Star Ocean: The Second Story

Star Ocean: the Second Story, is an amazing story of a boy named Claude, an alien from the Earth Federation, and a girl named Rena, a small-town teenager from Expel, starting a trek to gaze upon a meteor struck a year ago. The oddity coincided with mutations in normally tame beasts, natural disasters, prophets foretelling death and guests along the way that are either cursed with fate or blessed with knowledge. But the deeper they go into the continent of ash and stone, darker intentions from corrupt men weave dissonance into a peaceful melody.

Star Ocean, released in 1996 for Super Famicon, was a smash hit in Japan- marking another cult hit in Enix's belt. But typical of the company, and their associated firm Tri-Ace, the game went almost completely unnoticed in the rest of the world; mostly due to the fact that it was never released in North America or Europe. Enix's competitor, Squaresoft, which hadn't done that well in Japan, was tearing up North American and European markets with games like Einhander, the Final Fantasy series and Parasite Eve. Enix needed a breakthrough game, the marginally successful Dragon Warrior wasn't doing it, so when the sequel for Star Ocean came around Enix banked on the idea that America would give two thumbs up.

It didn't.

So~so press, Squaresoft's blockbusters FF: Tactics and Final Fantasy Seven were too much, and the US was awaiting Suikoden 2 created a game's opening that went largely unnoticed, despite a loyal cult following. Of course in Japan there were standing ovations, a TV show and multiple comic strips. But here in America, a welcoming so poor and pathetic was given that Enix has rarely released any games of that nature again. And only now that it has joined with Squaresoft has it opened up again.

But the game is good. Real good. The background graphics are at a pinnacle for their time, the unfortunate exception to this department is the laughable 16-bit sprites used. Character's lives are quite developed, the scope of the game is tremendous and, in my opinion, edging out Final Fantasy Seven by a sliver, the story-line although a bit cliched and stereotypical, isn't too predictable- and the cliches used are actually very enjoyable. The music is astounding, but the best part is the unbelievably addictive battle form of real-time. It's what hooked nearly all of the fans, including myself. I give this a 9.7/10, and a must buy for all.

Game starts nice and easy, with fun real time combat, where you control one character, while the other party members are controlled by AI. It's all good, till you get to fight 8 enemies at once, each one taking 50 hits to defeat. And your melee party members love to throw themselves at the punches and die, so get used to healing everyone and stack up on resurrection potions.

Only way to avoid long battles is to grind and grind and grind again. But soon you get to the point when enemies are overpowered again, and you have to repeat the loop. To add to this, often battles become too chaotic, and not only you have to keep concentration on your enemy, but also keep an eye on health and mana bars of your allies, which often get paralyzed. And your allies can't use basic items, so your healer is the only support you've got. "Tales of Destiny" and "Tales of Symphonia" have similar battle mechanics, but they work so much better, and feel much more responsive.

Switching between characters, using items and magic in battle is very inconvenient. Inventory items hoard up very fast and it's very inconvenient to search for items you need. To add to this, while in battle, all items are displayed in a small window, and you have to scroll a huge list every time (and for some reason all the items that can't be used are also displayed)

Crafting, cooking and other item creating mechanics rely on random numbers, especially at lower levels, so most of the time you'll craft useless rubbish. Much easier to just buy ready supplies.

Pixel art characters look fine, but nothing special. Some prerendered backgrounds aged poorly, others look gorgeous. World is fun to explore, cities and dungeons are unrepetitive. Some enemy designs are weird, and there are not that many interesting bosses.

Overall, I enjoyed most of this game, and despite it being too grindy at times, it's a solid experience, providing interesting story and some unique mechanics to explore.