Why Star Ocean 2 is the Best RPG Ever

So I'm just going to do you all a favor. I'm going to post a link to Amazon where you can purchase this game. If at the end of this review you haven't already purchased the game, you are a disgrace to the RPG community and to the human race; yes it is that serious.


Star Ocean: The Second Story ( PS1 )

Star Ocean: Second Evolution ( PSP )

There you go, I did all the dirty work for you. I solved the "But Romalia! This game is out of print, how am I suppose to play this! Well, you have two options: PSP which is like 10 dollars and PS1 which is like 20. So expense, availability, and access are already out of the question as excuses for purchasing this game. Now, unless you're one of those people who like... get welfare and you get JUST enough money to feed your 6 kids, you can stop here ( but honestly, I'd just starve one of those kids because this is a fun game ).


Anyways! Star Ocean 2. It's the sequel to the Enix game Star Ocean on the SNES which was never released in America. It follows the son of the characters: Claude who, well.... stubbornly decided to check out this anomaly on a planet which everyone kept screaming "Don't fucking go!", but he did anyways and it got him transported to this planet which he immediately meets your second main character: Rena. Rena happens to be the strange young magical girl of unknown origins.

Lemme just say, the worst part about this game is the first 30 minutes of it. Claude is an idiot, Rena is a cliche, and it's nothing but talk-talk-talk. So what I do is save RIGHT after leaving this area because it's pretty much where the fun begins. It suffers from, what I like to call, "Slow RPG Intro syndrome" where the first 30 minutes.... is just nothing but "OH MY GOD... JUST GET TO THE FUCKING POINT".

So skipping this, you start off.. and right away you notice something: The world music is fucking amazing. No seriously, this is easily the best world music I've ever heard of in any game. Listen for yourself:

The entire sound piece is one full piece of music. It doesn't repeat. And the more it goes on, the more epic it sounds. It's completely orchestrated... something I don't think I've ever seen in quality in any RPG. It's truly remarkable the amount of effort and quality that goes into this one song... Well, there's ALSO the 2nd world map music as well, which.... not as good, but still just as good in terms of effort.

So the battle system is pretty simple. It's an Action RPG which you hit X to attack, L1&2/R1&2 for skills. You choose any person in a team of four to control and everyone controls differently in terms of skills and attack patterns, and trust me.... One of the most fun aspects of this game is trying out different characters. What I love most about this battle system is it's not TRYING to be complicated, it's literally just mashing X and watching your character just destroy everything. Later in the game, you could equip Bunny shoes to run 5 times faster and just do laps around the enemies... It's so fun.


Now I mentioned 'trying out different characters' because this game is unique in that each time you play you can get different characters. For starters, I ALSO said "two main characters", because you can either have Claude as the main character or Rena. Both stories play out relatively the same, a handful of cutscenes are different... but who you choose decides on what characters will join you later on: Rena gets you Dias the swordsman and Claude gets you Leon the magician. But aside from that you also do private actions which can get you Ashton or Opera, assuming you do them in the right order, or if you visit a town early enough you'll get Precis instead of Bowman. And if you get Opera, you can get her boyfriend Ernest*. But each time you play, you have so many different methods of obtaining different characters that it's a different experience each time you play!

Skills make a HUGE part of the game. They alter how your character grows, like for example in the picture above 'Functionality' raises your STR, DEX, AGL, and INT for 20 levels, and below those you gain Combat Skills which affect the way your character behaves in combat: Feinting, Parrying, Casting faster, Cancelling attacks, Hitting weak spots for more damage. Each time you level up you gain Skill points which can go to any of these ( 40ish ) skills, and how you decide to accumulate will decide how your character grows. And IF you know what you're doing, you can break the game and DESTROY your enemies with these skills.

Something else skills give you: Item Creation commands. And these things are what make the game fun: Art, Customize, Metalwork, Compounding, Alchemy, Survival, Machinery, etc. They ALL help you if you use them correctly and once again, can help break the game. For example, before you're even 20% done with the game, you can make a weapon with about 1099 attack ( you can buy a weapon with about 150 ), which will pretty much one-shot every enemy and some bosses til near the end of the game. And this is how you get your weapons ( and best weapons ) for all your characters... from Minerals which you VERY easily ( for the most part ) obtain.


Leveling in this game so fun. You have 255 levels and by the time you beat the game, you'll be around level 120, which opens up a bonus dungeon with enemies MUCH harder than you've ever fought before. Each level in the bonus dungeon has higher level of difficulty much higher than the last one and as you progress, you start to grow levels much and much quicker while also obtaining godlke armor to pimp your characters out with. Each time you finish a level in this, you truly feel like you've accomplished something since each level contains a puzzle and challenge to get through them. I would say this is probably half of the games entertainment right here.

Now you might be saying... "Wow, so far you've said nothing but how easy this game is to break. Where's the challenge?", which is fair... this game is veeeery easily broken**, however with a simple private action, you can make the final boss harder than the boss of the bonus dungeon BY FAR, and even your best armors and weapons will still be a huge challenge.



Now if at this point you haven't already ordered the game. I apologize for your tastes being so awful, because what I just described to you was the best RPG. And what's funny was, I didn't even MENTION the story***, because honestly, when an RPG is already this fun without mention of a story, you're in for a ride and it's definitely something that I believe no one should ever pass up. I stumbled on this game by complete accident, it was purchased on a whim and I was completely hooked from Day 1.

The game was re-released on PSP. The translations are better****, the combat was changed a bit, voice overs were added, and a character was added. Honestly, I think the original was better, but I still enjoyed the PSP port. So do yourself a favor and help yourself to either one of them; you will thank me.


* Though I only got him once. I honestly think he's useless.

** IF you know what you're doing. If you DON'T know what you're doing, then you will very easily miss a lot and the game will be very challenging.

*** The Story actually kind of sucks... Haha

**** The Translations might be better but half of them felt completely needless and unnecessary.