I heard this was coming out in the summer and was immediately hyped. I used to play this on the PSX back in the early 2000s before I got into Final Fantasy but after my Legend of Zelda exposure so was the second fantasy rpg genre I got exposed to when I think about it.
I always loved the crafting, the corny dialogue, the free flowing combat, the plot is decent for the most part - just felt like a whole experience it covered everything. Also I like pretty much all the characters, even the less useful ones. There were just so many little secrets to find and things to do. When I finally started to beat the game maybe in the mid to late 2000’s I grew to appreciate how wacky the various stats and abilities are.
I wasn’t sure about pre-ordering because there is no limit to digital copies and I wasn’t enamoured with the perks - a gigantic pile of healing items included in the game? That would take away some of the challenge for sure. Bought it for 50 euro as a technical pre-order but with only a few hours left. Just couldn’t wait.
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Initial thoughts 02/November/2023:
Holy shit. At a tidy 20GB, it took less than an hour to install, if even that. OK honestly for the first hour or so it was the exact same game. I chose Claude for a variety of reasons, chief among them wanting that one Battle Suit on the Calnus (if it’s there). It’s very pretty, I was kind of uncertain with the background graphics but they grew on me rapidly over the course of my first six hour playthrough. Otherwise it's the same old sprites we all know and love. Though they did add little idle animations and whatnot which are nice. But yeah, same first somewhat tedious hour of meeting Rena, saving Rena and then setting out with Rena. Oh, I kept it on ‘Galaxy’ difficulty from the start which used to be an unlockable harder mode but now is the default difficulty while the former default difficulty ‘Earth’ mode is explicitly stated in this one to be easier so why not. I’ll do ‘Universe’ some other time as a personal challenge. Also one more thing - random encounters are now little balls of evil that appear on the map in three levels of difficulty and you can run past them if you want, backstab them if you position yourself right and get surprised yourself if they catch your sprite from the rear. They can also ‘chain’ together in groups of 2-5 and you must fight them in successive waves for more experience points. Nice. After acquiring Celine and clearing Cross Cave that’s when things really started cooking. I messed around with fishing and guild quests but it was all pretty tame…
Synergy. This game is all about little synergies that all come together to make you super powerful and enemies tremble. The remake took that and ran with it even further. It’s beautiful. I went off the correct path after the events in Clik (or Kurik now) to visit Herlie (Harley in this version) and realised that you can’t buy skills anymore - you just have them. I had been saving my Skill Points (SP) as usual so summarily spent all of them on the skill formerly known as Perseverance, now Determination, reducing the cost of all skill SP. Then I bought a load of skills for cheap after that. Then after going through some forced chain battles in Cross Cave I made my own by kiting enemies near Mars and fought the really tough mobs there - A Game Over was accepted when I got into a wave that was too tough, those witches could damage you badly in the old game but here their spells insta-kill you. You can retry and rejig your strategy which is a nice addition but I was bested. Anyway, I farmed experience and SP there and managed to upgrade more skills and unlocked more abilities - one that allowed me to go into battle with reduced abilities for more experience (Train) and another new one that makes me go into battle and earn less money (still ‘FOL’ in this, the ability is Enlightenment/Comprehension) for more SP and BP or Battle Points. I also set it so Rena and Celine throw themselves into melee combat, which has proven far more useful from past experience. Now we were really cooking.
So yeah I spent like the last 2-3 hours of my initial 6 hour run farming EXP, SP and BP (used for upgrading killer moves and combat skills which have been separated from regular skills which use SP) outside Mars (or Marze now) and Herlie/Harley, killing mobs. The icing on top was when I unlocked a battle formation which gave me an EXP boost for using it (free for all formation) and Bodyguard (the allied sprites behind your main character insta-kill weak mobs in the field). I got it so I could run from Harley to Marze while Rena and Celine would run at mobs and insta-kill them and the EXP, BP, SP and FOL are deposited directly into your account, no need to battle anymore! OK, you get more from actually fighting and even more for fighting a chain of battles (from 2-5 battles in a row) when enemy mobs are near each other, but still. Insane. So I finally got somewhat tired and decided to switch it off outside Marze before the whole Dias/save the children in the forest arc. At least when Rena fucks off with him for that episode, my Claude and Celine are well over level 20 and beasts.
