Star Ocean: The Second Story R | Re-setting The Bar | Anoriand Reviews

what's going on Fam I'm Josh you can call me an orian and today we're checking out Star Ocean the Second Story r a remake of the PlayStation 1 classic by Square Enix before I begin as always I want to thank Square Enix and disclose that I was provided in early access code for the game for the purpose of review but I was not provided anything else and all statements and Views are my own also all the footage you see will be for the PlayStation 5 version of the game and will reflect that play experience with all that out of the way let's set off for world's unknown Star Ocean the Second Story R is a remake of Star Ocean the Second Story a classic PS1 RPG often considered to be the best game in its series originally released for the PS1 in 1998 Star Ocean II story was the second game in the Star Ocean series but the first to come out in the west and was immediately received as an excellent gem Trias crafted a unique and standout RPG that took the sword and sorcery roots of the genre and put it in space dealing with alien technology and spaceships while still using dual swords and fire spells the blending of these things creates a unique world that doesn't really get replicated that much in other series quite the same but the question ask today is whether 25 years after its original release the r in remake is worth your time and money let's dive into the basics the story of the game follows one of two selectable protagonists Claude C Kenny the son of ronx J Kenny who is in the first Star Ocean game and an enzy in the pangalactic Federation and Reena Langford a young girl found on the planet of expel with mysterious and unique healing powers from the outset of the game you choose which of these two to have as your main playable character with a few differences between their stories but both go on along the journey together Claude gets transported by mysterious machine to the planet of expel and saves Reena with his phase gun and in so doing gets mistaken as the hero of light wielding his sword of light to come save the planet while he tries to fight off this idea he eventually agrees to go and investigate the problems of the world in the form of the so-called sorcery Globe a mysterious meteor that landed in a different part of the world and whose crashes coincided with cataclysmic events like earthquakes massive storms and energy possession of humans though you only start with the two characters you have the opportunity to recruit many more in fact Star Ocean 2 has 13 playable characters who can join you though only eight can be in your party in total and only four in battle at one time some can only be recruited by Claude some only by Reena and some are actually mutually exclusive from each other so for instance if you recruit The Unlucky swordsman with two dragons fused onto his back Ashton you can't recruit the three-eyed sniper Opera this necessitates multiple playthroughs if you want to see every character story and how they interact with one another and there is a lot of interacting within towns you can go into private action mode where all your recruited characters split up from you and you can find them all around the town leading to little mini events that can serve to fill out their characterization and backstory provide items and boost relationships all told the game tends to be a 40 to 50h hour experience so having multiple playthroughs worth of story and content without requiring 100 to 150 hours for a single playthrough provides good value without being overly daunting which is a great thing the meat of the game and what you'll be doing the most of even Beyond progressing the plot is combat in combat battles Traverse from the map you're currently on to a visible field with up to four playable characters facing off against a group of enemies unlike traditional turn-based RPGs Star Ocean plays closer to something like a Tales of game with your characters freely moving around the arena dishing out attacks with the Press of a button and using MP to unleash special abilities new to the Remake is the break system where enemies have a Brak gauge separate from their HP represented by Shields over their HP bar as you deal damage both of these things go down but if you manage to empty their brake gauge first the enemy will be in a broken State leaving them stunned in place and increasing the damage you deal to them it's a system that goes well with the frenetic and fun combat and what adds to it is the level of depth that's special attack Arts have see Arts can be HP focused break focused or balanced so do you go with a Brak focused art and an HP focused one so that you have a little bit of both but have a break art that can't hit enemies that fly up in the air it just happens to be your best one do you maybe just go with two break arts and not have anything to unleash when the enemy is in that broken State besides regular attacks these questions allow you to find your play style as it best suits you which allows different people to tackle the same battle system in different ways and and since you can freely switch between your four chosen characters in battle you can have each member customized for different intentions combat is Fast Fun and never gets tiring and I say that as someone who's played since the original release that said combat is not always easy if you don't learn the Parry system you will want to either lower the difficulty or be prepared to carry healing items because enemies can and will lay out your team members that said it never feels unfair it just feels like you should opt into how much skill you need to bring to the battle or opt into preparing to need you know items and the like the real standout of this remake and the thing I need to focus on for a minute here is