Games Happy

When Sq. Enix unveiled Star Ocean: The Second Story R a number of months in the past, I’m certain I shared an analogous response with followers of the unique basic – very excited, a little bit scared, a bit anxious, and intensely curious to study extra. Many Star Ocean followers maintain the second mainline installment in excessive regard and to many, it’s nonetheless one of the best Star Ocean but. After I heard that it’d be playable at PAX West 2023, I knew that it’d be one of many titles I had to take a look at. It’d be doing you RPG Website readers a disservice if I didn’t.

The temporary hands-on demo with Star Ocean: The Second Story R began within the Lazgriz Mountains (beforehand localized as Lasgus Mountains) as much as the boss struggle with Zinae. Straight away, essentially the most vital change followers will discover is the overhauled visible fashion. Though it’s not fairly HD-2D, Star Ocean: The Second Story R’s environments are all fully rendered in 3D; in the meantime, the character and enemy fashions themselves retain their 2D pixel artwork. 

I do know many stay divided on this visible path for Star Ocean 2’s remake, however I warmed as much as me the extra I performed. It’s as if the character sprites are wandering by a 3D diorama rendition of the unique sport’s environments. Extra importantly, the pixel artwork for characters and enemies are extraordinarily crisp to the purpose which you can see every particular person pixel that contains their mannequin when the in-game digital camera zooms in on them. There isn’t a smearing that tries to mix the pixels collectively. I had a psychological sigh of aid once I noticed it in particular person.

Earlier than beginning the demo, I shortly skimmed the get together menu to see what else I might study. Claude, Rena, Celine, and Ashton had been in my lively get together, whereas Summary and Leon stayed within the again; I sadly was not allowed to vary this setup. Characters can nonetheless distribute talent factors to study a plethora of expertise that have an effect on different system mechanics.

For these not aware of it, Star Ocean 2 had loads of “miscellaneous” expertise that characters might spend money on, such because the “Kitchen Knife” talent making a personality adept sufficient to prepare dinner,  the “Music Instrument” talent permitting a personality to ultimately use the Musical Expertise command, or the “Hazard Sense” talent granting the character the flexibility to scout. Star Ocean: The Second Story R looks as if it has left this facet rightfully untouched, although it has made its interface rather more organized to navigate by.

Battles in Star Ocean: The Second Story R retain what individuals beloved in regards to the unique sport’s battle system; it nonetheless permits individuals to roam the battlefield freely as they assault enemies with quick or lengthy ranged assaults in real-time. Characters with melee weapons have their fundamental 3-combo assault sequence. Arts (character expertise) may be fired off freely so long as you have got the MP for them. Gamers are nonetheless in a position to change between which character they wish to management in battle on the fly.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R makes vital enhancements into how symbology magical spells are utilized in battles. Followers of the unique sport can’t neglect how utilizing loads of symbology would elongate encounters as a result of they might freeze your complete battle to slowly play out their fancy animations for spells. Now, symbology has been given new prettier and speedier animations; longer ones that freeze fight, similar to Rena’s Star Flare, may be skipped totally with a single button faucet to maintain fight going. 

One other function that continues to be intact is gamers having the ability to difficulty a command for a symbology person to solid a particular spell after they’re in command of one other character. It’s a a lot sooner course of to execute in Star Ocean: The Second Story R as individuals can pop up a mini battle menu throughout a struggle, choose the Spells command, and shortly discover which character’s symbology repertoire they wish to entry.

With all these enhancements, the excessive tempo of Star Ocean 2 fights are extra constant, although it additionally brings just a few new tweaks to spice them up.

A brand new Break mechanic permits gamers to stagger enemies at set intervals by maintaining the strain on them; damaged enemies additionally obtain extra incoming injury. The Break gauge is depicted as purple protect icons above an enemy’s mannequin that reveals how shut an enemy is to being damaged.

Reserve get together members can now briefly take part in battle by help assaults. Gamers can name upon them through the D-pad and so they’ll hop into the struggle, execute a spell or potential, and tag out till a cooldown permits them to be referred to as upon once more. It’s a comparatively small addition to fights, however it goes a good distance in making it really feel like everyone seems to be taking part indirectly, form, or kind.

One other new function is one thing that future Star Ocean video games possessed after the unique launch of Star Ocean 2. Star Ocean: The Second Story R now has some type of ongoing, persistent fight multiplier bonus that grants numerous buffs by reaching sure level thresholds in fight.

The precise specifics of how this technique works in Star Ocean: The Second Story R is unclear to me in my quick time with the demo. There was some type of round orange gauge on the backside proper nook of fight that had numerical values in it. For instance, it displayed 136/300 inside it; as I dealt injury and broke enemies, the quantity 136 would improve. When it reached 300, it granted me a buff like Atk Dmg +1.5% and this round threshold would persist into consecutive battles. As soon as once more, the Star Ocean collection isn’t any stranger to battle chains yielding fight multiplier bonuses – although Star Ocean 2 by no means had that type of system till this new remake.

Lastly, Star Ocean: The Second Story R makes an amusing change for the sake of readability in terms of Ashton. For these unfamiliar, Ashton is the character from the reveal of the remake that has the 2 dragons on his again; their names are Creepy and Weepy. Generally within the story, one of many dragons possesses him if the narrative calls on them to take part.

Depicting Ashton as possessed within the unique launch noticed a slight shift in his artwork portrait and his tone of voice drastically altered to point that, in that second, Ashton was not Ashton. Now in Star Ocean: The Second Story R, the dialogue field may even denote this additional by having the speaker’s title be ‘Weepy Ashton’ as an alternative of remaining as simply ‘Ashton’. It’s a small factor that caught out to me and I figured I ought to point out it.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R was loads of enjoyable in my hands-on time with it. The large visible modifications depart me wanting to see how the remainder of the sport’s environments will look in its ultimate launch. All of the enhancements to its battle system have been nice. It reinforces one of the best points of Star Ocean 2’s battle system and makes some sensible changes to the lackluster elements of it. The extensively anticipated remake to this basic JRPG arrives on November 2 worldwide to PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Swap, and PC (Steam).