So yeah initial thoughts - while it’s basically the same game, down to the same Private Actions, dialogue is pretty close, quest/plot line is the same so far - it’s been ‘yassified’ and looks great for 25 years old. There’s just so many quality of life improvements - the quick healing, the chain battles, having skills available instantly, beautiful instant transitions between large buildings and areas - so many loading screens from the past which were albeit short are now gone completely. Fast travel exists - initially I was like WHY we have bunnies and synards but it is super handy for teleporting around and completing quests/Private Actions and avoiding armies of weak enemies. There are some negatives - while there is a speed up function it only seems to apply to cut scenes so is basically useless. But I was having so much fun after a couple of hours I didn’t miss it. Pickpocketing can be ‘seen’ by other party members and will affect your relationship with them regardless, even if in private action mode, which sucks. I spent 40,000 FOL, which I barely had, to get the Thieves’ Gloves and while it’s always tough starting out Pickpocketing hurting my allies’ feelings is the worst. Overall, a wonderful first impression and I look forward to spending the next 72 hours mainlining it. I’ve already cleared my schedule.
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OK now let’s write the review after spending 40+ hours on it over 6 days. I took like 2000 screenshots? Wtf? Anyway:
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Plot brief (spoiler-ish)
It’s the same as the original version. In Claude’s case, he gets blasted down to an underdeveloped planet, meets a local girl, save her from the son of the mayor of the next town, gets semi-outed as alien and must go on a quest to destroy the alien artefact causing all the misfortunes on this planet. Along the way he helps resolve a number of local calamities, particpates in a tournament of arms, takes part in the invasion of the continent that houses alien artefact and then gets blasted to another planet. Or pseudo-planet. There he powers up and destroys the creators of the artefact who once wanted to rule the universe but now want to destroy it. Simple!
Characters/Dialogue
This is probably one of the most interesting sets of characters I’ve ever seen in a game. I’ve played through this game to completion maybe 5-6 times over a 25 year period so have gotten to know most of their little quirks by now.
Claude - Earth Federation junior officer and one of the leads. He can come across as somewhat nauseatingly good for the most part but has his little moments of pettiness. Get used to him, you're going to spend 30-40 hours in his head. He grows up somewhat over the course of the adventure thanks in part to his co-lead, whoever you recruit and the dangers they face down and destroy.
He is also a combat beast - in the original he had the highest CON by far paired with the best Armour Class he could be nigh on invincible. It was good practice to control him for the most part so you could still be alive to use items. Now, items can be used even if the character you are controlling is downed but still Claude is a good choice to be the party Leader. No matter what, he should always be in the party unless you’re some sort of psycho doing a Rena solo run or a ‘crap party attempt’ or ‘all mages’.
I spent most of the game using him to break enemy shields (eventually) with Helmet Break and then would go to town on them with Mirror Slice. Whatever the reason, Claude didn’t seem as effective overall this time around but true to form he rarely was KO’d. I gave him the Federation blade early followed closely by the Sword of Minos and then the Aeterna/Levantine/Farewell so he was always in contention as the best party member.
The voice acting… isn’t superb. Granted the original was corny AF but was the original, and confined to battle. And the final shitty animation. Here, you have to listen to him A LOT and I don’t know… I feel like Spike Spencer read this off a script too literally. He literally pronounces ‘Hngh’ as it’s written, when that’s usually a stand-in for a similar-sounding noise but you don’t actually read it as… ‘HIN-GUH’... right? Or am I crazy? Anyway that took me out of a few scenes. Also listening to him shout HAW every time I used Helmet-break reminded me of Cornette.
Rena - I always had a soft spot for Rena (pronounced Ray-na in this version for whatever reason) the supposed resident of Expel who Claude meets early on and befriends, after a mining incident they decide to travel together to investigate the source of all these monsters and unusual phenomena on Expel. She always had that great maternal role in the party largely populated by domineering women and hapless men.
Rena also has healing abilities which apparently nobody else on the planet has access to. Hmm. I used to use her in the previous version in this role until I recruited enough party members to have an all-fighter team and just crush the enemy underfoot. She would be relegated to healing the party after some battles (now there is Quick Heal at the press of a button) and just making up the numbers.
I did something I have done in my Galaxy/Universe playthroughs on the PSX plus my crap party/all mage party playthroughs - I made Rena’s strategy ‘use no MP’ which causes her to throw herself into battle and punch enemies. This is so much more effective than her standing in the back row and occasionally casting healing spells or being interrupted and chased by enemies. In the early game, having an extra body in the attacking line is SO much more valuable than having Claude get ganked while Rena watches sagely from the rearguard. It worked like a charm in this version as well. When I had my party full of melee characters, I made Rena one of the ‘assault actions’, first as Cure All which I hardly ever had to use and then later as ‘Angel Feather’ which was SUPER useful in buffing the party. Star Ocean 2 was annoying in that there were great buffs but rarely time and space to use them - assault formation solved that.
