star ocean 2 (Star Ocean 2 (PS))

Member Name: MrMystery

Product:	Star Ocean 2 (PS)
Date:	04/05/02 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Long, Much replay value, Best battle system Ive ever seen

Disadvantages: If you dont like RPGs.....

I simply cannot believe that no one has yet written about this. Whilst it isnt quite on par with the final fantasy series just get this right: it is a REALLY excellent RPG and a very highly rated one.
It is a very traditional RPG.

Graphics
These aren’t the games strong point. They are more than adequate though. They are in a slightly cartoony style, and for some odd reason the characters are very small. Think Final fantasy 7 type graphics, excellent spells, some spectacular cut-scenes, perfect backgrounds and cartoony characters. But this has slightly smaller characters and they aren’t "blocky" in the way they are in the final fantasy series.
The graphics are more than bearable, though they wont win any awards.

Skills and more
A vital part of gameplay here is based around skills. These add a new dimension to the gameplay. This is how it works: when you level up you get some skill points to spend on learning and improving skills. Each character can learn a certain amount all ready, and by paying for the services of skill... erm people in the game you can add more skills to the "can be learnt" list.
Skills are mainly either battle or item production related.
Battle skills are for use in battle, and whilst not adding any extra abilities, can improve certain aspects of you. *ALL* skills add some bonuses to your character, whether it be +1 to stength, or +2 to agility and +5 to magic. Some also have direct affects, mainly either decreasing the time needed to cast spells (motormouth skill) or on such things as moving faster, increasing evasion rate and so on. But these are a smaller part of the skills.
Most skills are based around all sorts of things. Some main categories are stat increasing, eg biology (dont ask why)
performing certain actions, now this is the main part and is great fun. you can do things like identify certain items, to see if they have hidden value, call on a bun
ny to carry you across the world map, cook, to turn basic ingerdients you can buy into culinary masterpieces to restore HP, MP etc, you can fashion weapons out of certain items, modify weapons and armour by bonding them with certain materials, call a bird to get you things from a shop whilst in a dungeon.... the list is very big but ive covered all the important ones.
There are also some (if very few) group skills. These are more powerful and require knowledge of multiple party members in various fields, with their skill in each averaged out. These are: call a bunny to carry the party across the map, master cookery, to fuse multiple ingredients into culinary masterpieces, blacksmithery, to make VERY powerful weapons/armour with multiple materials, master identification.....
These are sometimes useful but too limited to be as intergral to the gameplay as the normal skills.
Skills add a real dimension to gameplay and is the main reason star ocean is a cut above most other RPGs.
You can make almost anything out of anything.

Gameplay
This will be split into battle,and other gameplay.

Other gameplay
The story element is more than adequate here. The story is pretty standard RPG fare, with sidequests, the compulsory save-the-world ending and a general roaming around doing quests type thing. I could not possibly give a good impression of the story because it changes so much, but ill give it a try.... you can choose your main character as (thats right you choose your main character!!!) either rena or claude, seeing slightly different bits and bobs of talk/conversation depending on who you choose. But this essentially doesnt alter the game. Rena is a 17 year old living in her village, in a world which is sort-of in the past. Thing medievil fantasy. Anyway, a meteor has landed on another continent and now bad things are happening everywhere with a continent in serious trouble of and another continent being totally invaded by mo
nsters. Claude is from this planets future, a member of the federal earth agency, whos father is the general of it all, who is poking around on another planet, and ignoring the "protecting undeveloped planet treaty" pokes around a bit on one of his first missions. He gets transported to this world, trying to regain contact with home. Start a varied adventure, which relies more on various quests giving an overall picture rather than one big storyline. However, revealing all or some of these plot changes would be party-pooping on a grand scale for those yet to play the game, so I wont include any here.
Let me just say this: half-way through the game, just when you think its all over, you get transported to another planet, this time in more the future than the past.....
the story is perfectly up-tp-scratch. But there are some very inventive extra elements in the mix:
There are private actions. These are entering a town, to hang out and you can speak to the other party members and give them many different replies, altering how much they like you and occasionaly seeing a short cut-scene.
You can choose party members! yes, you heard right. This can alter the way you approach battle, but makes little fundamental difference to the story. But it adds some real replay value, you see different cut-scenes, can get different side-quests... and so on. eg At one point you can choose between getting: no new characters, ashley a strong fighter or opera a ranged fighter (and a option to get her friend ernest in the party too later). If you choose ashley you have to go to a mining town and slay dragons in the mine to impress him, but he gets dragons stuck on his back and you have to try to purge them in many places throughout the game, culminating in a fight on a mountain.
With opera you break up a fight she gets in in a bar, and she joins you. Much of her story if trying to fund her old friend, ernest, and (she crash-landed on the planet) getting ba
ck to her home (kinda like claude really). This obviously affects quest-options that are open to you.
This gives the game REAL replay value, in trying out many new things and really makes you feel like you care about the characters and are in the game making decisions.
9/10

