new characters, and party dialogue. The world feels very lived in and has tons of lore and history going into its details, and the lovely characters you can recruit go a long way into making it feel as such, which is just a lot of fun. The towns often have interesting NPCs to talk to, architecture, and generally feel distinct and dense. Being a part of this universe is simply captivating, and it is tied together by the excellent soundtrack and wonderful visuals of this remaster and in the pre-rendered backgrounds of the original too.

There are a couple little nitpicks I could scrape together if I wanted to, but I see no reason to given how much I enjoyed this game. I have the platinum trophy on my Playstation- obtained simply because I was having fun and not due to a previous intention. The story is great, the world is exciting, it's incredibly fun, it's presented beautifully, and I want to go on adventures with Claude and Rena in real life. I love this game and will continue to love it for a long, long time. Great stuff here and an easy recommendation to anyone who loves PS1 era JRPGs as I do.

I never got around to the original back in the day, but this PS1-era RPG remaster feels like the ideal way to blend together the crunchy, messy old with the slick, streamlined new. The chunky little pixel sprites overlaid on stirring, expansively remastered background graphics are just the tip of the iceberg... the dense, obtuse stack of poorly-explained systems and arcane hidden paths are there, but with a modern sense of accountability. You can toggle on things, ignore them or dig in at your whim, the game is going to politely let you bend and break it however you like. I can't deny the old school rush of mashing buttons, endlessly pumping upgrades into stats, and churning through the breezy pointlessness of its anime-trope genre mix... but there is a point where it all starts to wear a bit thin.

This is my first foray into Star Ocean, I’ve never really seen much of the series before, and only with the likes of this game did I finally give it a try. I had an absolute great time playing it, I don’t play many Action RPGs, so when I finally get around to playing a good one, it feels great. There’s really a lot that I adore about this game, and a lot that I think is really strong about it, though as I’ll describe later one, I feel as if this game has one major flaw to it. Star Ocean: The Second Story R is an amazing game, though at least to me, there’s one aspect that keeps me from loving it as much as I could.

First off, I really like the idea of having two protagonists you can start out with, and for reference, I chose to play as Rena. With how the game structures itself, the character you start out with will have unique story moments. I really like this idea, especially as there could be some aspects of the world left unexplained in one storyline, answered in the other, and vice versa. If anything, I wish this happened more. Aside from a couple cutscenes, it felt like there were only 2 or 3 moments where these characters were separated, it’d be nice to have some more moments like this. Especially in the second half of the game, where it seems to happen even less so.

The game’s combat is excellent, though then again I’m sucker for Action RPGs like this. I love fighting around in arenas, absolutely combo-ing enemies. And with how you can break enemy shields after dealing enough damage, it’s even more satisfying. I tend to play as the more fast paced melee characters in action RPGs, and Rena isn’t exactly that I’ll be honest. Rena has melee options, and for most of the game they’re really good because melee in general is ridiculously powerful. But spells as well are really good I find, especially Rena, who seems to be the only character who can heal allies. Though I’ll be honest that’s also where a lot of the difficulty I had through the game came from, I forgot I was the healer, and I forgot to heal my allies. I also really like the Assault Actions, though it’s another mechanic that I rarely used. Being able to summon your allies to help in battle is really fun, though I mainly used it either once an enemy’s shield was broken, or to help break an enemy’s shield. The combat still is amazing, and with how fast most battles end, they’re always a rush.

I found that some bosses fluctuated in difficulty until around the last leg of the game. That last leg of the game is a proper challenge, but everything before then fluctuates from easy to hard. One boss that I don’t particularly like is the one where it’s a stationary, but attacks only with revenge damage. The thing is, that revenge damage is guaranteed to do half your allies’ health, even if they’re at the maximum total. It took me a couple tries, but I eventually figured out a strategy to beat it, and that strategy was to just completely overwhelm it with damage, and I still needed to heal multiple times. I think that boss is what allowed me to beat every following boss in the story, as I planned better, used everything I had at my disposal, and used spells a lot more, which I didn’t do as much. Most boss fights that were difficult were ones that had multiple enemies in it at the same time, but that’s probably an issue I had.

