Marking as Retired as I've completed the PS5 remake.
Old: Masterpiece, next to Grandia which came right after the following year for the psx. Glad I found this game on the old magazine demos, rented it when I was a kid and got a copy which I have to this date.
New: Same thing, but a new direction, it added and kept faithful to the original. Love it all.
New: Same thing, but a new direction, it added and kept faithful to the original. Love it all.
One of the greatest RPGs of all damn time.
Star Ocean 2 will always hold a place in my heart, even if I never finished it as a child. The music and characters are so nostalgic for me. <3
This game is good. Nothing about it is excellent, every aspect has flaws but overall turns out to be a solid game. Personally nostalgic for me so 4.5 stars.
Amazing game overall. Love the characters, the music, and the graphics (aged much better than a lot of other PSX RPGs). Boss Battles can be very lengthy and annoying. Along with the dungeons. A lot of this game's mechanics are inetresting too. "hey let's have a side quest where you make the final boss dead near impossible?" i mean ok sure mate. The 85 endings thing is also cool but I did zero private actions and everyone still had a good ending. Highly recommend tbh.
ive played this game a million times and i can conclude it was made for me
I don't really remember much of this and I didn't get very far. I guess it didn't really grab me.
A really fun game that I just never beat for some reason. I'm not sure if a boss or something later on gave me trouble. I liked the recruitment branching and locking, and the story and sidequests were neat.
Star Ocean: The Second Story is first and foremost, the grinder's dream. Realizing the depths that their previous title's skill system was capable of, Tri-Ace further improved surrounding gameplay aspects such as its massively raised level cap and added complementary mechanics such as character-specific talents. This system at least enables players to work towards a goal beyond simple levelling not unlike the original, but allows for greater, more reasonable end points. While combat remained the same from the series' debut, the pace is less frenetic and not nearly as tedious, with long-winded spell and attack animations breaking up the monotony into tolerable chunks. Also of note are the various environmental effects on the battle screen that add some layer of strategy to combat.
But this sequel also succeeds on more than a single overarching mechanic. The story in particular operates on a more personal level than the first, with effective uses of character moments and generally better pacing. The returning slew of optional characters are unfortunately meaningless in terms of story impact - reducing the game to focus on only two major characters, but the cast's design, personality, and sub-stories are at least memorable.
But this sequel also succeeds on more than a single overarching mechanic. The story in particular operates on a more personal level than the first, with effective uses of character moments and generally better pacing. The returning slew of optional characters are unfortunately meaningless in terms of story impact - reducing the game to focus on only two major characters, but the cast's design, personality, and sub-stories are at least memorable.
Deep crafting mechanics, two entire worlds full of secrets to discover, and thankfully gameplay far refined from the previous entry in the series. Very good game.
I have to say though, the random encounter rate really should have been toned down. It's not actually that high, but feels very high given how large and complex many of the rooms in the game are, and they keep interrupting your exploration making it hard to get your bearings. And this is coming from a guy who's been playing RPGs since the NES days!
I have to say though, the random encounter rate really should have been toned down. It's not actually that high, but feels very high given how large and complex many of the rooms in the game are, and they keep interrupting your exploration making it hard to get your bearings. And this is coming from a guy who's been playing RPGs since the NES days!
