Star Ocean: The Second Story
Reviewed by Dyson Turner
Star Ocean 2 was a great RPG but not the best ever as some
people claim. I mean it was innovative great story nice
graphics great music. I don't know the plot just didn't
absorb me. Although it was a very good plot some things were
missing from the game major key elements that were supposed
to be in but were noticeably absent. Then there was the
battle system innovative yet it didn't necessarily have to
be done the way it was although it was a breath of fresh air
from the usual mash x battle system. The two main characters
Claude and Rena were both unique but if you look deep we
seen these two types of characters in other RPGs but they
weren't the main characters. They both go through major
changes in the game and they both realize their plight in
the world, which is showing of decent story telling. One
outstanding point in the game is the music I loved the game
music especially in some of the towns and the battle music,
the music really did give you a feel of the atmosphere in
the game. Upon first impression I didn't like the story
because the first 5 minutes of both characters seemed a
little boring but the story picked up quite a bit when you
got deeper into it. Then I thought the graphics were a
little cheesy but you get use to them. Overall upon first
look I thought this game had promise.
Story 9. 0/10
Two different characters two different stories almost but
then they meet and their individual stories mesh together it
did go together seamlessly I had no problem there. But they
both could have used more individual character development
maybe an extra 20 minutes before they met would of made each
one stand out more. Well the first character is:
Claude Kenni
The story starts off with Claude and his father and a crew.
They land on a strange planet. They are all from Earth and
Claude is an Ensign in the space research team. Claude
examines a strange force field even though his father and
the rest of the crew told him not to. He gets sucked in and
lands on a strange New World which looks under developed
which it is. Claude's scenario is different from the other
character Rena because he deals with some of his longings to
be home and different feelings.
Rena Lanford
Her story starts off in her home town then she goes to a
forest and she then meets Claude, Claude saves Rena from a
monster that was chasing her and they both meet and pick up
from there. Her story is different rather than the longing
to be home scenario it's about a big meteorite that's about
to hit her planet called the Sorcery Globe. She wants
desperately for it to go away and her and Claude start off
to stop it.
Like I stated before their stories are very similar for the
most part there aren't too many changes between the two
characters or too many differences. Since you will get to
use both any ways you just get a different point of view.
Although it does give you more of a reason to play through
again, since I first started with Claude then switched to
Rena because she was more interesting. The story although
good could of used some help, I fell there wasn't a true
supporting character. The rest of the characters seem to
just follow Rena and Claude around like lost puppies, since
none of them in my opinion contributed much to the game.
That's my major story flaw and the main problem I had if you
make supporting characters please make them have there own
side stories. The focus was too much on the major characters
and not enough on any of the supporting characters. Then
another problem was the minor characters or supporting
weren't even that great to begin with. They should of made
at least two more character who had great stories so that
you weren't always focused in on what the main characters
did and said. It seemed as though it was made purposely so
that the main characters got more attention and that you
don't want to pay the lower characters any attention.
Visuals 7. 0/10
The graphics were good but they could have been better. The
pre rendered backgrounds looked great and not too cartoon
pretty realistic like the Resident Evil Series. The game
focused a lot on making places look futuristic or rustic. Or
to make old spooky caves look down right scary. The
characters on the other hand looked flat and 2D which they
were but then they didn't look real bad against the 3D
environment. Although 2D they were that flat they just were
lacking color, I'm not sure what it was but they were
lacking colors. I think that if they added a little more
definition to their faces they would have looked better. The
enemy design was quite similar to the character design but
they were a little bit better. Seeing as most enemies were
monsters they were pretty colorful and slightly more
detailed than heroes were. Although the pictures of the
heroes in the status screen looked very good but that's not
the main focus point of the game. I think their faces should
have had more details because this game was very Final
Fantasy VII like because they lacked mouths. Even so they
were good but I think the graphics could have been better
since I have seen better when this game came out.
Audio 7. 0/10
The music like the graphics was lacking in certain
instances. Strait from the door I have to say this game had
great music, I loved a lot of tunes and the music never got
annoying even if you heard it play over and over as you were
searching a town. The air ship music was decent but it
reminded me too much of other games airship theme. Although
this one is equally good they should have made it more than
different than they did. The sound effects were pretty good
like the sound of explosions when spells were cast and the
sounds of enemies getting hit with swords and other weapons.