the graphics now with the rise of classic remakes alongside them we've seen HD 2D games think games like octopath traveler triangle strategy or the live alive remake Star Ocean meanwhile is not HD 2D instead it's chosen to go in a a bit of a different direction and instead they have gone with an HD 2.5d approach and while that seems like a very nitpicky difference it's actually massive in practice you see in HD 2D everything is rendered as a 2d Sprite and you can make things gorgeous but everything is limited to Sprites with 2.5d while the characters in Star Ocean are all beautifully rendered 2D Sprites the backgrounds and the world you interact with are all pre-rendered 3D objects with gorgeous presentation I can't stress enough how often I would just stop and stare at the locals around me in surprise of how good it all looked I wouldn't say it's better than HD 2D to be clear it's different I think they're both equally gorgeous and I believe each choice better suits their own worlds and I believe that the world genre and narrative they built in Star Ocean is perfect for the 2.5d approach it just feels right the more science fiction you bring into it because you get to see these building bus and these mountains and these other things around you and they just feel different it makes you actually feel like your characters are on an alien world it just all ties in well and as a side note can you imagine a Xeno gar remake in this style with like 3D gears and 2D Sprites Please square like just please I'm man can dream okay all right the soundtrack is the same as the original but updated allowing you to choose between the original tracks or newly arranged versions of everything now I love Star Ocean 2 I loved its soundtrack it possesses an excellent Battle Theme an even more excellent boss theme wonderful setpiece music in towns and mines and everywhere else but I found myself leaving the Arrangements on Non-Stop many of these songs are Classics to me to be clear but the new Arrangements feel right for lack of a better way to put it really with both the graphics and the music the best compliment I can give and the most accurate way I can Des describe them is that they feel like what you remember with classic games without going back and playing they feel as big and bold and excellent as your memories fill them in with even if you tend to embellish or remember things more fondly than they were everything in this package feels like a labor of love time spent trying to painstakingly recreate this classic while staying true to what it was and that labor of love is paid off in the end product for sure so with all that said where do I stand on Star Ocean second story R well if it isn't obvious I absolutely love this game I played it essentially non-stop from once I got it until writing this and I feel like a kid all over again reexperiencing it the new updates to the graphics the music the combat system the superb voice acting and character art the flowing presentation the sense of impact and decision making with everything they decided to put into this version of the game game everything about this remake feels like it was made with intent and not just a thing they put in because other games have it see around this time last year I got a chance to work with square and review Tactics Ogre reborn and I called it the gold standard of remakes at the time and I gave it a 10 out of 10 saying I could not imagine them nailing that game as a remake better than they did it is with that in mind that I say that for as good as remakes like Tactics Ogre reborn or live alive or the trial of Mana remake which I loved or anything else square has made have been outside of something like Final Fantasy 7 remake which is obviously in a bit of a different category if we can be honest I think that Star Ocean second story R might very well be Square's magnum opus for remakes Star Ocean the Second Story R gets a 10 out of 10 they have taken a game that's set a bar and then reset it to to the highest caliber and in so doing they made something I'll be playing over and over whether it's the little things like adding small challenges that can give you boosts to your money and BP early on or big things like adding fast travel with almost no load time to Any Given save point in any dungeon or to basically any location within a town and there's not a single creative decision they made that I disagree with if this is how Square Enix handles their remakes moving forward with some of the rumored games they could be doing them with I truly believe it's going to be an incredible win for all of us thank you so much for listening today my name's Josh you can call me an orian and I'll catch you in the Stars hey thanks so much for watching if you can do me a favor please hit that like button if you like the video and the Subscribe button to tune in for more I have a few more videos coming out the next few weeks that I really think you'll enjoy you can also check out my twitch page at twitch.tv/ andorian where I stream 3 to four times a week or check the description for links to my socials or my Discord if you really want to stay caught up any support is super super appreciated anyways I'll catch you all next time bye-bye

Channel: Anoriand

Views: 7,940

Keywords: GameDad, GameDad Plays, GameDad Lets Play, Fagundes, The GameDad, GameDad RPG, Game Dad, The Game Dad, Anoriand, Game Review, GameDad Review, New Game Review, New RPG Review, JRPG Games, JRPG Review, Square, Square Enix, SquareEnix, New Square, New JRPG Review, Star Ocean, Second Story, Star Ocean Second Story, Star Ocean R, Second Story R, Star Ocean Review, Second Story Review, Star Ocean Remake Review, Second Story Remake Review, New Star Ocean, New Star Ocean Review

Id: LPd2Z8qTN9g

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 01 2023