Star Ocean the 2nd Story

Game: Star Ocean the Second Story
System: Playstation
Genre: RPG
Developer: tri-Ace
Publisher: Enix

Star Ocean: the Second Story, is an amazing story of a boy named Claude, an alien from the Earth Federation, and a girl named Rena, a small-town teenager from Expel, starting a trek to gaze upon a meteor struck a year ago. The oddity coincided with mutations in normally tame beasts, natural disasters, prophets foretelling death and guests along the way that are either cursed with fate or blessed with knowledge. But the deeper they go into the continent of ash and stone, darker intentions from corrupt men weave dissonance into a peaceful melody.

source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364026/

Gameplay and Features

Title screen

Character Select

Both characters have different paths to explore the adventure, but the same story. Its just the story line is too complex and that is the beauty of this game. Here you can also read about the characters profile and stuff.

Emoticons

The sweet emoticons of the game gives much more expressive thoughts of the characters. It may be sad, happy, shocked, OT, surprised, blank or should I say mood?/gg lol

Acquirable Items

If your tired of searching where and what it looks like. Its all in the box. Villages, Castles, Cities, and even in dungeons there are boxes scattered around.. Lucky for you if you get boxes with monsters or traps, you might get into trouble.

Place Icons and Labels

Anywhere in the game, place icons and labels are indicated left side in the place's name. So worrying about the wrong place while reading your walkthrough?.. No Problem! xD

Main Menu
What else should I say?... well press triangle button to see xD

Specialty Menu (Rena)

In case your already in high levels. The more specialty you acquired from the spell casters, the more that they will appear in the battle menu. Simply you can turn off/on the spells by pressing square button to select specific spells for your battle menu.

Specialty Menu (Claude)

Executing special moves and spells by pressing L1 and R1 button during combat mode. The proficiency indicates of how much strong your skills can damage. The more you use, the higher it will get. You can level up your skills at a maximum of 999 skill level.

Item Menu

To toggle a certain item by pressing square button.

Another is that by pressing triangle button. You can have its sub menu like that displayed above. Sorting and classifying your items in many styles. O indicates of usable items, E for equipment, and X for special purposes and some are useless.. my favorites. lol

Item Creation menu lets you use of the special skills of the characters. Like this. yeah cooking. If you select Cooking. It will go directly to Rena's menu and do the cook. Item creation is another story I guess. That's another thing to talk about.

My Super Specialty Skills are currently blank. As far as I remember, example is to be Animal Friendly. You can use a bird to scout outside the world map to decrease the enemy combat rate while walking. Above are examples of precious items. *Those precious items are totally useless I tell you*

Equipment Menu

This is where you can change your weapons and armors. To toggle is to see the elemental attributes. Currently no elements showed. In case there are elements in the attack portion means that is its strength and for the other is the opposite. Pressing the sub-menu triangle button for auto optimization equip. Armors could be clothes as well, but taking a bath?.. well you should. pause the game and go shower xD

Skills Menu

Skills are very important in the game. It can affect your status, specialty, talents, damage in combats, and more. To put a level point to your skills by pressing X button. The left number indicates your current skill level and the right indicates for level points required to level. Your SP indicates your current level points or skill points. You can acquire SP by rampaging to the jungles and dungeons from the monsters. Same like battle experience.

By pressing triangle button in the skills menu lets you show the current specialty level.

By pressing X button lets you see the current status of your annoying skills T_T huhuh tired of this page to discuss. huhuhuh you must play SO2 2nd Story!! /gg

By pressing triangle button in the Specialty Skill Level in the Skills menu. Lets you show your current talents. These talents can be used inside a village or outside, and some during in combat mode.

Status Menu

By pressing triangle button in the status menu gives you shortcut to the talents menu which you can find inside the skills menu. The square button is for overall attributes. This means your attributes during combat mode.

Option Menu

Basic typical option menu and can be seen in many games. If you don't like the options.. well your f***ed.

The 3 Combat Menus

Strategy Menu

In the strategy menu lets your other characters auto perform with these instructions during combat mode. The replacement menu replaces your characters from one to another in case you acquired more characters.

Formation Menu

This menu will set your combat formation during combat mode. In case of any situations like open to attacks, open to escapes, open to back attacks. Well its your choice to pick up that suits your play.

Data Menu

The reason of crying because of a certain game is not that you can't have it or you can't beat it. Those annoying brownouts, memory card defects, plug detached, console overheat, and what so ever. Data loss is the worst enemy as of my many years of experience in console gaming.

Across the World

The place where you can find monsters, save data, and that special feature the Private Action. There are also time features that it can get to dark, then morning, noon and afternoon. And in the roads are few enemies than in the woods and mountains.

Battle mode 1

We all know that the best defense is to run. Someone knows how to run? well be sure to be distant away from the enemies because it takes time to escape. about seconds I guess. Depending in your status and on the enemy's status. If its a boss.. never mind. Once your hit in that escaping stance, well sadly it will cancel.

Battle Mode 2

OK, lets try some basics about combat strategy in this game. First you can freely choose any character that you can manually control by pressing O button.

for other menu, by pressing triangle button.

While I got damn busy doing stuff with Claude. My precious Rena got hit. So I switched to Rena to get manual control.

by holding square button and take directions makes you run around the battleground.

While I keep running around, my knight in shining armor kills the enemies. Depending what strategy style I choose. You see that enemy is getting hit with an Air Slash skill. xD

and then Claude slashes the enemy to pieces.

Battle over. Gained lots of stuff like EXP, SP, item acquired, and money.


Text and Script Box

The script box for indication suits perfect. Not much of a solid background look and its stylish light green color. The text also is not bad, and can be easily seen.

PSX Screenshots



The Characters

source: http://www.rpgfan.com/pics/so2/art.html

Overall
- Very nice story
- Great voice dubbing
- Cool BGM's
- Skills can be spammed during combat mode
- Insane combination of skills
- Unique talent skills
- Maximum of level 250 per character
- Skills have their own levels
- Decision making affects the flow of game
- Maximum of 12 characters overall
- Maximum of 4 characters per combat mode
- Insane Bosses
- Remake title ported to Sony PSP
- The game Rocks!!