What I didn't like was the voice acting. It was quite
horrendous and bad. They should have had the characters say
nothing and maybe put text on the bottom of the screen I
know that sounds cheap but it's a lot better than what we
got here. All the characters sound funny, and not just they
sound funny they some pretty stupid stuff like. 'I don't
want to die, Do we have to fight, Hey That was a close
battle' Other generic and corny statements throughout the
fight. During before andf after. It's kind of cool they talk
at first but after a while when you start listening to it
gets pretty cheesy. I mean there is no getting around this
horrific speech in the game and I would rather they would of
left out the speech altogether then to give us this bad
acted mush. Other than the cheesy voices the music section
was pretty good, but that does ruin the mode of a good fight.
Game Play 10/10
This game is for one player only. You control the lead
character for the most part Claude or Rena. What I mean that
by that is you get to see them in the front and not any
other character. Which is sort of cheesy since you can do
this thing called Private Action. It would have been more
fun to use each character separately during Private Action
instead of using either main character depending on whom you
picked in the beginning of the game. The battle System is
different this is how it works. You have 3 choices you have
Turn Based where you get your turn then they get their turn.
You have Semi Turn Based where as it's you walk over to them
and then they do something it goes back and forth and it's a
little faster. Then finally you have Action this is my
favorite it's everybody doing whatever they want no turn
based it's more like an action RPG although you have random
battles. Also not every character can use magic, which is
better than they all can are. This right sort of reminds me
of games like Wild Arms. The Main character Claude as far as
I know never used any spell he only uses special attacks,
these were spell like. Seeing as though he would say
something before them but it didn't take all day to go like
all the other spells used in the game.
Then Renna she wasn't that strong physically but she is one
of the only characters in the game to use curative spells.
The way she got her spells was a mystery. The controls were
tight but the problem was when you used active battle, when
you changed characters some times it was too late to try to
move them out of harms way if they were getting beat up too
badly. Besides this there was skills to be learned skills
did all sorts of things. You could do item creation through
skills the most popular and easiest of these is cooking. You
can cook food from raw materials the better the cook and
materials you got the more chances of you cooking something
good will occur. Then you also had other fun ones like
compounding where you could make medicines or refine silver
and things for cash. This is one of the major draws of the
games is the fact there is just so much to do and it's all
fun to do. People didn't realize this at the time when it
came out but now I do. Anyway the difficulty of this game
and length is really an eye opener, seeing as it will take
50 hours or more to beat this game fairly and you have 80
endings. I doubt anyone will beat the game 80 times seeing
as how that would be ridiculous. The game is not that good
to be beaten 80 times so I think adding that, as a feature
was wrong. Well it's not a true feature but as an incentive
if you will. RPGs weren't made for many replays only if you
were extremely bored and you wanted to play through an
extremely fun part of the game will you continually beat the
game. Other than that I wouldn't waste my team trying to
beat this again. The difficulty is Very hard and this game
requires the standard one block to save.
Overall 8 out of 10
Although this is a great game and I loved it to death it
just didn't strike me as being as great as people say it is.
It's not nor will it ever will be the best game of all time.
I mean yeah it's a great RPG to add to the collection yeah I
even consider this a must have game. But the fact of the
matter is this, it's just too hacky. I mean they could of
made this just slight bit better cut out all the hacking and
then and only then would I even consider this game in realm
with some of the greats. A truly great game wouldn't have
needed all these innovations to make it solid. I think a lot
of things in this game could of used some work for order for
any one to even consider this one of the greatest games of
all time. Because this game although I enjoyed I'm just real
iffy on it. I liked certain sections of the game but then in
some instances it just seemed tedious and kind of boring. I
mean that when I don't play an RPG strait through then it's
just not that great to me. It didn't really hold my interest
although I have to admit when I do pick it up before I
beaten it did hold it for a while. Overall I still think
this is an excellent game and I recommend it to anyone still
looking for a good RPG and they have almost everything else.