Celine - I’ve always been on the fence about Celine as a combat character but in the story and private actions she does have good characterisation as the haughty treasure hunter. In one series of private actions you can even get her wed to the Prince of Krosse - not sure if it’s in this version or did I miss the PA. Annoyingly, you must keep her to go to Krosse Cave when you first meet her but can tell her to go shove it after that, only for her to appear again in Marze but you don’t need to keep her. I did in my first playthrough of R.
Celine casts offensive spells. I very briefly allowed her to do her thing but then switched to the usual ‘throw yourself into combat and use no MP’. So she joined Rena and Claude in bashing enemies with her staff and she was almost more valuable than RENA, the trained punching character in dealing with enemies. She was the second to be ‘fired’ from frontline duty after I acquired Precis, Welch and Opera.
Celine was the other Assault Formation character I retained other than Rena and her Angel Feather buff. Celine can also cast Angel Feather but instead I had her casting first Explode, then later Meteor Swarm to do lots of damage to the enemy. Very handy and redeemed the mages in this game in my mind - maybe not what the developers intended exactly but I still loved it.
Ashton - a hapless, luckless young man who decides to hone his skills with twin blades and goes to fight a two-headed dragon that is menacing the mines of Salva. Unluckily for him, after being distracted by the protagonists he is cursed by the dragon and bears their two heads on his back. Blegh when you think about it. He insists that the party must take responsibility for that but I left him crying in the mines. I saved and let him join to pop the achievement but then re-loaded and went to get someone else. Ha!
Ashton is the second pure melee character you can unlock by the time you’ve cleared the first continent, which is a hell of a slog depending on difficulty. I used to always recruit him by default because I had no idea how to get Opera, who is mutually exclusive to Ashton. When a friend of mine printed off a Gamefaqs guide to getting her instead of Ashton way back in 2004-5 I never ever got Ashton again. This is the same story now.
He’s fine - his stats if I recall rival Claude’s in some ways and he can equip very good weapons and armour but in the past his Luck stat was locked at like 18 or 20 in a game where 255 is the cap in some cases so he tended to fall randomly in battle and be otherwise afflicted with bad luck. Also some of his animations and attacks are surprisingly slow (at least, they were in the past) so I don’t know I’ve never been into him since. Also Opera is just better for various reasons.
Opera - possibly the best character you can recruit! You get her kind of late in the first half of the game but she is totally worth it. Searching the galaxy for her lover, she has tracked him down to Expel. You relay that you met him earlier in Krosse (now a mandatory incident) and she runs off to find him. Finding her later you decide to join forces and can go ahead and never find her lover if you want to do a little more digging and encounter him later. Generally wise to do so because he carries some goodies but totally optional. I think the voice actor in the original captured Opera’s essence a bit more, here she is a bit forgettable.
But not forgettable as a combat character. Wielding a massive gun, she usually just slowly ambles into melee and wacks the enemy with the butt of her rifle. Her killer moves are the key - most of them seem nerfed or not as exciting as they were before. The tracking plasma for example, formerly Alpha on One, was essential in the past. Now it’s just kind of bleh seeing as the battlefields are way smaller and manoeuvres and movement is not needed.
Healing Star. It’s all about Healing Star. Now that you can simply upgrade it with a few hundred battle points, there is no longer a need to spam Healing Star outside Hilton to level it up - it starts good and gets great almost instantly. It was healing my party for like 5000+ HP a pop (like 12MP?) for most of the game, making Rena completely unnecessary and causing me to switch her to buffing from the sidelines. In sum, Opera didn’t really wow me in terms of damage dealt or battlefield control like she did in the past but is THE healer you need on the battlefield. She's so good I always pick her for the two-person run of the Cave of Tribulations.
Precis - Poor Precis. Much maligned in the original for her high-pitched voice actor, I always, always had a soft spot for her. Mainly because like Opera-Ashton I thought it was only possible to recruit Bowman, who is mutually exclusive to Precis. When I figured out how to get Precis I pretty much always got her. I didn’t mind the VA much either but I understand where people are coming from. Portrayed as a bit of an airheaded quirky 16 year old, she is in fact a brilliant inventor and had plenty of light-hearted private actions in what could be an often dark game.
Precis is a melee character and you can recruit her very shortly after arriving on the second continent. She attacks with a gigantic robotic fist she invented so naturally I was a fan. I had her, Celine, Rena and Claude all whomping enemies to death so I was set for a while. I kept her for most of the game but found that Claude-Opera-Welch-Chisato was a bit better as they could all equip heavier armour.
This time around, she did not excel. I mean, she never did but I found that in the previous version her throwing and kicking Robbie at the enemy over and over was effective. Here? Not so much. I just got the feeling the developers nerfed melee a bit (fucking shields) and buffed spells to encourage their use. Big win for all those people who say mages are shit in the game, not so great for coneheads like me who want to dominate the enemy no matter what by beating them to death with 4 melee characters.
Bowman - POISON PILLS! OK I did not use Bowman this time around but I did in my rapid New Game + playthrough the second time around which took me maybe 2-3 hours to finish. He seemed to be fine?
He is one of the few melee characters with a healing ability (Secret Medicine) so that’s good but his main strength was (formerly) in spamming Explosion and Poison Pills. In the old version equipping him with a Weird Slayer enabled him to steal health from enemies so you could spam the offensive pills all day long. Arguably better than Precis overall who he is mutually exclusive with. Maybe during my Rena playthrough I’ll see what he’s like now.
Ernest - much maligned in the meta as the worst (melee) character. Opera’s lover, an older space Indiana Jones-like character who got a surprising amount of dialogue in the late game even if it’s just useless additional ‘oh really?’ type of announcements. Also quite a few private actions feature him in some way. Once you get him, Opera is much less interesting as a character as anytime you see her in private actions it’s just the two of them canoodling or drinking somewhere.
Ernest is most useful as the carrier of two Battle Suits, one in Linga, one in Marze that you can pickpocket off him. I forgot to get the one in Marze but bagged it later when you returned to Expel. Otherwise, he had a reputation as the worst character for melee - his main strength in the first iteration was the sheer range of his whip attacks, and in the PSP version I think someone said he had the highest Accuracy when that was a stat. Woop.
I found him quite good here and in my ‘crap party’ playthrough. I used him a bit here toward the end during the Cave of Trials and whatnot when I was messing around with different characters and noted that his ultimate whip (which adds extra attacks) combined with his selection of killer moves seemed to be knocking off more enemy shielding and doing loads of damage. He had a propensity to die a bit in battle (in the original version I found that he had shit stamina so would always be low in MP) but otherwise was a contributing member of the party. Again, I suspect the (re-)developers read the Ernest-hate comments and possibly buffed him in some ways. His stats don’t impress but I found his Killer Arts and weapons useful. If and when I redo my ‘crap party’ run in Star Ocean 2 R Ernest will be in my party and I will judge then.
Welch - I have never played the PSP version or whatever so this was my first exposure to Welch. As a character, I loved her. Loved the whole ‘I’m the boss around here now’ type character and megalomania. She stood out both as a character and the Voice Actor had a bit of fun playing her. In the heat of battle I could often hear her saying ‘take that and that and that’ when slapping monsters about and ‘don’t mess with me you’ll regret it’ at the end of battles. Gold. The only downside is she is a bonus character and the developers didn’t add any new scenes or revamp the private actions much so she is just kind of 'there' for the main plot.
She was my 5th character recruited here in November 2023 and replaced Rena to make the lineup Claude-Celine-Precis-Welch for a bit until I got Opera who pushed Celine out. Rena would (very occasionally) heal from the sidelines. For most of the game she certainly contributed as my frontline party but again much like Precis and Opera I’m not sure how effective she was.
Leon - the little genius brat who is only fully recruitable in Claude’s game. So naturally I kept him until Eluria whereupon I saved and reloaded in such a way that I got the achievement for acquiring him and then proceeded on without him. Heh.
He did play a small part in the Assault Formation during the Hoffman Ruins mandatory story quest but I was just using him to cast spells like Deep Freeze and Black Sabre and so on. I thought that was how you unlock the voice collection - no, apparently it’s by playing with that character until the game ends. So I had to run through the game again in 2 hours to unlock Leon. Will also need to do that again because I forgot to pick up Ashton. Ugh!
Anyway, Leon is a mage so I’m biassed against him but I bet he'd be good in this version. Gremlin Lair is OP when it is combined with Thundercloud/storm of Celine’s before.
Dias - this master swordsman with the troubled past is exclusive to a Rena playthrough so I won’t say anything much about him here but I will say I was happy I broke his shield in the Arena as Claude but then was forced to eat shit because you must lose that battle. Stupid. I look forward to giving him a spin. I'm sure he’ll be at my frontline party. I'm thinking Dias-Bowman-Opera-Chisato maybe?
His stats are up there - not as high as Ashton and Claude but up there. If I find out he specialises in breaking shields I want him in my party badly.
Noel - again, much like Leon I acquired him and then changed reality and told him to stay and mind the animals. A zoologist, he is similar to Rena in that he can heal as a Nedian and cast offensive spells (more so than Rena). So, not what I want but in a future crap party and/or all-mages run he will be front and centre. Rena and Noel beating up enemies, Leon and Celine casting spells. Or maybe something different.
