Star Ocean - The Second Story R (PS5/PS4/NS)

[Gizmo_Duck]

Battles in Star Ocean: The Second Story R retain what people loved about the original game's battle system; it still allows people to roam the battlefield freely as they attack enemies with short or long ranged attacks in real-time. Characters with melee weapons have their basic 3-combo attack sequence. Arts (character skills) can be fired off freely as long as you have the MP for them. Players are still able to switch between which character they want to control in battle on the fly.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R makes significant improvements into how symbology magical spells are utilized in battles. Fans of the original game can't forget how using a lot of symbology would elongate encounters because they would freeze the entire battle to slowly play out their fancy animations for spells. Now, symbology has been given new prettier and speedier animations; longer ones that freeze combat, such as Rena's Star Flare, can be skipped entirely with a single button tap to keep combat going.

Another feature that remains intact is players being able to issue a command for a symbology user to cast a specific spell when they're in control of another character. It is a much faster process to execute in Star Ocean: The Second Story R as people can pop up a mini battle menu during a fight, select the Spells command, and quickly find which character's symbology repertoire they want to access.
With all these enhancements, the high tempo of Star Ocean 2 fights are more consistent, though it also brings a few new tweaks to spice them up.

A new Break mechanic allows players to stagger enemies at set intervals by keeping up the pressure on them; broken enemies also receive more incoming damage. The Break gauge is depicted as red shield icons above an enemy's model that shows how close an enemy is to being broken.

Reserve party members can now briefly participate in battle through assist attacks. Players can call upon them via the D-pad and they'll hop into the fight, execute a spell or ability, and tag out until a cooldown allows them to be called upon again. It's a relatively small addition to fights, but it goes a long way in making it feel like everyone is participating in some way, shape, or form.

Lastly, Star Ocean: The Second Story R makes an amusing change for the sake of clarity when it comes to Ashton. For those unfamiliar, Ashton is the character from the reveal of the remake that has the two dragons on his back; their names are Creepy and Weepy. Sometimes in the story, one of the dragons possesses him if the narrative calls on them to participate.

Depicting Ashton as possessed in the original release saw a slight shift in his art portrait and his tone of voice drastically altered to indicate that, in that moment, Ashton was not Ashton. Now in Star Ocean: The Second Story R, the dialogue box will also denote this further by having the speaker's name be 'Weepy Ashton' instead of remaining as just 'Ashton'. It's a small thing that stuck out to me and I figured I should mention it.

 

[Carl Tethers]

Can't wait. This and the Suikoden remasters

 

[Methodical]

My type of game

 

[The Mad Titan]

Game is looking fantastic, the fact it's not on the Xbox is whack.

Square is gonna be unimpressed by sales as usual and we aren't going get (what looks like) polished smaller remakes of this caliber.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

Game is looking fantastic, the fact it's not on the Xbox is whack.

Square is gonna be unimpressed by sales as usual and we aren't going get (what looks like) polished smaller remakes of this caliber.

Xbox wouldn’t help this game

 

[The Mad Titan]

Xbox wouldn’t help this game

 

[Pull Up the Roots]

Disgaea 7 and this should make up for the rest of the year being a wasteland for me.

We got this after Romancing Saga MS remaster, and that wasn't on the Xbox, either. It's on the PS4 and, most importantly, the Nintendo Switch. If it doesn't reach their expectations being on the 2 systems with the largest userbase, then

Edit: It's on Steam too.

 

[Grand Conde]

Square is gonna be unimpressed by sales as usual

Yeah being on X-Box would have made a huge difference here.

 

[The Mad Titan]

Yeah being on X-Box would have made a huge difference here.

Yall such haters you snuff at stuff that could help overall with the big picture in the long run.

Cut off y'all nose to spite your face.


Outside of final fantasy 7 remake this is probably the highest quality remake they have released, and one of the main reasons it even got a release is because of star Ocean the divine force.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

star Ocean the divine force.

 

[Grand Conde]

Yall such haters you snuff at stuff that could help overall with the big picture in the long run.

Cut off y'all nose to spite your face.


Outside of final fantasy 7 remake this is probably the highest quality remake they have released, and one of the main reasons it even got a release is because of star Ocean the divine force.

Sales on this game on X-Box would be miniscule. Not sure what your other point is supposed to be.

 

[Bboystyle]

Recycled

Starfield>>>>

 

[Grand Conde]

Played another bit of the demo and this is a really cool JRPG remake.

 

[Eternally Jaded]

Yall such haters you snuff at stuff that could help overall with the big picture in the long run.

Cut off y'all nose to spite your face.


Outside of final fantasy 7 remake this is probably the highest quality remake they have released, and one of the main reasons it even got a release is because of star Ocean the divine force.

Normally I rock with you but nah. Trials of Mana is a much higher ask in value than this.

It should've been on everything tho, that I agree with.

 

[Eternally Jaded]

Sales on this game on X-Box would be miniscule. Not sure what your other point is supposed to be.

If they're miniscule it's largely because SE hasn't fostered an audience for their games on Xbox systems.
You can't build a fanbase if you're not steadily pushing product in their direction.