Star Ocean: The Second Story R

Despite the story not really grabbing me until the final 1/3, I didn't drift because this game has some great engine building systems. Fighting battles gets you your normal XP and then adds Battle Points (BP) and Skill Points (SP). BP gets invested into making special moves/magic more powerful (bigger AoE, more hits, more damage) and on passive/triggered combat buffs like +Def, Atk, Int or Dodge chance. SPs get spent on skills that can grant attributes and when combined unlock crafting options like Alchemy or Art, or other bonus like quicker XP gain. The crafting jobs allow you to turn refine resources into items. But there's also a list of party based skills like Blacksmithing which is unlocked by having multiple members and multiple professions unlocked which grant another power layer onto the existing systems. I found the these various layers engaging and the crafting system - which I generally find as pointless filler in most games - actually rewarding here. I would say these systems are the real strength of this game, and it sounds like most of the games in the series. At one point around level 50 I had been saving gold and some items and bought multiple copies of the newest weapons from the shop and managed to turn one of them into a high tier that boosted that characters attack rating 50%. If I had better understood some of the other systems I could have layered in adding a factor (basically a second enhancement) for even more of a boost. Remaster/QoL improvements cover a combat overhaul, fast travel, mostly VO story, Private Actions (PAs - which are basically optional relationship improving scenes) being added to the map instead of guessed at, fast forwarding/skipping for scenes, bonus gauge, and replacing random encounters with visible enemies on the map. The same level and high level enemies will chase you, but the lower level ones won't. There's actually a skill you can pick up to give a % chance for party members to auto attack and kill the lower level spawns for quickly XP and gold farming. Your inactive party members (only up to 4 participate in combat) can be equipped with accessories that increase the % chance of this happening, and finding random items or gold. Couple that with other skills to multiply XP gain and you can eventually skip tons of fights and just farm like crazy. I entered the final area at level 98 (cap is 250ish) had 4 boss battles + 1 encounter I didn't dodge, and these systems auto farmed me up to level 133 in less than an hour (when combined with +XP items in the boss fights). The systems really fit together nicely throughout. It's a fairly short game (took me ~20 hours on easy) - but it is built with replayability in mind as well as having additional end game content like super powered versions of the bosses granting even rarer stuff for the real final boss. I didn't do the post game stuff so I can't comment on it. For replayability there's 2 protagonists to choose from with some separate supplemental story bits and access to some different party members. Often picking a party member will lock you out of recruiting another. Your party size is capped at 8 and there's 13 recruitable characters (6 max per run due to the 2 main characters) so multiple runs are required if you want to see everything. There's 99 "endings" but i get the impression it's really 99 different possible character end scenes. I saw 4 at the end which are a byproduct of the character and their highest relationship score. There's also a New Game+ for people who like that as an option.

After years I am finally able to beat all the bosses in the arena. On the original playstation title you'd get to fight 73 and the game would just black screen every time. Didn't matter what game you used or what playstation you used. You could not 100% this game ever. Now you can.

It was fun for the most part, the 2D and 3D environments were very nice and appealing to look at and combat fun, but I'm a little disappointed with how little sci-fi environments I got to explore. This is my second Star Ocean game I've played so far, the first was Last Hope. I liked the beginning when you were on a starship bridge and was hoping we'd eventually be able to use that as a hub to travel to different planets similar to what you do in Last Hope, but this game's story is essentially you being a technologically advanced human stranded on a lower tech planet and having to conceal himself from the local population and try to find a way to contact his ship to get back home. Well, that's if you pick the Claude route initially, anyway. You can also play as Rena and start the game a little different from the perspective of one of the local population of the planet Claude ends up finding himself stranded on, but both of their stories basically converge at some point and you're basically limited to two different planets in the whole game. The lower tech starting planet and eventually a more higher tech planet but it just didn't really hit that sci-fi spot for me due to the lack of spaceship stuff. I also didn't like the fact that there's only a limited amount of space for companions, 8 total include the 2 main characters of Claude and Rena, so basically 6, and there's a lot of them to meet, and some even are locked behind whether you play as Rena or Claude, or even if you choose to take a particular companion before being able to invite a different one you otherwise wouldn't really know you could until it's too late, if you're like me and just accept anyone who asks to join the party. I didn't really appreciate that. I enjoyed the story for what it was, but after beating the game, you're given a tease into some "true ending" type deal if you've been taking care to visit every icon on the map, especially the timed special event ones marked as "PA". I got excited that there was more, but it required you getting to like level 200+ (I was around 98-99 by the end of the game) and basically doing a 13 level endgame dungeon that helps grind you to that level and give you some better gear, only to fight the final boss again at the end who is absolutely BS in regards to being OP. I ended up having to cheese it in the end with wearing Bloody Armour that makes you immune to all damage but makes your HP drain constantly. It was the only way I could beat him once his "limiter" is removed from seeing a secret event post game. The problem I have with that is, it felt pointless. He literally only gives you a couple of lines of extra inconsequential dialogue that basically tells you what you already know from reading the secret files if you take the time to decode them during your playthrough, which is easy to do if you're constantly paying attention to the map and visiting all the things before progressing the story. It just felt like such a pain to get for something so... pointless? There really is no reason to go through all the trouble of grinding to 200+ for a couple of lines of dialogue that essentially adds nothing of value or new information you wouldn't already have. I was playing on EARTH difficulty but still had a hard time with this game, most of the fights were a breeze but some enemies would just 1 hit you no matter what and suddenly you'd party wipe. I really disliked that about the game, playing on the easy difficulty didn't really feel "easy" and took way more effort than I would have liked to do. My disappointment with what the "true ending" thing has made me change my mind in wanting to replay the game some day as Rena and take different companions. The many endings that advertise in this game were pretty lame as well in my opinion, they were very short, couple lines of dialogue scenes showing what your party does post-game. Some of the ones I got seemed boring and others somewhat interesting, but not worth the effort in playing through and seeing what the others could be. Especially since they seem awfully finnicky to get. You have to pay close attention to whose relationship you max out first and when. Despite my complaints with it though, I still enjoyed most of my time with it and liked the adventure.