Chisato - the final baddie in our selection of baddies. A reporter tasked with following the group, it is possible to recruit her so she gets the inside scoop. She is the last character you can recruit so gets the least screen time if you will but she holds her own. Hard to establish much of a character but the VA did her some justice. Not as clear as the old VA (I can still hear her saying TEAR GAS and B-URN-ING CARDS over and over) but I liked how she would say “Defence Force! One missile please!” here.
In this version, she finally got to eat Fruit Sandwiches and certainly contributed in my final party (fucking 10,000 volts took up the whole screen) and Tear Gas animation got changed a bit. Again, the changed nature of battle with a much smaller battlemap meant every fight descended into a clusterfuck which I usually emerged victorious from. See the next section for more.
Battle
This is where Star Ocean 2 used to shine brightest, in my opinion. For a JRPG released at the turn of the century, the turn of the millennium even, to not have turn-based combat but free-flowing combat over a large set battlemap was a ton of fun and innovative.
This 2023 version changed a few things that, in my opinion, made the combat slightly less good. Still good, but not as good:
1 was the smaller battlemap. Now, the enemy are right there and there is not much space to run around so battles became entrenched slugfests straightaway. Also, in the old game the sprites seemed smaller and the maps bigger so there was something to be said for moving around sometimes. Something about getting into a better position was just sweet in the old game.
2 the battle camera. The camera follows your character throughout so all you can see is them and not much else. If an enemy wanders off to the side you have to rely on a big red arrow to point off toward them. That’s fine but give me the old zoomed out view or options. It just felt cramped because then 3 came into effect:
3 particle effects everywhere! Toward the end of the game my eyes were tired from looking at all the special effects being thrown everywhere. Yes you could disable all killer arts if you really wanted but they are so integral to knocking out enemy shielding. I never tired of it in the original version because at least the camera was zoomed out a bit, but the voice actors screaming could be annoying.
4 enemy shielding. Though introduced alongside perfect counters to encourage their use, my jury is still out on shields. I dig having to switch things up constantly but after a while it seemed a bit tedious. Also I hardly ever bothered with perfect counters so maybe I just missed out on that but it only takes off 1 shield at a time and enemies have 4 so why not just keep spamming the killer art to negate shields over time?
5 battles are made redundant anyway by Bodyguard. Introduced in this game I believe your party members can go around and insta-kill weaker mobs on the map, indicated in green. They can also hold purple/blue normal difficulty mobs in place but after a certain period (post-Marze grind) about >75% of the games’ enemies were marked green for me (the other 25% or less before Marze), even in the final bonus dungeon so my party members could go around insta-killing them instead of me having to risk it all in battle. You don’t get as much experience as fighting legit but it’s enough and it’s way faster and safer. By the end of the game I had my Scouting ability set so that enemies would not engage me willingly or would not spawn (‘Avoid enemies’ setting) so all I had to deal with were the few in the dungeons naturally or that spawned sparsely on the world map. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED the Bodyguard super special ability but I realised it had largely replaced actual combat. And actual combat involved whittling down enemy shields and whaling on enemies with particle effect maelstroms so… I think I chose the right option.
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So yeah other than that the combat is basically the same. You can now set ‘Assault Formations’ to buttons 1,2,3 and 4 but as I said I had Celine’s big spells on 4 and Rena’s buff Angel Feather on 1 so 2 and 3 were reserved for anyone and anything that was ‘shield-focused’ - fucking shields just had to go down one way or another. These Assault Formations are not essential but are super helpful, they take nothing away from combat they added to it.
Though actual formations (how the party position) in battle existed before, they did fuck all, I usually had my guys and gals in Assault Formation in the original so they could get into battle faster - back when the maps were bigger. Now, they give you buffs and depending on how many ‘spheres’ you gather there are three levels of buffs for each formation. I had the default one for a while but then I spotted there was one that gave bonus experience points for the first two tiers and bonus FOL on the third so I used that one until the very end. At the very end when my characters were level 255, I switched to one that made me far stronger and turned off all those SP, BP and EXP boosting abilities that had nerfed my strength. Again, this battle formation system was a benefit to the game.
Items CAN be used in combat. For some, stupid reason, namely me skipping through tutorials, I didn’t know how to use items in battle and just assumed for a while they had been removed from combat. Yet I had battle-related items? So there was a while where I just went into combat and if a party member happened to die… I just hoped I won the battle as they would be revived afterward on 1 hp. Same with petrification, paralysis and poison - these affect you in battle but are gone afterwards. I eventually found out it was ‘T’ on the keyboard so I had a vast array of items to use! Stupid. Anyway, I like those changes listed above and if you die or are petrified, you can still access the item menu and use an item to revive/liberate Claude if you are controlling him. In the past you would have had to change party members to say Opera then use items, then switch back. So that’s good.
Also another cool thing was you can give your orders as leader to the group in battle. I got a lot of use out of the ‘Prevent enemy spellcasters from casting spells’ order. So the other AI controlled party members would go over and punch a witch if they began to cast a spell. Didn’t always work by the endgame those wizards and bosses could sneak spells in but still. Served me well from maybe Marze (20% progress mark(?)) to Cave of Trials (90% mark) so that’s something.
As standard, each party member can have a personal strategy (the aforementioned, making Celina and Rena not cast spells and instead attack strategy for example) which existed before anyway.
The gooey - stats, levelling up etc
OK rather than talking more in general I will simply type up my recommendations:
- Equip pre-order weapons if you have them, or best equipment at all times.
- Spend no BP or SP for a while, but if you must spend them, spend them on Determination first until it's maxed, then Effort until it's maxed. The latter will take longer.
- Do the game until you have Rena, Claude and Celine. Set everyone to Fight/Use no Spells strategy.
- Rena and Celine must not use MP. They must throw themselves into combat. This breaks the early game balance in your favour. Instead of Claude getting ganked while Rena slowly heals him or Celine throws a few choice spells, you have 3 fighters straight away.
- Clear Krosse Cave and keep Celine if you wish.
- Go to Marze and Harley, not Klik, first and spend all your SP on Determination (then Effort) and BP on Body Control (it's cheap and keeps you alive).
- Buy no magic-related combat skills for Rena and Celine. Godspeed is a good one to get early.
- Do not upgrade spells. Upgrade Claude's Killer Arts. Have a Break move and a HP-focused move for when the shields go down.
- Helmet-break is a good shield breaker early on for Claude.
- If Determination is maxed and Effort is trucking along well, feel free to spend excess SP on any skills that cost 1 SP and repeat until they jump in price.
DO NOT BUY PIETYI would have said in past. I left it until max level 255 and it gave a pathetic boost to random stats. In the old game, I believe it gave a (3?)% boost to one of your final stats, so if at max level you had 400 strength it would be bumped by 12. Not game breaking but nice. Buy whatever you want :) Purity is decent for some free money.- Get Effort to 10.
- Free-form formation for the 25% experience and 50% experience boosts.
- Raise Effort and Determination to get the Train ability. Set it on everyone and get Enlightenment, both of which when switched on weaken your characters slightly BUT give more SP and bonuses you can use to power your characters back up.
Don't be afraid to abuse Item Creation. Buy 20 eggs for 160 FOL maximum, cook them into delicious food worth more than that and sell. If you're really stuck for cash. Or do what I did and sell all the pre-order healing items to buy the Pickpocket Glove early. After a while, you will have more money than you will ever know what to do with. In contrast to previous games, I hardly ever bought weapons or items from shops it is possible to become largely self-sufficient. OK you need to keep buying Conductor Batons and whatnot but you will always have the money for that.
Expel is an underdeveloped planet, fantastical yet there are some science fiction elements here and there. Nede on the other hand is supposed to be so hyper advanced no more advancement is possible, so they have all this weird nostalgia going on.
Expel just has a bit more going for it - if you’re Claude you can sympathise with Earthling transported to a feudal magical world. Krosse is still there as a gigantic cross-shaped continent, you still start in Arlia and venture to Salva and the mines… Kurik/Clik still gets destroyed and Marze suffers from kidnapping. Herlie has a bit more to it if you’re playing as Rena but is also the location of the Fish lady (more on her elsewhere).
The second continent of Lacuer (stole that name for my geofiction) is intimated to be the most powerful country in the world and has the largest city of the same name. Linga also hosts the only university in the world and is found here as well. Hilton is still the port city when you arrive from Krosse but there is no ship sailing animation anymore which is a shame. The Frontlines are there in all their glory.
They made the Hoffman continent all jungle now - boo! It used to have walls of ice surrounding a jungle/forest. What a wonderfully weird concept that inspired me as a child.
Ell - the name of which I also stole - is still sacked by monsters and seems a bit more empty this time around. The original (I’m so sick of typing that) had a huge city ruin on a hill with an impact zone cutting into it. Elluria still looks cool now though.
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Nede… always suffered from second disk fatigue. I had completely forgotten how quickly you whisked from the Garden to Central City to North City to go Psynard-hunting. Granted, I usually slowed down on the PSX and spent some time unlocking talents with Orchestra and other fiddly game stuff but on the PC I had that sorted ages ago so was free to blast through and acquire Noel and Chisato and a Psynard.
Soon after that you have to go through the four Fields which have been objectively described as more filler in the late game plot but I also noted how they always exposed a problem in various older JRPGs - if you ain’t a main character, you get less screen time at the end. As you acquire the four gems from the four Fields the focus is entirely on Claude and Rena, pretty much from the moment you step foot on Nede the others hardly exist except in private actions and the occasional comment.
But sorry - setting, not plot stuff: Nede has existed for millions and millions of years continuously which is kind of absurd but also has been artificially recreated and sealed away in an energy field, so that it’s hyper advanced technology cannot be used to dominate the universe (again). It still seems like just another place, there is not that much evidence of hyper advanced technology but then again it is a recreated, weird place with plenty of nostalgia. Even the snow in the town that you don’t need to visit at all, completely optional, is fake snow. There is an entire city that serves as a world theme park.
What I’m getting at here is Nede isn’t as well developed a setting as Expel in my mind.
Music
There is a new arranged soundtrack and the original music. I gave the new arrangements a chance here and there but there is just no competing with the original. No comparison. I’m sure the armies of people out there with recency bias will say the new one is better and maybe they won’t realise they can change it but for me anyway there is no comparison.
I only found out recently (2022) that Motoi Sakuraba also did the soundtracks for Golden Sun for the GBA and Eternal Sonata for the Xbox 360. And Dark Souls for the PC! No wonder I liked those tracks so much as well as this one. I think they should let him do Final Fantasy at some point.
Probably one of the greatest soundtracks ever, if a little forgettable. Some absolute gems like Lose One's' Illusions were slightly done dirty here as it kept repeating the first guitar strings for me as Claude - in the old version, it launches into the full song when Rena reveals that they are on Energy Nede. Masterfully done. Here, it just kept repeating the guitar strings! Sad. Unless in the Rena version it’s done right? Anyway, I went back there to hear it again. I listen to it occasionally on YouTube but still. What a track.
Minigames
There are a bunch of them if you want to play them! Bunny Racing, Cooking Master and the Arena come to mind. Hell, even figuring out the whole Item Creation system is a minigame in itself. Item Creation is now smoother, faster, more player-friendly.
I did a bunch of Bunny Races to get the achievement for winning 5 times. Was not too painful. I did not win any Bunny Shoes but I did steal them off the mascot outside. Once you figure out which Bunny’s are good and which are bad you can usually get it right (helpfully they tell you the stats of the 4 runners straight up now).
FISHING - while I did not care much for it initially, I was accosted by the Fisher girl in Harley (unskippable encounter) who gave me a fishing rod and instructed me to catch all the fish in the world, reminding me of Professor Oak’s request. I dicked around with it a bit and unlocked the first two tiers of awards but did not do what a lot of the guides were saying - oh you can fish and make loads of money. I kind of forgot about it to be honest for large tracts of the game but then at the end with all-access and a Psynard I caught all those fish. It’s not particularly hard, just press ‘X’ at the right moment. Some are trickier than others, and sometimes enemies would spawn instead… but this happened VERY seldom. Once early on, once again in a random part of the world and finally in the Field of Love.
Villains
This is broken into two parts. Expel and Nede.
Expel regular enemies - nothing too exciting, it's all the same stuff. Krosse continent's basic enemies don't suck as much now and the more advanced ones in the east are way tougher.
Expel bosses - I always liked the succession of assholes you deal with on Disc One, err, Expel. Alen, Gargoyles, Bandit Leader Vermillion, Lizards, Dias, Hellmouth Slugs, Hoffman gremlins, Shin - they’re all here. I don’t recall doing this before but you can go back at a certain point to the mountain and fight XINE which is cool, even if you don’t have Ashton. The stakes seem higher because you’re weaker and you don’t know the full story yet. Where are all these monsters coming from?
Nede regular enemies - again not too many surprises here, I equipped Stone and Paralysis Immunity on all my party members early on so the only thing to worry about was death itself. Also, with Bodyguard I found myself bothering with combat less and less as the game went on.
Nede - the Psynard is normally a make or break boss in this game. If it kills you, you need to get your shit together. It’s tough but beatable, historically. I aced this boss completely here.
The Four Fields beckon:
Field of Wisdom/Intelligence whatever - this cannon dude used to rock my shit in the past. Sometimes it would just be Claude or whoever I was controlling whaling on him while everyone else was dead. Not so here, I murdered them. The maze beforehand had been changed slightly, I think, and I found it quite aggravating. It’s usually OK.
The Field of Power is usually where I grind on the Playstation because all the enemies don’t cast spells. They can smack you around but no funny stuff. The Guardian here used to also rock my shit but I am so OP now it ain’t no thing. Hasn’t been for many years.
