Star Ocean: The Second Story
Reviewed by CB007
Graphics
It seems to me that Star Ocean 2 has excellent graphics,
overall. At some points, it almost feels like you're playing
a classic SNES RPG, and at some times it feels like you're
playing a game with State of the Art graphics. Most of the
towns have a very unique look to them. Meaining that you
rarely see two towns that look alike. Depending on which
town or dungeon you are in, the camera angles vary quite a
bit. The angles are less awkward than in FF7, and for the
most part, are setup in a way that makes it easy to see
where your character is in relation to everything else.
The Battle graphics are interesting in many ways. They're
more similar to classic SNES games than to a lot of other
PSX games, judging from the way your party members and your
enemies are designed. But there are also some things that
would never have been possible on the SNES. Spell Effects
for example. As the game goes on, they become more and more
elaborate. Eventually, however, they become too elaborate.
It's not as bad as the Summons were in FF7, but it's
annoying enough to keep you from using certain spells as
often you would like to.
Game Play
You control a party of 4 people at a time out of a total of
8 that you can recruit during the game. There are more than
8 characters in the game, but there are many variables that
determine which ones you can find. For example, some
characters can only be found if Claude is the hero, and some
only if Rena is the hero.
During battles, you control one party member at a time,
while the controls the rest.. I guess this is
slightly similar to Secret of Mana. You can control any of
the characters you want, but like I said, only one at a
time. During the difficult battles, you'll probably have to
switch between characters frequently, in order to be the
most effective. Until you get used to the system, it can
make things seem pretty confusing. To make things easier,
you can give the Controlled characters a general
idea of what to do. For example, some of the settings for a
particular party member are.. 'Attack until all MP are
gone', or 's tay Away from enemy'.
Magicians can cast powerful attack and recovery spells, like
they can in most other RPG's, but in Star Ocean, Fighter
Characters also have special attacks called 'Killer
Moves'. These are special attacks set to the L1 and R1
buttons that are very powerful. The more you use them during
the game, the more powerful they become. And they do drain
magic, so you have to use them wisely, especially early on
in the game.
There is a Skill System in Star Ocean that allows you to do
many things. You buy the Skills in various places throughout
the game. By using Skill Points earned by each character
after battles, you can make different people better with
different Skills. It's too comlicated to go into detail
here, but by using the Skill System wisely, your characters
will eventually become very powerful, be able to make great
weapons, armor, and items, and do many other things that
would not normally be possible. It is possible to get
through the game without fully taking advantage of this
system, but it makes things more difficult, and less
enjoyable overall.
Story
Depending on which character you decide on as the hero
(Claude or Rena), the story will be slightly different in
some places, since you are playing from that person's point
of view. For example, if Claude gets seperated from the rest
of the party while he is the hero, you will see everything
that happens to him. But if Rena is the hero, she will be
with the rest of the party waiting for Claude to return.
Most of the differences are minor, though.
When you go to towns, you can do 'Private Actions'. During
these, your party seperates and you can talk to your party
members indivicually. Sometimes, you can talk with certain
party members. Depending on what you decide to say to them,
you can make them like you more, or start to dislike you.
The endings are determined by how everyone feels about
everybody else. This also affects battles slightly. If a
party member's close friend is killed in combat, he will
become furious and do extra-high damage to enemies for the
rest of that battle.
The game has a lot of text, but that bothers me less and
less every time I play. It also seems that it's only a
little excessive in the beginning. As the game goes on,
there's less and less excessive dialogue, and more focus on
actual GamePlay. The story itself is really interesting, and
has some pretty big surprises as it goes on. There were some
things that happened that I certainly didn't expect to see
when I first started playing.
Sound
I happen to really like almost all of the music. I have
heard that there are also a lot of people who hate it.
Depends on the individual person, like anything else, I guess.
The voice acting varies from character to character. I
wouldn't go as far as to say that any of it is great, but
some of it isn't bad to listen to at all. On the other hand,
there are some characters that have really annoying or
ridiculous sounding voices. It probably wouldn't have been a
bad idea to include an option where you could disable the
voice acting for a particular character, but most gamers
shouldn't be bothered too much by this.
Extras
There is one more secret worth mentioning. The game keeps
track of how many different voice clips you have heard so
far by checking all the saves on the Memory Card. After
hearing a certain amount, you will gain access to Galaxy
Mode, in which the game is much more difficult. Hear even
more, and you can access Universe Mode, which is said to be
nearly impossible. If you hear almost all of them, you can
access a Sound Test of some sort.
Final Thoughts
This is a great game that seems to become more enjoyable
every time I play through it. It has more features and
options than most other RPG's I've played. There is enough
to keep you occupied for a long time. Most will want to
replay several times to completelely conquer the game.
Overall: 9 out of 10
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