I also adore how much you can upgrade your characters in this game. If anything, I do wish it was easier to obtain the points required to upgrade these skills though, as some skills have heavy point costs. Even then, there’s so much you can upgrade. You can upgrade character skills, which can increase stats, or allow characters to gain new skills. These skills can introduce modifiers to help in certain ways, introduce crafting systems, or open up new mechanics like fishing. There’s also Battle Skills which give stats boosts during battle, or modify how your characters acts during battle which is really good. And you can also simply upgrade your in-battle attacks, though those can only be upgraded once or twice. The level of upgradability is really nice, especially as it can help build characters in some way.

And I mentioned it in the previous paragraph, but some of the modifiers you can get while playing this game are absolutely absurd. Particularly, Train, Enlightenment, and Bodyguard. Train sacrifices a percentage of a character’s stats for an equivalent percentage boost to their EXP yield. This in turn is already great. Enlightenment sacrifices a percentage of money you gain after a battle for an equivalent percentage boost to the Skill Point yield. These two modifiers combined are already spectacular, and they help so well in the early game grind. But what makes things far crazier is Bodyguard. Bodyguard is an overworld modifier that gives aa chance for one of your allies to run over to a weak enemy and instantly kill it, instantly giving you the EXP yield without having to fight. This simply means that if you’re in an area of exclusively weaker enemies, you never have to fight a battle and you can still gain levels. It’s absolutely absurd how convenient and time saving not having to grind this much actually is. Though I will say, I don’t want every game to feature this sort of system, especially with how early on you can feasibly obtain Bodyguard. While I appreciate how convenient this all is, sometimes I’m fine with things not being heavily convenient like this. It just feels like it removes a whole lot of the challenge, if that makes any sense.

The story of Star Ocean The Second Story R is rather interesting I’d say. First things first, I really like the setting and the characters. I really like this sort of blend of Fantasy and Sci-Fi, having a couple of characters who are Sci-Fi characters, but trapped on this alien planet that’s more fantasy in design. It’s a really interesting and fun blend of the two. It really feels like two worlds combining into each other. And as well I really love the character writing. Aside from the main two, the main cast of characters you can add to your party aren’t anything too complex, but they’re really fun. While I got a full party of 8, the main characters I used throughout the game are Rena, Celine, Precis, and Welch, so those were the characters I got most attached to. I also really like the idea of the 99 potential endings of the game. It’s not entirely accurate to say that the game has 99 endings, there’s really only 1 actual ending. Those 99 endings are little character endings, that describe what the characters are up to after the events of the game. It’s a fun way to incentivize playing the game again, especially if you want to play the opposite protagonist’s route. Though I will say, I don’t see myself replaying the game so many times in order to not unlock unlock every character, but to see every single ending. But what I will say is that the game’s main ending itself is really interesting, and rather dark as well.

And that brings me to that one fatal flaw that I mentioned all the way back in the introductory paragraph, that being the pacing of the game’s story. For a game such as this, the pacing is ridiculously fast. This is most prominent in the second act of the game, where it feels like there’s very little time to breathe until you’re in another dungeon, fighting another boss. Especially with the major character revelations that happen during the second of the game, I never felt like I was able to fully process what was revealed, and I was suddenly brought into another dungeon. Some of these revelations are extremely drastic too, which makes the little time to digest the information all the more jarring. The biggest moment of this is the ending of the game itself, aside from those little character epilogues, the game just ends. There’s no real moment to see what happens after that final moment. I think if the game allowed itself to be slow in that second act, it would be a lot better paced, and fix a lot of issues I had with the story, though that’s just me.

Pacing issues aside, I really enjoyed playing Star Ocean The Second Story R. Action RPGs are still really good to me, and it felt so good fighting battles in this game. There didn’t seem to be too many music tracks, but they’re also really good music tracks so I don’t mind too much. And I really love the characters of this game, and when the story is good, it’s really good. Even though it’s not a perfect game, I still do recommend it, it does a lot right, and it’s a really fun action RPG. I’m unsure if this game particularly was the best entry point for me to get into Star Ocean, but it definitely hooked me in, and I plan to play more of this series.