Star Ocean: The Second Story R Review – Far Beyond the Stars

The first PlayStation generation was an amazing time for Japanese role-playing games, and this is saying a lot, considering it followed the Super Nintendo era which is also considered a golden time for the genre. While established series like Final Fantasy became worldwide phenomenons on the first Sony console, other franchises moved ahead of their first SNES entries to become more modern titles with refined gameplay.

This is the case of tri-Ace and Enix's Star Ocean franchise. With Star Ocean: The Second Story, tri-Ace seemed to hit its stride, creating what is the best entry in the series to this day. 25 years later, and a remaster on PSP, which didn't change the original all that much, the second entry in the sci-fi-meets-fantasy series is getting a well-deserved remake that improves the original in every possible way.

The only thing that hasn't been changed in Star Ocean: The Second Story R is, unsurprisingly, the story, which worked well in the original and still maintains its charm 25 years later. While the game features two different campaigns, starring the young Pangalactic Federation officer Claude C. Kenny and the Expellian Rena Lanford, who is mysteriously capable of using healing magic, something that regular Symbologist on the planet cannot, most of the story is the same in both. While investigating Planet Milokeenia with his father and commanding officer Ronyx, a returning character from the first entry in the series, Claude discovers a foreign object that transports him to Expel, an underdeveloped planet. While the UP3 treaty prevented him from showing any of the native advanced technology, the young officer is forced to use his phase gun to save Rena from a monster. This leads to a misunderstanding that will bond the two heroes together, eventually making them set out to investigate the mysterious Sorcery Globe that is unleashing calamity onto Expel, an investigation that will result in a shocking discovery that could endanger the entire galaxy.

While the Star Ocean: The Second Story R story treads some familiar ground, it is quite enjoyable. Every character in the game, from Claude and Rena to every other one that will join them in their journey, is both likable and decently developed, mostly thanks to the Private Action system. This system allows the party to split up inside towns to experience some special events between the chosen main character and every other one, which provides excellent character development. The remake improves this simple yet effective system with some choice tweaks. In the original, there was no way to know when a new Private Action was available in any of the already explored towns, so it was extremely easy to miss most of them, as many become unavailable as the story progresses. In the remake, players can learn when new Private Actions are available in the Quick Travel menu, making it extremely easy to experience all of them.

Being built around the main character picked at the start of Star Ocean: The Second Story R, Private Actions are one of the things that change between the Claude and Rena campaigns. The others are small story segments when the two are separated, and two exclusive characters, Leon and Dias, who only join the party in Claude and Rena's story, respectively. Generally speaking, Claude's story is the one to pick for newcomers as it provides some context to events that otherwise remain unexplained in Rena's more fantasy-focused campaign. At the end of the day, to truly experience Star Ocean: The Second Story R in its entirety, the game must played through at least twice, also considering not all characters can be recruited in a single play, as recruiting Ashton, for example, locks Opera and Ernest out, and so does recruiting Bowman with Precis. The remake, much like the PSP re-release, features an additional character, Welch, which makes managing the eight-party slots even more difficult.

While the story of Star Ocean: The Second Story R hasn't seen any major change or addition over the original, the gameplay definitely has. The combat system is the feature that has been improved the most in the game, putting the remake so far ahead of the original that I feel very few will feel the need to revisit it in the future.

While the game retains the basics of the original combat system, with parties of up to four characters fighting against enemies in real-time using a three-hit combo regular attack, special moves, spells, and items, almost everything else has changed. One of the most annoying elements of the original, magic spells freezing the action for a few seconds, is a thing of the past, and the action is only interrupted briefly by certain spells. Additionally, every spell has been reworked to hit enemies multiple times, finally making spellcasters as useful as melee fighters in crowd control and DPS. While actually performing spell combos in the vein of modern Tales of games is still not possible without using the new Assault mechanics, which allows players to use special moves or spells summoning characters not actively in battle as well as the main characters of other entries in the series such as Roddick, Fayt, an Egde, their usability and usefulness in battle was increased tenfold. Unfortunately, their AI isn't the best, and they will usually end up getting killed while attempting to cast spells while surrounded by enemies.

