STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R

Review

Starting a new game, you will have the option to choose the game's main character:  Claude or Rena. Claude C. Kenny is the son of Admiral Ronyx J. Kenny, hero of the Terran Alliance. He’s nineteen and studying at officer’s school, unsure about what he really wants in life so he’s just plodding along. The other is Rena Lanford, a seventeen-year-old girl with a big imagination. She lives in the small village of Arlia on the planet Expel and possesses a mysterious healing power. You can play as Rena in your next playthrough of the game, and she will be your sidekick when you play as Claude.

After deciding who you wish to play as you can then tweak some game options, including changing your name, voice language, difficulty, background music and event art. There are three game difficulties to choose from; you have Earth (which is the easy mode, for those wanting a relaxing game), Galaxy is the normal mode and Universe is hard mode. I chose to play the Galaxy difficulty as Claude.

Your journey begins with you following your father and other crew members down to a nearby planet to investigate an unusual energy scan. After finding your way into a building you come across a mysterious device. Even the Science Officers haven’t seen anything like it before, and wonder how it works and what does it does. Curiosity getting the better of you, you decide to take a closer look, with your father telling you to hold back until you know more about the device and what it does.

Unfazed by any danger you might be in, you proceed to move closer and investigate the device. However, suddenly the device starts up, stating coordinates and informing you that a gate is opening. Then suddenly there’s a flash of light and both you and the device disappear. You awake in some forest.  Unsure where you are, your father and other crew members are nowhere to be found. So you head off to try and figure out where you are.  This is where you will first interact with Rena as you save her from being attacked by a monster. From here you will gain control of Claude, have your first battle and go over the basic controls.

In combat you have a Normal Attack, and you can perform Special Arts and Symbology. Normal Attack will use your current weapon, while Special Arts and Symbology attacks will require the use of Magical Points. You can control your main character around the battle area and as you gain new characters in your party you can give those characters options on how they will act on the battlefield. There are four options; first is I’ll Let You Handle It, second is Spread Out Your Attacks, third is Focus Your Attacks and the fourth is Prevent Enemy Spells. You can even swap between the different characters and take control of them, which is helpful if your current character gets dropped like a sack of spuds by some monster and you need to jump in quickly to continue, or if you don’t have any resurrection pills on hand.

This will allow you to tailor your battlefield experience to your gameplay. So, you could have two main attackers, with one using magical attacks and one healing your party. You could leave it to the characters to handle what they do, or have them go full-out attacking your current foe etcetera. I found using the I’ll Let You Handle It option worked well for the most part.

You can also determine the formation on the battlefield with your characters. To begin with you only have one or two formations that you can select but you will unlock more as you progress through the game. Each formation will give you some bonus towards your overall stats while fighting in that formation. The bonuses become available after gaining a critical hit, breaking your enemy, or collecting a number of spheres dropped from your defeated enemy.

In your battle party you can have four main characters although you can have another four characters in your Assault Formation. You can call upon these characters to help you out in battle although you will have to fill up your assault battle gauge before being able to call upon them. After defeating the enemy, you will gain some experience points, as well as special points and battle points.  With any luck, you’ll also gain some items, such as weapons, equipment, potions or materials.

With Rena you’ll head off into the world to investigate the source of the Sorcery Globe, the mysterious meteorite which crashed upon Expel; ever since this time, monsters have started appearing. While you’re on your journey you will come across others who will request your help and send you out on missions. Some of the characters you come across will be able to join your party.

You will travel from location to location on foot to begin with, fast travel will be available to you once you have visited a location. You don’t just travel fast to a location, but you can also fast travel to certain places within a location such as a store or inn. There will be other forms of travelling that you can unlock as you progress through the game.

On the world map or in the dungeons you will find enemies appear; what type of enemy is hidden until either you or they activate contact at which point combat will commence. You can get an idea of how powerful an enemy is by the colour of the enemy symbol roaming around. They come in three colours - Green, Purple and Red - with green as your weakest enemy, purple as your average enemy, and red enemies as your strongest enemy. On the world map you may come across some red enemies, which are huge in size compared to the regular enemies you find wandering around. These are extremely strong enemies and as such must only be taken on if you are up to the task, otherwise you’re going to get your botty spanked good and proper (which isn’t a bad thing now and then *wink wink*).

When contacting an enemy, it is best to approach it from behind; this will give you advantage, allowing you to attack first after catching them unaware. However, this can also work the same for the enemy, in which case you will be unable to perform any action for a couple seconds, giving the enemy time to cause some havoc on your group.

Some enemies can be linked together, indicated by a red line between several enemies, up to five enemies in total. If you enable combat with these enemies, then you will fight each of the enemies which are currently linked. So, if there are four enemies all linked together then you will have four rounds of combat before combat is completed.

As you progress you will earn Specialist Points and Battle Points. You can use these to unlock new skills and attacks. There are quite a few categories in which you can unlock using your Specialist Points. Some categories will unlock Specialty Skills while others can unlock Item Creation. Item Creation will allow you to create or even replicate items, equipment, weapons and just about anything else you get your hands on if you have the required knowledge, experience level and resources needed.

Each of the skills can be upgraded to level ten, with the cost in specialist points increasing for each upgrade. Some of the categories will give your stats some bonuses which will come in handy and allow your characters to grow without having to rely on finding the best equipment or weapons, although good gear will definitely be needed.

You can also visit the local Guilds scattered around at various locations and they will have missions for you to complete. These will help you learn about the use of the Item Creation and Specialists Skills. You will earn Specialty Points and Battle Points as rewards, along with some other rewards such as weapons, equipment, potions etcetera. 

At various times and locations, you will be able to activate Private Actions, which will allow you to find some information about your fellow companions. This information could have an impact on the choices you make, and as a consequence, what the future may bring. Friendship between characters can have an outcome on events and have an effect on the ending of the game. This isn’t the game’s main ending that you’ll get playing with either Claude or Rena but there are ninety-nine mini endings from the characters that you played with.

I really do love the graphics in the game, the backgrounds look amazing. The story is good and there are plenty of ways to impact choices and members of your party. I like the fact that while you mainly control one character in battle you can also control the actions of the other characters if things are not quite going your way. For the most part, though, I just let my characters do their thing, especially as I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where I was in the kaleidoscope of colours from our attacks.

There are plenty of skills to unlock, as well as weapons and equipment for you to find, create and even upgrade. I would say that if you want a challenging game then I would probably try the Universe difficulty. I played the Galaxy difficulty and for the most part I found it challenging without being too hard. I think I might have enjoyed bit more of a challenge in combat. I didn’t play with any of the known equipment and bonus pairings that boost your stats and make you invincible etcetera.

The game ran very well; I didn’t come across any problems, and I enjoyed playing. I am currently on my second play through as Rena.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com

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