Star Ocean: The Second Story R Review: A Beautiful yet Imperfect Blend of Old and New
Star Ocean: The Second Story R is among a growing number of remakes of PlayStation-era JRPGs. While the Star Ocean franchise has historically garnered mixed reception to its games, particularly with more recent entries, a remake of what is considered the best game in the series serves as a fantastic way to build interest in the series. While The Second Story R still shows the original game’s age and imperfections, this remake is a visual treat and makes for a refreshingly fun time. // Image: Square Enix
As a massive JRPG fan and as an aspiring developer that hopes to make video games adjacent to the JRPG genre, I’ve made a concentrated effort throughout my life to play as wide an array of JRPGs as possible. This mission has naturally led me down the path of experiencing multiple franchises and one-offs that have informed my overall perception of the genre. I’ve naturally garnered an appreciation for certain mechanics and styles throughout the genre. I’ve found new personal favorite games and franchises as a result of my curiosity of the overall landscape that this genre has to offer. All this has given me various takeaways and understandings of the genre that I can apply towards my own game development efforts. Of course, the other end of this mission’s spectrum is that I get exposed to various mechanics and design approaches that I want to avoid. The JRPG genre is specifically prone to innovative approaches to game design and combat, for better and for worse. A large part of my mission in learning as much about JRPGs as possible is to understand what makes these ambitious but flawed adventures intriguing, how they miss their potential, and what could be done to improve upon their mistakes to make something greater in the future. Oftentimes, ambitious developers try out different types of stories. They’ll try implementing completely different combat and progression systems. Sometimes these experiments succeed in creating something fun and unlike anything that has come before, and sometimes they don’t. But the willingness to experiment and try out such different mechanics is a trait of many JRPG developers that I greatly admire. Through the continued willingness to innovate and make something different, developers can gradually build up to something truly great.
For me, Tri-Ace is one of the best developers that embody this type of mindset. Long ago on this blog, I discussed my thoughts on Resonance of Fate, an Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3-era JRPG that plays like nothing else, which works to both its benefit and detriment. Its mixture of turn-based action with gunplay and weapon customization makes for a game that feels like a JRPG for weirdos. The game has horrendous difficulty spikes, features multiple dungeons that feel far too long, and tells a thematically interesting but narratively confused story that has no idea what tone and scale it wants to go for. Resonance of Fate is a mess of a game, and yet it’s one that I continue to think about. I’ve even garnered the urge to play the game in the six years since I posted my review of the game, only to get quickly reminded over each new playthrough of why I gave the game a mostly negative verdict. Resonance of Fate may be a game I don’t fully enjoy, but it is a game I have a lot of respect for. It’s a game I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing a sequel or full-on remake or reboot of - I truly think the potential for something fantastic is there. Nevertheless, while I felt disappointed by the quality of Resonance of Fate, I couldn’t help but admire the spunk of Tri-Ace’s weirdness and ambition. It was enough to make me want to check out what the Japanese developer is most known for: the Star Ocean franchise.
In December of 2019, Star Ocean: First Departure R released for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, which served as my gateway into the franchise - I would go on to pick up the game just a month after its release. First Departure R is a remaster of 2007’s First Departure, a PSP remake of the original Star Ocean game, itself a Japan-only Super Famicom game released in 1996. First Departure R felt remarkably cozy as it featured beautifully updated artwork new to the First Departure R remaster, in addition to fantastic sprites, pre-rendered backgrounds, and a simple but effective story that fused sci-fi and fantasy elements and characters. Simply put, First Departure R felt like a time capsule to the mid-90s and 2000s era of JRPGs in the best ways, and was precisely the game I needed when I played it for the first time. The combat wasn’t necessarily mind-blowing, nor were the game’s fairly typical assortment of towns and dungeons. What makes First Departure R, and indeed the entire Star Ocean franchise, different from any other JRPG franchise, though, is the fantastic Skill Point / Specialty / Item Creation system.
This innovative system is a somewhat unconventional means of character progression that still manages to feel deeply customizable and rewarding to take advantage of. While characters in Star Ocean still get general stat improvements from acquiring experience points and levelling up, the bulk of character customization comes from levelling up Skills, which go on to grant the player access to Specialties and Item Creation - means of customizing the overall game experience to the player’s choice. When fully taken advantage of, Skills, Specialties, and Item Creation can make for a JRPG experience that’s unlike any other.
The Item Creation and Specialty systems turn an otherwise plain combat system into one that feels remarkably rewarding to break with the game’s supplementary systems. It’s true that First Departure R can feel fairly basic in the grand scheme of things. Its plot isn’t anything to write home about, its lore, while interesting, isn’t particularly ambitious, and combat mostly boils down to spamming attacks and Arts with occasional spells and items thrown in. With that said, though, First Departure R knows what its mission is. It knows that it simply wants to be a serviceable action RPG with unique progression systems, and that self-awareness carries the game into being just enough to feel like a cozy, competent JRPG well worth checking out.