Battle
This is, in the opinion of most, one of the Best battle systems of all. It is sort-of like the final fantasy series, but much better (this is generally agreed).
Each member of your party has various skills, based on who they are.
The characters are (mainly) fighters, healing + some offensive magic users, and just plain out offensive magic users.
Figthing characters have abilities, which get better as you use them more and get more experienced in, which have certain effect. eg claudes headsplitter (he uses a sword) propels him up into the air landing on an enemy. These are special abilities with direct affects.
With magic users, you cast spells from the back row. The spells available are very standard RPG fare, attacking and healing as well as elemental spells are available. But a good option here is to put them together: you can (if you time it right) make multiple spells happen at the same time, sometimes making them have a special effect.
The battle playing field is fully moveable in, you can move anywhere in it. You go into battle with a certain formation based on your strategy, adding a new dimension to traditional turn based battles.
You control 1 party member, and the others are computer controlled and their actions can be altered in a tactics window. The battle is in real-time, no-one waits for their go here. You select an action from a window (similair to that in grandia) and do that action. You can choose to attack, magic (not avialable to fighting characters) tactics or to use an item. You constantly choose what to do, their is no waiting to input actions. The only limit to this is that each action takes a certain amount of t
ime to actually do, and to perpare for (applies to magic only). So you can unleash a constant stream of attacks, which adds a whole new dimension to the "shall I use a magician or a fighter" question evident in most RPGs.
You can also move your characters around the map, positioning them behind an enemy or making magicians run away from enemies. This improves on the ATB "wait for you go and choose and attack" format, as you are now playing in a fully movable combat field which feels much more like a battle, with many options, than a game of cards like many other RPGs.
10/10 The best RPG combat system I have ever seen. Especially with the added option of skills (explained above) this really is a part of the game warranting a purchase in its own right.

Length/Replay Value
Fairly standard RPG here. I reckon the whole adventure will take you anything between 40 hours and 100 hours (much like the final fantasy series as well) to complete, depending on whether you choose to level up chracters, experiment with skills, play at torunaments and compete in mini-games....
Considering you can get this for £20 or less, this is more than your moneys-worth.
There is also the added option of (once youve completed it) visiting a kind of "super hard" dugeon to get items, fight bosses and have fun. This keeps you interested until youve leveled up to level (!) 250. Imagine Final fantasy where you level-up slightly faster, but can go up to level 250 instead of 100.
9/10
Replay wise, this is VERY high for a RPG. This is in skills and a open-ended battle system. You will not feel like youve done everything, and it is a very enjoyable so most will play this title again at some point in the future after completing it.
But the main factor for replaying is this:
in most games, (generally) each time you play a title it is the same. But in this everything can change. You can choose different characters in your p
arty, there are about 12 a game to choose from to fill a party of 8. This affects how you approach battle, and even can affect in many points what quests you can embark on. This differs even more with the fact you can choose your starting (main) character, letting you see slightly different amount of story each time. Add to this that each character has slightly different choices of character. To make this clear, eg If you choose Rena as a main character, a woman fighter (who will remain nameless to not spoil surprises for those yet to play the game) can join your party, if you choose claude as your main character a magic user called leon can join you party. This adds real replay value to the game, you can differ character skills, characters you have, which alters some of the quests you can do, there are even 80(!) endings to add to the mix.
10/10 This is the RPG with the most replay value Ive ever seen. And ive played many.

Worth buying?
Defintly. Add to this that its only £20, and youve got a winner on your hands. This was overshadowed by being released at the same time as final fantasy 8, the famous anticipated game of the time, and was therefore underrated as a result. It almost didnt even make it to the US and UK!. IT is well worth buying. Most under-rated role playing game ever? could be.

Summary: