While I always liked the idea of these games, my past with them have been a bit tumultuous. I bought this and First Voyage for the PSP at close to the same time and I played the original long ago. Simply put I loved it, even with the incredibly stupid/cheesy reason for the last boss. So when I bought a PS3, I already wanted Star Ocean: The Last Hope for it (Star Ocean 3 was going to be next to impossible to find, so I took what I could get). And when I played it, well… I was far from impressed with. But when the dice selected this as a possible game, it had my curiosity. After all, with the steep difference between what I played in the portable game vs it’s sever-iteration later sequel, I could only wonder if the game’s were good until then, or if it was a slope of sequels that got worse as they went on. After finishing this game, I believe it could well have been just Last Hope that was just that bad.
Also, please note, that by the time I played this game, my PSP had basically died. While it was in the process, but I could at least get the disc drive to work some of the time, so I hacked it and fought to get my small library to file. As such, I played this game via emulator with a 360 controller, so your experiences may vary some from my own.
Story: It’s been 20 years since Ronyx Kenny had his adventures on Roak in the original Star Ocean. While still on active duty, life has carried on, and Ronyx has had a son named Claude. This young man is currently a cadet and serving his first mission under the leadership of his storied and esteemed father. Their mission is to investigate a mysterious energy field out on the outskirts of explored space, but a careless action or three activated something at the source and just as quickly as it went south, Claude was gone.
But his story is not his alone, for on the planet of Expel, there is a girl named Rena who is a little different from everyone else in her village. She was an orphan found in the mystic woods just outside of the town of Arlia and all through her life, she has felt a bond with that place. However, at this time an artifact known as the sorcerer’s globe has fallen from the sky and ever since earth quakes and monsters have begun to appear and make it more and more dangerous to leave the village, even just to go to this place. She found out first hand when a monster attacker her one day, only to be saved by Claude as he suddenly appeared out of nowhere! Using a “sword of light” he is immediately identified by Rena as a prophesized hero to save the world from these phenomena.
Claude, for his part, had no idea about this prophecy, but he suddenly found himself in a strange forest where a young girl was being attacked by a monster and acted, shooting down the beast with a standard issue phase gun before it could do any damage. Together they journey back to her home-town and after some explanation about this hero, he declines being it. But the artifact sounds a lot like the one he was investigating when he was whisked away from his ship. So, if he can help the people here while looking for a way home, why not? With this in mind, he agrees to go look into it anyway. And Rena seeing a chance to explore and find out where she really came from, decides to go with him.
From this beginning point, you will follow this unlikely duo as they march across the globe in their mission to understand and undo the damages caused by this strange artifact. And while the game offers only one really major twist to the main plot, do not expect a straight line. Rather, as you reach different cities you will be taken down small detours that are partly related to the big plot, but not enough to not feel like their own little mini adventures that happen to occur on the way. The resulting flow feels natural, if a little extended beyond necessary at one specific point, which is ironic as this turns out to be one of the key points leading up to the big twist the game throws you at the end.
The only other outstanding point about the story is that you will choose which of these two protagonists you follow explicitly. There are a few places where they split up and which half you experience at that point will be decided by this choice. However, these moments are few and far between as most of the game has everyone in the same place at the same time, so there isn’t really much reason in the story line to come back a second time.
7/10
Graphics: Star Ocean: Second Evolution is a remake of Star Ocean: The Second Story for the PSX. As such there is a certain style to the graphics many fans of RPGs from the 16/32 bit era of gaming will expect to see, and from the UI to all the action you will see on screen, these expectations will be met.
While in combat you will have the health and magic meters of your four active party members at the top of the screen, leaving the rest to show the action. If you need to do something requiring a menu command, it will zoom into that character and show you a rotational menu with your options clearly noted and easy to read (and pick out by icon after you see it once or twice).
The sprite-work you will see here and in general will conform to the same standards as well with a fairly chibified look to the characters while the monsters run the gamut from cute to grotesque to mechanical to even some weird in-between. But it all fits together for a damn good looking set of characters as a total picture. Add to this some epic spell casts to show off just how much damage you or the enemy will do and you have a pretty good start to one of the points in the game you will spend the most time in.
Towns and dungeons will also carry the expected ambiance as they are generally 2-D images which depict the area you are running through. They are in general very well done, but I’m pretty sure there was some computer work in them rather then being hand-drawn. That’s not really a downside though, as it is still masterful. It’s just between the moving elements (like some places with bodies of water for example) or even places where finding a secret suddenly animates the screen with an FMV, it becomes a bit obvious what the favorite tool was. Still it was used to great effect, and the only downside I could give it was due to the way I had to play the game. (The PSP screen is only 480x272 in size, so to see some pixelization in backgrounds like this when playing at a full 1080p resolution is to be expected from time to time.)
7/10
Sound: Like most RPGs of its time, sound effect are not particularly important to the game. That is not to say they do not sound good, but they are fairly standard affair with hits against meat or metal getting impact noises, magic healing getting glittery sounds, and all kinds of explosions and the like as needed. It’s varied enough to show work was done for them, but they hold to the limit of the original game’s platform, so do not expect a lot of realism here.
