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13 of 14 found the following review helpful:
The Second Evolution of the Second StoryMar 31, 2009
By Wolfgang Star Ocean strikes again, this time accompanying the very first Star Ocean, which was never released to North America. Those returning to this game will find the game they remembered. Newcomers will find an enormous RPG, full of continents to explore, hundreds of enemies to vanquish, and an engaging storyline to digest.
In the previous adventure (First Departure, also for PSP), four heroes banished evil from their continuum and restored peace to their separate worlds. Now, Ronyx's son, Claude, is unintentionally sent to a primitive planet, Expel, upon investagation of a barren plane. There, he meets a young girl, Rena, an odd looking villager with mysterious healing powers. He soon learns that her world is in danger.
Before his arrival on Expel, a shimmering meteorite slammed into Expel. With its coming came forth hordes of monsters that rampaged the surface. Claude, after using a light gun, is proclaimed by Rena's village to be the "Hero of Light," the one who is destined to deliver them from this evil invasion. Soon, Rena and Claude depart on their great adventure to put a stop to, not only sinister creatures overtaking Expel, but to a divine conspiracy that has silently raged for centuries and centuries.
In your journey, you will meet up to ten different characters, whom you can choose to accompany you on your mission, including three secret ones and many who can be added at the price of another. Another feature unique to the Star Ocean series is Item Creation. Here, you can do almost anything you can think of: create your own custom weapons, cook delicious food, conduct alchemy to make precious stones out of iron, and forge jewelry.
The battles themselves are also rather exclusive to the series. It's in real time: there's no polite attacking in this game. You and your battle party are free to roam the battle area as you see fit, whether if it's to close in on an enemy or to gain distance between you and your attacker so you can summon a spell. Leveling up is a huge part of this game, so be prepared to do a lot of it. When you leave one area and go to another on the World Map, you may suddenly find yourself 10 levels behind your enemies --- not a good place to find yourself. With every level up you get, you also get money (FOL, as it's called here), experience points, and something else special: Skill Points.
See, with the whole Item Creation idea, you need to do several things before you can gain skills. First, you need to buy the sets in various towns in the Skill Guild. Then, you need to gain enough skill points to level up your chosen character in the skill you want he/she to have. When you accumulate enough skills, you learn a Specialty. It sounds quite complicated, but it's really quite simple when you get into the menu.
Another good thing I found about this version of the game. The voice actors are incredible: it really brought something new to the game, a charm it didn't have before. Most were improved greatly from the PSOne actors. It's not a buy-or-not feature, but it was a new delight to a returning lover of this game.
Bottom line? If you're at all like me, and you played this game so much, so religiously, that you actually wore out the PSOne discs, buy this game. If you have never heard of Star Ocean, and if you love RPGs, and if you don't want to miss out on one of the most epic games out there, I would give serious thought to picking this up.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Pretty good remake of a classicJul 24, 2010
By Fuekun I played Star Ocean: The Second Story for the PS1 way back when I was ten or so. It was my first RPG experience and will always have a special place in my heart no matter how fancy-schmancy current games are (and I love eye-candy as much as anyone). So when I heard about a port for the PSP I couldn't resist. It also gave me a chance to reevaluate this game through the eyes of a more experienced me as opposed to the nostalgic memories as a 10 year old.
Storywise, the plot isn't incredibly compelling. The connections and reasons between going from place to place are pretty contrived. The real reason I chug through the story is the characters. I have met just about every character and they all have something unique and interesting to learn about(except maybe Noel, but more on that later).Heck, one's an unlucky dragon-slayer with a pair of dragons possessing him. Another's a journalist with a stun gun and mad martial arts skills. It's the interactions with the different characters you recruit that kept the game going as opposed to the "what's going on? Oh, we need to save the world" thing.
gameplaywise, it's pretty good, although it obviously lacks the prettiness and strategic depth of newer Star Ocean releases. Fights are real time, you only actively control 1 character at a time and only 4 of your characters are on the field. those that you aren't actively controlling are controlled by a fairly competent AI. I never had any problems with the Ally AI.
In playing through, I'm realizing just how much mashing of the X button I do. The triple hitting (a new gameplay mechanic that let's you do three regular melee hits in quick succession) makes the game seem a bit easy. It also places an even greater amount of reliance on fighters rather than mages. Fighters learn special abilities as you level up but most of them are either useless or only as good as regular attacks. Mages have offensive, support or healing spells, depending on the character. The offensive mages are useful in the early game but as mentioned previously, they will tend to get overshadowed by fighters during the mid to late game. The only mage you will consistently use is Rena (healer) because she can eventually heal or revive the whole party at once. The only other healer is Noel but by the time you get him he will be way worse than Rena and his offensive abilities are laughable compared to the offensive mages.
