Star Ocean: The Second Story R

• Genre: RPG
• Time Played: 40 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Generally the pacing is pretty good, until the very end, like the last few hours are tacked on. This may just be me personally.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Extremely pleased. There are so many classic RPGs I would love seeing get this exact treatment.
• Why I played: Star Ocean 2 is an amazing RPG. I feel like back in the day it stood up there with the very best, but in recent years I feel like people have forgotten the praise this game used to get, maybe, partially due to some very divisive sequels, but I have never forgot, and this game does it justice.
• Recommend to others: I would definitely recommend this to anyone who has any love for classic snes/psx style rpgs. It is technically an action rpg, but not in the way modern takes on action rpgs are and definitely accessible to those who might prefer turned based.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R, a remake of The Second Story, and this time, for Real. Years ago they sort of remade Star Ocean 2 on PSP, but it's more like an "enhanced port". They actually remade Star Ocean 1, using a lot of Star Ocean 2's mechanics, engine, quality of life improvements, etc. To go along with that, they did an enhanced port of Star Ocean 2 with new art, new voices and some additional content, but it was still the same base game generally, using mostly the same assets and mechanics.

Second Story R is an actual remake, but still using some of the (previously new) assets and content. It's like them finishing the job, or fully realizing the idea. It's a very true to the original remake in that regard. There are still even more quality of life improvements, more modernization, but it's still at it's core almost the same exact game released 25 years ago. This is a game almost literally built on top of the old game, and I love it. It also goes to show how great this game always was. There are so many aspects that just feel like they're from a modern game that is trying to harken back to the good old days. Well, this is the good old days.

I have very few complaints with this. Really just two specific things that are inherent to the original game. One being that I was never fond of the dual protagonist set up. It would be one thing if this was a shorter game and more was different with each protagonist, like how Saga Frontier or Live a Live does it. But we're talking a 40 hour rpg. Granted, with new game plus, I could potentially plow through a lot quicker as the other character, but there is a lot of story in Star Ocean. A lot of story that I would have to endure again just to see some overall minute differences, but I would still like to see what happens with they split up. I would still like to see the party members interaction that I didn't recruit.

For context, you can only recruit 6 additional party members among 11 options. I guess I don't love this, which you could consider it a third thing, but I kinda count this toward the dual protagonist thing especially since some recruits are exclusive. I suppose it's more incentive to play again for some people, but not for me. I would just rather they put the content of both playthroughs, since they follow the same main story with 90% the same events, into one slightly longer game. With the additional characters side quests, private interactions, and showing the two perspectives, you're probably not even adding 10 hours of gameplay ontop of a single play through. I'd find that much more amenable than replaying through the game for another 30 hours.

I guess my other thing was just that it does the fake-out ending sequence kind of. Not as bad as some games do it, but when you're all ready to face the final encounter, go to the final area, the game says haha no, you have to go do all this other stuff, oh and one more thing, and it just feels a little tacked on to get a bit more mileage. It's not that bad, but it does kinda feel like "oh shoot, shouldn't we have had more dungeons in this game?" "oh shoot, yeah, throw a bunch in at the end". Don't get me wrong, this are all decent areas on their own, but they could have been interspersed throughout the game and the pacing would have felt a lot better.

Other than the issues I have with pacing/seeing all content, the game is just wonderful. It's improved in subtle ways that don't really change the game at it's core and yet make all the difference for a modern release. It really is just a better version of a classic rpg and I would love to see many more games get this exact treatment.

Here is a bonus little video for this one: