I think Star Ocean: The Second Story ranks about fifth on my all-time hours spent list.
It�s not unfair to say that this game, along with Final Fantasies VII and IX, was a huge
chunk of my high-school-era gaming. Star Ocean: the Second Story was the game that taught
me important life lessons: Rivalries improve everyone, Motoi Sakuraba�s compositions
are amazing, if a dude gets possessed by dragons because you were cheering for him too loudly,
you owe it to him to help him out, and you CANNOT drink three-eyed alien women under
the table. It just doesn�t happen. So while I could look upon the PSP remake of the first
Star Ocean with some freshness... this Second Evolution treads on territory that�s much
closer to my heart. And, in the interest of being a more accurate translation, some chunks
of it are different. There�s actually a vocal performance, and some pronunciations
aren�t what you�d expect, largely because they were mistranslated in the first place
back in �99. It�s not �ten-out-of-ten,� Claude. It�s �Somewhere Around Eighty
Points.� C�mon.
Awright, maybe I�m being a bit of a stick in the mud, but to me it feels like someone
went back into Final Fantasy VII and actually cleaned up all the �This Guy Are Sick�
parts. And that�s not inherently a bad thing, either, it�s just... messing with my memories,
is all. The story�s still the same, and you can choose to approach it from either
Claude�s or Rena�s point of view, though the off-the-bat choice of difficulty is missing
from this version. Also, just for the record, you�re going to spend most of the game collecting
different pronunciations of Rena�s... I mean, Rena�s... I mean, Rena�s name. Anyway.
Claude, being a doofus, disregards his dad�s warnings and pokes the wrong thing on an alien
planet, thus warping himself all the way to some underdeveloped backwater where a girl
- viz Rena - is being attacked by a gorilla-looking thing. Being a heroic, if impulsive, red-blooded
federation ensign, Claude promptly dispatches the beast with his trusty Phase Gun... only
to lead the poor girl and her entire village to believe that he�s their hero of legend,
complete with a holy Sword of Light. Hijinks ensue, as Claude searches for clues to get
him back home and Rena searches for her real mom because this party needs a healer too,
donchaknow.
The mechanics of combat feature the now-familiar instanced bouts of free-roaming, isometric
skirmishes, though the UI�s been touched up a bit into a more standardized form appropriate
for portable remakes of both this title and its predecessor. If you�re a fan of the
original, though, you�ll only have to deal with a couple differences, the most glaring
being Claude�s new three-step sword combo available from the outset. The skill system
returns, and is just as abusable as it was before. These skills, in turn, lead to Item
Creation abilities, and those build into Super Specialties, until you accidentally compose
the symphony that leads to the goddess of whoop-ass coming down and annihilating everyone.
(In fairness, I almost beat her, but Ashton was only level 212 at the time.) Being a rather
technical game, the difficulty curve can be mitigated through the use of effective tactics,
which can sometimes leave you a bit underleveled... until you figure out even better tactics.
Or grind some more. But better tactics usually works.
And the audio, well... there�s a reason this game made me an unabashed Sakuraba fanboy.
For my money, it�s one of the best soundtracks ever composed, swinging from celestial harp
solos to flute-driven rustic themes to energetic, keyboard-heavy dungeon music. The admittedly
dicey dub of the original has been completely redone, and is now... well, still a bit shaky
in parts, but significantly less dicey. Rena in particular sounds worlds better (which
is welcome, as she�s got a LOT of dialogue), though her redone character portrait makes
our supposedly 18-year-old co-protagonist look about 8. Fortunately, hers is the odd
one out, as the rest of the redone art and new Production I.G animation looks as good
as could be hoped for. If you love your PSP RPGs, it behooves you to obtain this title
and answer the age-old question for yourself: Opera, or Ashton?