A personal blast from my past that doesn’t hold up as well without my rose tinted glasses. The things it does right in terms of overall presentation and providing an illusion of depth in the systems quickly gets overturned by some unfortunately inconsistent pacing for the story and a combat system that really doesn’t feel like it’s to be mastered, in favor of simply being brute forced. The character interactions, music and visuals all have a lot of quality and charm to them, but there’s distinct elements that take me out of the experience. Spells casted by party members completely break the flow of combat by forcing the player to watch the whole spell cast, interrupting whatever momentum or groove they could have been getting into. The skill system is half cooked, with a lot of solid consideration but also skills that are such no brainers (like Perserverence) that they should just be removed entirely because every player with a brain is gonna go for them. As well as skills like Flip actively ruining the combat (fortunately it can be manually disabled, but it’s just lame to have something so useless and situational). Finally the story ramps up in the transition from the first to second disc, and provides a lot of really interesting story a la Star Ocean 1, but unlike 1, The Second Story ends with a pretty straightforward, un-twisty conclusion that is literally described to the player by an NPC earlier with not divergence from the plan. Plus, while the 4 locations you visit to get the stones necessary to invade Fienal are super unique and pretty, it is ultimately a macguffin hunt with little actual story beats occuring, and the final attack on Fienal feels like it was in dire need of some form of story shakeup mid way to keep it engaging, instead of just being a final zone to slay some bosses and grind for levels in between. That all being said, it’s an absolute vibe of a game, and has a lot of odd quality of life features that seem well ahead of their time. It’s trope-y, it’s repetitive and a little frustrating to play but it’s ultimately worth a go-through as it’s still a nifty package with a lot of heart. But I ultimately expect to be returning to Backloggd in a week or so to completely decry this version of the game in favor of the remake.
Demo Thoughts: I'm gonna log this since I can't log or see my own thoughts on remake right now due to the limitations of the site so I just wanna get my thoughts out there for other people to see.
Anybody who knows me knows that I am not terribly fond of this series because anytime I've played any game from this franchise I keep circling my own thoughts like "what in the fuck is the decision making with anything that goes on with these games." where I feel like the people in charge desperately want to make something unique that stands out but the execution is always fucking garbage.
The writing of Star Ocean games have no sense of pacing they always try to rush through everything as quickly as possible and then ask you to care about the things that are going on as well it's utterly annoying.
And then I play the demo for Second Story R and suddenly it's like somebody at Tri-Ace woke the fuck up and tried to make something worth somebodies time for once.
The combat was basic but still very easy to understand and fulfilling to play, and the story actually takes the time to establish stuff and make you care about the main characters from what little I got to play before the demo cut me off. Timed demo's are stupid is my main take away from this. I will pick up the remake at some point. It was legitimately the first time I had ever enjoyed my time playing a Star Ocean game. Not once did the thought cross my mind that ALWAYS crosses my mind when playing these games which is "why the fuck would I play this when Tales games are right there?"
Please.
for the love of God.
I want the quest to find a good Star Ocean game to end here.
Anybody who knows me knows that I am not terribly fond of this series because anytime I've played any game from this franchise I keep circling my own thoughts like "what in the fuck is the decision making with anything that goes on with these games." where I feel like the people in charge desperately want to make something unique that stands out but the execution is always fucking garbage.
The writing of Star Ocean games have no sense of pacing they always try to rush through everything as quickly as possible and then ask you to care about the things that are going on as well it's utterly annoying.
And then I play the demo for Second Story R and suddenly it's like somebody at Tri-Ace woke the fuck up and tried to make something worth somebodies time for once.
The combat was basic but still very easy to understand and fulfilling to play, and the story actually takes the time to establish stuff and make you care about the main characters from what little I got to play before the demo cut me off. Timed demo's are stupid is my main take away from this. I will pick up the remake at some point. It was legitimately the first time I had ever enjoyed my time playing a Star Ocean game. Not once did the thought cross my mind that ALWAYS crosses my mind when playing these games which is "why the fuck would I play this when Tales games are right there?"
Please.
for the love of God.
I want the quest to find a good Star Ocean game to end here.
There are few games that can sustain the momentum of their opening cinematic and successfully stick the landing.
I didn't have much expectation going in and found myself immediately invested and drawn-in specifically by its soundtrack and art direction. The perfectly timed sequences and scores made the experience that much more impactful and is a perfect example of visuals and sound working in tandem. Its gameplay still handles very well and addicting, keeping me engaged and invested in powering stats and learning skills - the games biggest component. However, one thing that was sorely under-explained was the crafting system that does not explain its importance well until the very end when it suddenly becomes vital to playing the game properly. I made this mistake and regretted not having learned more since it never pressed upon the player to explore this mechanic, nor a lot of the other interesting yet tedious components from crafting, alchemy, etc.