Nor is the music going to stand out particularly well through most of the game. Rather there are a few tunes used for specific locations and boss encounters that sound pretty good, but just wont stand the test of time. However, you will find the opening scene and the end credits tunes absolutely stunning, giving a nice lasting impression that actually will stick.
But the voices, on the other hand, fair a lot better. And they should considering Square brought some very well known professional voice actors in to redo all the voices in the game for this PSP release. Even I picked up Shinji Ikari (Spike Spencer) as Claude in seconds. While this left me initially questioning the choice due to wanting as few characters to be Shinji as possible, it did not take long for Claude to become his own (and much better) character through the voice acting alone. He is very well played and you will enjoy the performance in this version from him and the rest of the cast (there really were no slouches here, at least for the characters I had in my party, but we will get to that in the next section).
7/10
Gameplay: Being a console RPG of the 16/32bit era, the gameplay is going to follow a lot of mechanics fans of these games should be very familiar with. At it’s core, this is an RPG which will have you spending time in four environments. First one you will encounter are towns/dungeons. In these instances, you will run around a 2D flat maps interconnected with each other, scaling the sprites to show the depth of the scene you are currently looking at and doing a pretty good job of keeping how you move around intuitive. However, this is not flawless as you will find some maps on you understanding the angle it shows to know how to use the 8 directional it uses for movement correctly. As a result, you will find yourself using the nub because it’s placed well to be comfortable sometimes, and reverting to the rocker switch for the odd indoor location from time to time (or if you are playing like I am, the stick and rocker accordingly).
While in this mode, you will have the option to interact with people and items as you would expect, as well as have the potential for combat to occur by boss or random encounters.
That combat changes the view to a 3D arena where your party and the monster(s) will be displayed, move around, and fight in real time. Star Ocena 2, much like the original, is an action RPG where you only control one of your party at a time. This is done through a few basic commands. You will have three attack buttons: one for your main attack and two trigger/bumpers for pre-set special attacks you can unleash on the fly, and using all of it feels absolutely right. Doing so will send your character running to the proper distance from your targetted monster or ally (noted by a green “target” on them) before committing the attack. If you change your mind before then, you also have a cancel button to regain control of the character.
In addition to these commands, you can also bring up a menu to access all other options not hotkeyed. This of course includes all the other special moves your character has learned up to this point, but in addition to that, you will also have access to items, AI behavior, and an escape option. Items and escape are fairly obvious as they will allow you to use things you have in your inventory or try to run from the fight, but the AI behavior gets interesting. Since you can only control one ally at a time, this option lets you change the basic behavior of the one you are controlling right now. And while that may not be important, the last button this game uses lets you swap which one you are actively controlling, leaving this AI in control while you take over someone else. The end result is a very dynamic combat engine which will leave you a lot of options… or you could decide to just hammer everything down with your party leader if you have enough faith in your allies and strength to do so. The choice really is yours.
The only thing I can fault the combat in this game for is a very steep difficulty curve at the end of the game, but it’s nothing that can not be overcome with some thought and a little bit of grinding. (Levels come very easy in this game, and a few can make a huge difference.)
Aside from this, you will also have an overworld map which will remove the interactions for a 3D world connecting all the other locations you will get to. But in return this is also where you can save your game at will rather then just at save points. You also get an interesting touch in this game where on reaching a town, you can choose to let everyone go their own way and enter with only Rena or Claude (depending on who you chose to play at the beginning of the game) by the private option. This opens up some side-dialog as you find and can interact with your party, but can also lead to additional members joining you (up to 8, so you will not be able to have every character) on your quest. You will want to take advantage of this.
But last and certainly not least is the menu system. This, like you would expect in an RPG, is where you can do everything from select your team, to pre-emptively control how they behave, equip items to them, or even control what abilities are setup in on the left and right bumpers for each one and what the AI will have access to follow the action-type you gave it with. It looks functional and you should find most of how it works intuitive after a few minutes of looking around, but it is not going to be exciting by any means.
It will, however, allow you to use points gained every time a character levels up to learn and improve skills that will also effect stats and/or special abilities outside of battle like cooking (allows you to make extra powerful items for one use consumption) or metal forging (create items and weapons). This final detail is a feature that will feel unique to this series, and indeed can be used to enhance the whole thing… but you will never be forced to if you want to just push on.
8/10
Bugs: I can’t say for sure I ran into any bugs in this game. I might have hit a graphical few, but I’m pretty sure those were my emulator, not the game itself. So, I believe this game ran bug free in it’s own right.
Overall: Star Ocena: Second Evolution is a very solid console JRPG that many would consider a classic. While I am not sure I would go that far myself, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Still, it does not stand really above it’s peers so much as a strong contender within those ranks. If you like this kind of game you most certainly will have fun with it, but it’s not going to change anyone’s mind who dislikes the genre.
Score:
7/10
Source: Unfortunately this is not a game that can be found new or carried by most stores anymore. You may need to go hunting at amazon or ebay for this game.
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