The changes to spellcasters are only some of many great combat tweaks in Star Ocean: The Second Story R. Taking a page from the fourth and sixth entries in the series, the remake features a Counter system that allows players to move quickly behind an enemy if an attack is dodged at the right time, much like the Blindside system. All enemies also have a shield stat which can be decreased to Break them, leaving them stunned and open to attacks for a few seconds. Interestingly enough, the Break mechanics go a long way to make combat less button-mashy than the original and make some characters finally usable even in the earlier parts of the game, such as Ashton, whose special moves are slower than those of other melee fighters like Claude and Dias. The Break mechanics also work great in conjunction with the Enemy Leader mechanics, as breaking the buffing and party debuffing bigger enemies encountered in certain battles will force Chain Breaks on their underlings, making these battles more manageable.

While these mechanics are extremely solid and elevate the Star Ocean: The Second Story R combat experience, I have to admit they do not matter much at Earth and Galaxy difficulties, as fights against enemies often end up being as button-mashy as those of the original. At Universe difficulty, however, players do need to be mindful of them and also need to use Item Creation to the fullest to survive battles against common foes. Aiding players in the most challenging battles is a change to the Formation systems, which grants a variety of buffs to the party once the Sphere Gauge has been filled past certain thresholds.

Two more combat changes that have to be highlighted are those to Combo Link, which now no longer requires a character to "steal" the special moves of another to assign two special moves to a single input and is active for all the cast at the same time once unlocked, and the complete removal of random encounters, as enemies are now visible on the field and can be avoided easily by simply staying away from them or using a variety of items, the Scouting Speciality to decrease the number of enemy symbols and the Bodyguard Super Speciality to stop them in their tracks. Scouting can also be used to increase the frequency of enemy symbols appearing, which makes it easy to chain enemy encounters together for massive EXP, SP, and BP bonuses.

Other gameplay elements in Star Ocean: The Second Story R received far fewer changes compared to combat. Exploration is essentially the same as the original, as straightforward as it was in JRPGs from the late 90s, although dungeon design is somewhat above even modern games thanks to the light puzzles found in some of them. The world map now also features some powerful enemies that put players' skills to the test, so there's a good reason to explore it fully and not rely heavily on the handy fast travel option, which is available at almost every time, and the waypoints that indicate the next location to explore to move the story forward.

Item Creation, the game's unique crafting system, works like the original but with some key improvements. While leveling up skills to unlock Item Creation options like Cooking, Compounding, Crafting, Customization, and Replication, to name a few, is still a requirement, producing items is easier than ever, as it is now possible to make them in bulks of ten. The reworked interface also highlights which items can be produced, which character has the right Talent to enhance Item Creation, as well as what is needed to unlock Specialities and Super Specialities. As such, creating excellent equipment with the best Factors (special skills tied to gear) is way more fun and way less time-consuming than before.

The most obvious change featured in Star Ocean: The Second Story R over the original is the revamped visuals. Employing the HD-2D style introduced by Octopath Traveler, Gemdrops has made an amazing recreation of Expel and beyond, breathing new life into every location while staying true to the original art style and design. Sprites have also seen a little reworking, and they look amazing over the new 3D locations, which replace the pre-rendered backgrounds used in the PlayStation original. As this type of visuals is not particularly demanding, the game runs great on PlayStation 5, keeping a steady 60 frames per second framerate even during the most intense battles with multiple spells going off at the same time.

The already amazing soundtrack of the original, composed by Motoi Sakuraba, also received plenty of attention in the remake, with some excellent new rearrangements that make it extremely good, especially the battle themes. Those who prefer the original soundtrack, however, have the option to select it at any time via the options menu. Voice acting, on the other hand, hasn't been revamped, so the only English dub option available is the one of the PSP release, which leaves a lot to be desired. The remake also features the Japanese dub of the original Second Story and the Second Evolution remaster, so players aren't forced to go with the English one if they do not like it.

Star Ocean: The Second Story was already the best entry in the series by far, and the amazing work done by Gemdrops propelled it further into the Galaxy, turning it into an even better game that is far more enjoyable than the original. As such, Star Ocean: The Second Story R isn't just the best entry in the series but also one of the best remakes ever released, masterfully updating the gameplay where needed without touching what already worked great back in the late 90s.

PlayStation 5 version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

9.0

Wccftech Rating

Star Ocean: The Second Story R

Star Ocean: The Second Story R

Star Ocean: The Second Story R is, hands down, the best entry in the series, and one of the best remakes ever made. With the excellent combat reworking, massive slew of quality of life improvements and impressive 2D-HD visuals that make the game's simple yet engaging story and charming characters even more enjoyable, Gemdrops has set a very high bar for classic JRPGs remakes that will be very difficult to top.

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