As much as I appreciate and was pleasantly surprised by Star Ocean: The Second Story for a majority of its playthrough, it was with dismay to see how it fell short across its second disc. The quality in disc 2 in some of its plotting crumbled into trope game design and villains that are 1-dimensional and uninteresting in contrast to how the main cast is overall handled. Another thing that I wish was better integrated through its runtime that felt very outweighed in the end was the theme of self-empowerment and forging one's own path. It fell into a lot of Evangelion influence that didnt' feel deserved nor as cohesively introduced as it could have been. Despite this, and despite its shortcomings overall, the soundtrack and art direction is worth applauding. It holds as arguably rivaling FF7, Grandia, Xenogears, and the like of being the best of its era.
Star Ocean: The Second Story might not be balanced and its ambitious mechanics don't quite stick the landing, it is an impressionable experience that is well-worth traversing.
I didn't have much expectation going in and found myself immediately invested and drawn-in specifically by its soundtrack and art direction. The perfectly timed sequences and scores made the experience that much more impactful and is a perfect example of visuals and sound working in tandem. Its gameplay still handles very well and addicting, keeping me engaged and invested in powering stats and learning skills - the games biggest component. However, one thing that was sorely under-explained was the crafting system that does not explain its importance well until the very end when it suddenly becomes vital to playing the game properly. I made this mistake and regretted not having learned more since it never pressed upon the player to explore this mechanic, nor a lot of the other interesting yet tedious components from crafting, alchemy, etc.
As much as I appreciate and was pleasantly surprised by Star Ocean: The Second Story for a majority of its playthrough, it was with dismay to see how it fell short across its second disc. The quality in disc 2 in some of its plotting crumbled into trope game design and villains that are 1-dimensional and uninteresting in contrast to how the main cast is overall handled. Another thing that I wish was better integrated through its runtime that felt very outweighed in the end was the theme of self-empowerment and forging one's own path. It fell into a lot of Evangelion influence that didnt' feel deserved nor as cohesively introduced as it could have been. Despite this, and despite its shortcomings overall, the soundtrack and art direction is worth applauding. It holds as arguably rivaling FF7, Grandia, Xenogears, and the like of being the best of its era.
Star Ocean: The Second Story might not be balanced and its ambitious mechanics don't quite stick the landing, it is an impressionable experience that is well-worth traversing.
Hard to give a rating as I don't remember ever getting that far into it. i think the combat system didn't work for me, being a fan of slower turn based like FF7.
全作より恋愛要素がもりもり。ゲームとしてもしっかりしている。アシュトンはとてもいいよね。
My number 1 most favorite game of all time.
This review contains spoilers
I played a lot of JRPGs in middle school and early high school, and they all kinda meshed together. Franchises like Star Ocean, Suikoden, Wild Arms, etc. haven't been as easily memorable to me as some of the other franchises I got into at that time, like Tales and Shin Megami Tensei. But I think I always felt positively about them regardless, because, growing up in an area where I was pretty much the only super hardcore gaming enthusiast, it felt neat to have these fairly obscure experiences under my belt instead of things like GTA (Which may explain why I also have bad memories of those games). And since I am prying into why I felt certain ways about video games when I was a teenager, I can't help but be curious as to what I saw in this game. I never held it to an extremely high regard, but I always thought of it as a game that was quite fun.