Same with the Field of Courage - I loved the change here, before it was a different kind of maze, now it’s a straight run and if you turn back (show a lack of courage) the game starts poisoning you! Nothing serious but a great change. The Guardian here is a bit more manageable by now, hopefully, for you. My guy and gals wiped the floor with him:
Lover appears in the Field of Love, which has also been overhauled massively by the way. The ‘flowers’ trail was neat and amazingly I didn’t need a guide to crack it, I was just ploughing through the game at this point.
I probably cleared all four fields in a matter of hours. Lover herself and her cronies managed to survive a bit longer but did not trouble me:
Nothing you can do about Marsilio:
The ancient LEA beast can ‘Lose Patience’ and wipe you out if you’re not careful but mercifully this did not happen here. The Mihne Cave was also somewhat overhauled. All the dungeons got a facelift and were faithfully remastered to reflect the new graphic scheme, but it was way more noticeable on Nede.
Marsilio eats dirt:
Shigeo also used to give me trouble in the past (those attacks he would call down from the sky were brutal) but here he died quickly.
Berle again - sorry, Metatron, which fits him a lot. I struggled immensely to beat him in my all-mages run earlier in the year so I took a lot of pleasure in whipping him here. Merlin Drinks For all.
Ruprecht, Jibril, & Nicolaus faced us next and were souped up somewhat - in the all-mage run, they managed to beat me. 4 mages versus the 3 mage-y Wisemen, you pick it. Also, the run-up to them with them in the background was cool:
Here, they seemed to last a bit longer against an all-melee party but died as usual. I was really picking up steam.
Vesper and Decus. Normally THE stumbling block we have all hit. Not so here. Though they got a few Spicules on me (never gets old) I was immune to stone and paralysis so had no issue holding on and kicking their asses. First time, no issues, no need to equip fire-resistant accessories or whatever.
Cyril also managed to get a few Winds of Destruction launched at me but to no avail:
Finally Indalecio (Limiter ON, I could not see any way to turn it off) was the last to fall. I was immensely satisfied to have curbstomped him in one attempt. OK he beat me once but I retried and boom, it was over.
I cheesed him various times afterward with the Bloody Armor and Healing Star/items (shoutout to VeghEsther) which I find is actually viable in this game, scarily so. I was going for different endings and just figuring things out.
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Cave of Tribulations
Still the same beloved multi-level endgame dungeon. Of the few endgame RPG dungeons I've had the privilege of playing, this one is my fave because of the great music and the weird puzzles. Also it's just so satisying to clear it. Here's me beating most of it in one 3 hour sitting:
Allies/NPCs
It’s only now I realised how stupid some of the side characters are in this. Probably just the hammy English localisation which is basically the same as the original PSX but they did clean up some of the dialogue and removed or changed certain weird interactions.
There are TONS of NPCs to interact with. Every city has like 10-20 different sprites of more and all can pickpocketed. Many also have different dialogues depending on where you are in the game and what’s going on, which is always cool. I’ve spoken to more Star Ocean NPCs than I ever have Final Fantasy ones, and I’ve played a dozen of those games.
Fishgirl was a welcome addition - other than Welch, this is the only new character I can think of. Almost everyone else is where they normally are and say the same things but the Fish girl was a cool addition.
Graphics
Gorgeous.
Having the same sprites was smart in some ways but I don’t know, could have been a good opportunity to update them SLIGHTLY. But I love 'em anyway. The talking artwork inlay things were cool, like Claude with sword:
But that’s my only complaint. Oh, and the particle effect maelstroms I mentioned above in ‘Battle’ could wear on my eyes after a while, and I have perfect vision with thicc retinas so I don’t often have issues with sight or headaches from watching games but this I found wore me down a bit.
Conclusion
Achievements left - I didn’t play as Rena this time around but will go back in 2024 or whenever. I could have bombed through in a few hours and unlocked the final 6 achievements I need to get (including 1 for finishing the game as Rena, 1 for getting Dias, 1 for watching the Armoury contest as Rena) but decided to save this run for a rainy day. Might as well, what’s the point of spending 50 euro and then utterly crushing the game in a week.
But yeah - an excellent polishing up of a much underappreciated classic. I had ranked it as one of my top 10 formative games, 'games that influenced my life' so to speak and it’s true. So yeah it was a wonderful trip down memory lane and now I have a much better-looking version of it. I can play much more easily on PC rather than dusting off my various Playstations or figuring out how these emulators work again.
So stay tuned for a 'Clearing the Backlogs' post with Star Ocean 2: R in it. Next blog post is on 31st December - the 2023 retrospective! An insane, long year that has not ended yet.
Bonus:
Catching Kyogre:
I liked the little anime movie package you get after you beta the game, I think it's from the PSP version:
Found Filia/Pheria/Feria AFTER beating the game. That's how you get her unlocked. That, and going back to the Cave of Trials:
God the alternate art from the PSP SUCKED:
