A look back at: Star Ocean: The Second Story

"Tear into pieces!" "Air Slash!" "Explosion Pills!" "Ten Thousand Volts!" "Healing Star!" "Mole!" "Hurricane Slash!"

My goodness this game had amazingly bad voice acting, something I don't bother to care about in reviews. Usually it doesn't matter that much, but hearing it over and over is obnoxious. Luckily for me, Star Ocean 2's gameplay is just like the previous game, loads of fun with techs and AI usage. And then the customization aspect rears in and there's just a TON to do. Imagine being able to break your game once you gain enough skill points to get better with skills, unlock talents, and use these specialties to do all sorts of things, pickpocketing, playing music, creating arts and crafts and machinery, getting discounts at markets, manipulating encounter rates, my god, there's so much to do. And the Private Actions only help sidetrack you from the main plot, and manipulate the endings. Of course, I just don't have the time to get all these endings, and I personally recommend playing the game simultaneously on both Claude and Rena's paths just once to see some scenes and all. Besides, not every party member can be recruited, Dias can only be recruited on Rena's path, and Leon on Claudes, while Bowman and Precis are mutually exclusive along with Ernest and Opera against Ashton.

I don't remember if I said this, but I hate the term "aged poorly", I can't make any sense of it other than "this game is old and not really as good as it used to be". I guess that's the term? Well I'd say that Star Ocean 2 aged poorly in that regard, as much as I'd hate to say it. Good customization and battle system, and a splendid amount of actually good bonus content for proper challenges, but its plot is mostly cliche and lackluster. There's not a lot of overall differences between Claude's path and Rena's path, and that's actually okay, because big differences would actually be more detrimental and perhaps bore players. But so many scenes are long and boring anyways, the cliches about Claude being the chosen one, Rena's pendant, "you are too late", etc. I can barely remember the whole middle section of the plot, because the beginning and ends are more interesting. They tried to make ten powerful adversaries in the Ten Wise Men, but only succeeded in one of them (Indalecio), as the rest are basically boss-rushed to death, while Indalecio can actually be made a LOT stronger with a private action.

An appropriate adjective to describe Star Ocean 2 is apocalyptic, since the end of Disc 1 sees the planet Expel meet its demise. The end of Disc 2 has Expel returning, but Energy Nede disappears, with three characters being the last of the Nedian race. Also the Calnus getting destroyed was a major player punch here. Safe to say that there's some serious ramifications in story that really will punch player's guts. You'd almost think the game was over at Disc 1 since the whole party is still on Expel when it is destroyed. What makes this worse may just be how Expellians think that this "Sorcery Globe" just made a load of disasters and did not have any clue about the demise, while the Nedians in your party pretty much know that they'll be the last of their kind at the end of Disc 2. Talk about heart-wrenching, and this game sure delivers when it finally does deliver.