I guess I'll start with the combat. It improves the issue of randomly switching targets mid attack, a flaw that made First Departure completely unplayable for me. This is probably the only reason I felt I wanted to press to the end, as this small adjustment made things allowed for nearly every battle to feel fine, whereas FD had 0 battles that weren't frustrating. It does keep pretty much every other issue, however. Attacks will just randomly miss, you're limited to having to special attacks without menu hopping (It's an action RPG btw, for those unaware), and depth perception is difficult with 2D sprites on a 3D plane. Another issue that arose here (One which I never really saw in FD) was how sluggish encounters become when spells grow more powerful. When many of the spells are used, it completely stops the flow of time to give you a presentation of the spell being used. And around the end-game, spells are being shot off constantly, so battles become way too slow for an action RPG, especially one as mindless as this. Every offensive spell does this, I believe, and most support ones have an animation. It gets old when the cutscenes for the spells are totaling a larger amount of time than the time you spend actually fighting (Source needed. I have no actual evidence, but I honestly can't tell, which is still bad). On top of all of this, it's such an easy game (Until the final boss, but we'll get to that!). I bet it without ever really focusing on the metagame stuff like crafting and specialties and all that jazz. Not only that, but everything was so damn simple. Putting and emerald ring on your melee attackers and just spamming special artes worked on 99% of the encounters. I only died twice before the final boss. Once where my party got insta-killed by being eaten, and once where my party got insta-killed through petrification. All this culminates into a really shallow and tedious battle system. Maybe if I had done more work in the metagame, I would've had more fun with combat, but they didn't do a good job of incentivizing it, so I didn't see the need to bother.
Story was also bad, which is a shame, because it probably should've been great. The lore behind everything is cool, and some of the twists are fun, but the pacing is terrible. We spend about 85% of the game in fantasy land (Not gonna rant about how dumb the idea of a sci-fi RPG that doesn't incorporate sci-fi into a majority of the plot is again) as the plot doesn't really move. You're just kinda questing to decipher some texts or something. I don't really recall much of it since it drags it's feet for so long. Then the main plot just kicks in out of nowhere, and suddenly there are ten villains and the world you've lived in is a projection or some shit and there's some sort of new world that is the actual world and it is going to be destroyed if out don't stop the ten dudes from making it phase into oblivion? Like, I got most of that wrong, I'm sure. It dumps almost the entirety of the lore and plot on the player in one cutscene. The final bits of the game are just massive info dumps of story, and I eventually stopped caring because how in the hell do I follow it? Best part of the story, however, is when Rena asks Gabriel why he wants to destroy the world, and Gabriel just says, "You wouldn't understand."
and dies. A+. As far as characters go, Rena and Claude are really the only ones notable enough to warrant much of an opinion. Claude kinda sucks. Rena is alright.
Final boss was the worst part of the game, however. It's pretty easy to start off with, but in phase 2, he gets the ability to launch spells off at an alarming rate, and this usually ends in your party getting wiped with no chance to heal. Now, I'm not against bosses having one-shot capabilities.
Happens in Souls games all the time. But the thing is, a one-shot attack should be preventable or dodgable in some way. Gabriel has no significant windup for these spells, he can't be stunned while casting, and they can only be dodged through luck. So how did I beat him? Literally luck.
He didn't use his spells as quickly or in as high of a volume as other battles, and when he finally unleashed a swarm of spells on my party, Dias managed to dodge the one that would've given me a game over. I barely managed to heal everyone back up and won. It wasn't satisfying. It wasn't rewarding. It was what it was: A lucky break. In the process of being mutilated by this seemingly unfair battle, I checked online to see if I was missing something. But I wasn't. Guides literally say luck is the only way to win (I guess I could've grinded for a few hours as well, but that wasn't happening). I can't imagine how anyone thinks this is a good idea for a video game, especially one that has never challenged the player beforehand. It is indefensibly bad. 2/6
I guess I'll start with the combat. It improves the issue of randomly switching targets mid attack, a flaw that made First Departure completely unplayable for me. This is probably the only reason I felt I wanted to press to the end, as this small adjustment made things allowed for nearly every battle to feel fine, whereas FD had 0 battles that weren't frustrating. It does keep pretty much every other issue, however. Attacks will just randomly miss, you're limited to having to special attacks without menu hopping (It's an action RPG btw, for those unaware), and depth perception is difficult with 2D sprites on a 3D plane. Another issue that arose here (One which I never really saw in FD) was how sluggish encounters become when spells grow more powerful. When many of the spells are used, it completely stops the flow of time to give you a presentation of the spell being used. And around the end-game, spells are being shot off constantly, so battles become way too slow for an action RPG, especially one as mindless as this. Every offensive spell does this, I believe, and most support ones have an animation. It gets old when the cutscenes for the spells are totaling a larger amount of time than the time you spend actually fighting (Source needed. I have no actual evidence, but I honestly can't tell, which is still bad). On top of all of this, it's such an easy game (Until the final boss, but we'll get to that!). I bet it without ever really focusing on the metagame stuff like crafting and specialties and all that jazz. Not only that, but everything was so damn simple. Putting and emerald ring on your melee attackers and just spamming special artes worked on 99% of the encounters. I only died twice before the final boss. Once where my party got insta-killed by being eaten, and once where my party got insta-killed through petrification. All this culminates into a really shallow and tedious battle system. Maybe if I had done more work in the metagame, I would've had more fun with combat, but they didn't do a good job of incentivizing it, so I didn't see the need to bother.