So ,yeah, character balance is a bit of an issue. But as unbalanced as it is, I still love to fight the battles and mess around controlling the different characters and seeing what they can do. I have yet to get to the end of this version, but hopefully the fights will eventually be more difficult then the stuff I'm dealing with now.
when you're not fighting, you can learn skills to do item creation( make weapons/armor, jewelry or food), summon birds that will bring you items (always handy in a dungeon), pickpocket, and a bunch of other things. You can also do Private Actions in the towns to see how the character interact and are always fun to watch.
graphics are essentially the same as the PS1 which isn't really a complaint as it still looks good to me. My only complaint is the new character pop-ups that show up in the bottom corners whenever a particular character speaks. Half the fun for me when I was playing the original was that I could imagine how those sprites on the screen really looked like or what their facial expressions would be. The character pop-ups kinda stole that pleasure by using a fixed set of images per character (minor characters only get one image) to try to match the emotion of their dialogue. Sometimes the expression doesn't quite match the tone of the script, which throws me off a little. But whatever, it's really not that big a deal and probably won't bother anyone not me, but I do wish there was an option to turn off the character pop-ups.
Sound is pretty much identical to the original. The original had a great soundtrack and I'm glad they kept it. The new addition to this version is the voice-acting. I think they did a pretty good job for most characters and the characters can, for the most part, convey the emotions from the script well enough for me to suspend my disbelief. While, again, I miss being able to imagine what they sounded like, the voice-acting is good enough that I don't really mind the change.
Overall, fighting is unbalanced and on the easy side but still fun to play through and seeing what all your recruits can do. SKills and Private actions give you some fun distractions to tinker with. Overall plot is pretty generic. characters are a blast to follow throughout the story. graphics and sound are the same as the orginal with some new additions that I think most will enjoy. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes JRPG's with an emphasis on character development and item creation or wants a new battle system to try out. It's also not a bad way for those not familiar with JRPG's to get into the genre as I did.
3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
SO2: More ambitious and developed than the firstDec 16, 2009
By the tie
"JT"
Having played the PSone version of Star Ocean 2 about 6 years ago, I have to say that this PSP version is far superior to it. Barring the voice acting (which you're either gonna love or hate), the graphics are overhauled for this version. the spells don't lag and are less pixelated in this version. The anime cut scenes enhance the storyline overall, and this story is deeper, darker, and more involved than First departure (and it still has multiple endings).
I'll admit that the story starts off really slowly. To speed things up, you wanna make sure you enable the ability to click through spoken dialogue since you can probably read faster than they can talk. Choosing between Claude and Rena changes the perspective of the story, and allows you to recruit unique characters for each one. Picking Claude if you're new is a good bet since his perspective provides more background information on the story (and also allows you to pickpocket valuable armor more often during the game). The features that were great in First Departure are included in this one (like the ability to melee attack 3 times in succession by hitting the x button).
Some character recruitment is complicated, and recruiting great characters like Opera prevent you from recruiting other great characters like Ashton, but these characters are far superior to the one's in First departure. They wield unique weapons with devastating techniques. The melee attack feature also improves other characters like Ernest and Dias from the PSone version. A definite drawback to me though is how you improve techniques (assigned to the L and R buttons) in this game. Each time you use a move, it increases it's proficiency by 1, and greater proficiency means a stronger and more devastating attack. The problem is that it often takes a ridiculously high number to max out a move's potential, which makes it so you have to level grind and really retracts from the flow of the game overall (unless you don't care about maximizing the strength of a technique).
A word of caution though: pickpocketing too much (even when you are in a private action) changes the ending you can get. Only pickpocket the most important items (such as rare armor or weapons or bunny shoes). Other than that, 2 perspectives on the storyline enhances replay ability (so you can try out all the recruitable characters and see which ones you enjoy most). There are ways to make the final boss really difficult but I would just refer to an online strategy guide if you're intrigued. The game has it's flaws, but it's easy to pick up and play and the button mashing free-for-all it leans towards is more fast paced than a traditional RPG. I would recommend it for any Star Ocean fans, and for any modern RPG fans since this battle style seems like it's being phased into newer Final Fantasy games.
6 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Star Ocean 2 does it again!Feb 06, 2009
By Donnie Darko
"RPG Loser"
I bought the original Star Ocean 2 for the PlayStation almost 10 years. That feeling that I had when I first played it then has the same effect on me when I bought Second Evolution for the PSP. Simply amazing. This game has one of the best storylines an Rpg could have. It's definitely an underrated one because at the time it came out FF8 ruled the land, so it was overlooked somewhat. The battles tend to get frustrating at times, but all that's forgiving as you progress through the story. There's so many things you can do in this game, like create your own weapons and items. And there's even private actions in towns where it effects the emotions of your characters and how they feel towards one another. They've updated and added some stuff too. Like Anime cutscenes, new voices (which are a lot better and less annoying) and other things, but I don't wanna spoil it for you. :)
All in all, this is an amazing RPG. I'm so glad they re-released it for the PSP. Buy it!
Absolutely. Favoritest. RPGFeb 01, 2012
By Jacky I ordered when it was 14.87 also the product qualified for free shipping but didn't go over 25 so shipping was $4.??
Anyways, great game. So many outcomes and skills and omg so much to do it's crazy, I remember the game on the ps1 part of two-disc set and just never finished the game but now it's remade and JUST SO AWESOME. It was also new, not used. I'm not even to the new characters yet :O! Best of the star ocean franchise made better to be the best ultra best awesome <3
based on 23 reviews
( 23 customer reviews )
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