Story was also bad, which is a shame, because it probably should've been great. The lore behind everything is cool, and some of the twists are fun, but the pacing is terrible. We spend about 85% of the game in fantasy land (Not gonna rant about how dumb the idea of a sci-fi RPG that doesn't incorporate sci-fi into a majority of the plot is again) as the plot doesn't really move. You're just kinda questing to decipher some texts or something. I don't really recall much of it since it drags it's feet for so long. Then the main plot just kicks in out of nowhere, and suddenly there are ten villains and the world you've lived in is a projection or some shit and there's some sort of new world that is the actual world and it is going to be destroyed if out don't stop the ten dudes from making it phase into oblivion? Like, I got most of that wrong, I'm sure. It dumps almost the entirety of the lore and plot on the player in one cutscene. The final bits of the game are just massive info dumps of story, and I eventually stopped caring because how in the hell do I follow it? Best part of the story, however, is when Rena asks Gabriel why he wants to destroy the world, and Gabriel just says, "You wouldn't understand."
and dies. A+. As far as characters go, Rena and Claude are really the only ones notable enough to warrant much of an opinion. Claude kinda sucks. Rena is alright.
Final boss was the worst part of the game, however. It's pretty easy to start off with, but in phase 2, he gets the ability to launch spells off at an alarming rate, and this usually ends in your party getting wiped with no chance to heal. Now, I'm not against bosses having one-shot capabilities.
Happens in Souls games all the time. But the thing is, a one-shot attack should be preventable or dodgable in some way. Gabriel has no significant windup for these spells, he can't be stunned while casting, and they can only be dodged through luck. So how did I beat him? Literally luck.
He didn't use his spells as quickly or in as high of a volume as other battles, and when he finally unleashed a swarm of spells on my party, Dias managed to dodge the one that would've given me a game over. I barely managed to heal everyone back up and won. It wasn't satisfying. It wasn't rewarding. It was what it was: A lucky break. In the process of being mutilated by this seemingly unfair battle, I checked online to see if I was missing something. But I wasn't. Guides literally say luck is the only way to win (I guess I could've grinded for a few hours as well, but that wasn't happening). I can't imagine how anyone thinks this is a good idea for a video game, especially one that has never challenged the player beforehand. It is indefensibly bad. 2/6
the original star ocean had a whole lotta potential and ambition, but not much in the way of execution. thankfully so2 thoroughly got its shit together with VASTLY better mechanics, superior pacing, stronger characters - everything's improved, really
loses steam in the endgame though, due to the story becoming too impersonal and infodump-y for its own good
loses steam in the endgame though, due to the story becoming too impersonal and infodump-y for its own good
back then without any walkthrough pumped the story multiple times for hundres of hours to get all characters was so much worth it
One of the biggest hidden gem of the PS1 library.
Another PS1 JRPG that is perfectly representative of everything that a "PS1 JRPG" is. If that's your jam, then go for it.
Just make sure you craft the Eternal Sphere on disc 1, preferably right after the tournament, or you're not a real gamer. What, it's easy if you use Orchestra!
Just make sure you craft the Eternal Sphere on disc 1, preferably right after the tournament, or you're not a real gamer. What, it's easy if you use Orchestra!