After my positive experience with First Departure R, I eagerly looked forward to the eventual remaster of the other Star Ocean remake on PSP: Second Evolution. This 2008 remake of the PlayStation original shared many aspects with First Departure, in large part due to the games sharing engines, art styles, and user interface. Clearly, if First Departure got a remaster for modern consoles, surely the same would happen to Second Departure, right? It was surely only a matter of time. Right?
Following my playthrough of First Departure R, I satiated my wait for the eventual Second Evolution R by playing all the other Star Ocean titles available on modern hardware at the time. I went on to play Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, The Last Hope, and Integrity and Faithlessness throughout that year. Many of these games brought emotions similar to what I experienced with Resonance of Fate. Till the End of Time, in particular, proved to be a game that I find remarkably dated and frustrating to play thanks to a lot of PS2-jank and poor stability of the PS4 port of the game. The Last Hope is certainly polished in some ways, but has a weak assortment of characters that makes for an uneven tone to the game. Integrity and Faithlessness is a game I find not to be nearly as bad as online discourse would lead you to believe, but it does manage to feel empty and rushed at points. Each of these games bring with them a variety of flaws to their design and RPG systems, and because of that, the Star Ocean franchise is one that I generally consider to be just “okay”. Tri-Ace injects a lot of admirable qualities into these games, but for one reason or another, they crumble under the weight of their own ambitions. This makes for games that feel in reach of true greatness but come up just short.
That said, there is still a lot to like with these games, and long before my playthroughs of these games unfolded, I had been familiar with how lauded the second game in the series was. Star Ocean: The Second Story and its remake, Second Evolution, are considered to be the very best of what the series has to offer. The original PS1 game is often in the conversation for being one of the best non-Squaresoft JRPGs on the console. Because of such praise, I remained excited to play the eventual Second Evolution remaster and finally complete my journey to play through the entire series (one that would only become longer after the announcement and release of 2022’s Star Ocean: The Divine Force). It wouldn’t be until 2023 when a surprise Nintendo Direct reveal confirmed that Star Ocean: Second Evolution R wasn’t happening. Oddly, Square Enix had opted not to remaster the remake of the second Star Ocean game like they had done with the series’ first game. Instead, Square Enix and developer Gemdrops decided to remake the entire game a second time with Star Ocean: The Second Story R.
While the game continued to utilize some aspects of Second Evolution, including its voice acting and sprites, the game’s environments, UI, and gameplay would receive considerable overhauls. The most immediately striking thing about this new remake was just how gorgeous it looked. While many Square Enix titles have used the HD-2D artystyle pioneered by 2018’s Octopath Traveler, Star Ocean: The Second Story R looked completely different from anything Square Enix has put out before or since. With additional quality of life adjustments as well as simply being a remake of what many people consider to be the best game in the franchise, Star Ocean: The Second Story R looked like the slam dunk that the franchise’s notoriety desperately needed. When the game released later in 2023, it saw some of the best reviews that the series has ever seen, marking a brightened perception of the franchise to the JRPG community and beyond.
As I stated in my Collection of Mana review, I’ve been on a journey to tackle a lot of my backlog throughout 2025, and this title is among the many games I’ve wanted to finally get around to playing. It’s been nearly two years since the release of this remake and over five years since I committed to wanting to play this franchise’s second title after being impressed by the remaster of the series’ first game. Being mindful of the amount of time that’s passed since then, I went into Star Ocean: The Second Story R with an open mind and open heart regarding its quality and notoriety for being the best game in the series. Did it live up to the expectations I had placed onto it? I would say so - Star Ocean: The Second Story R is a remarkably fun JRPG that reminds me of the coziness brought forth by the first game’s remaster did all those years ago to me. While Second Story R still retains a lot of the series’ shortcomings and imperfections, I still found the game to be fun, compelling, and an incredible preservation of the ‘90s and 2000s style of action JRPGs. Let’s discuss what makes this game feel like such a warm hug and why it stands as a fantastic example of how to remake a classic game while preserving its essence for a new generation.
Star Ocean: The Second Story R is one of the most visually striking games ever produced. In a style evocative of Square Enix’s HD-2D art style used in games like Octopath Traveler and Live A Live’s 2022 remake, The Second Story R merges classic 2D sprites with vivid 3D environments to create an aesthetic unlike anything else in the games landscape. // Image: Square Enix
Star Ocean is one of the few franchises that have dabbled in the dual protagonist concept. Not unlike games such as Tales of Xillia and Tri-Ace’s later attempt of the concept with Star Ocean: The Divine Force, Star Ocean: The Second Story R lets players make an immediate decision when starting a new game: what character they will primarily follow for the coming journey. The two protagonists featured in this title are Claude C. Kenny, son of Ronyx Kenny and Ilia Silvestri from the first Star Ocean. Like those characters in the first game, Claude’s side of the story is framed with a greater emphasis on the game’s science fiction elements, as he showcases the perspective of the universe outside of the game’s primary setting. After a mission on another planet, Claude accidentally teleports to the underdeveloped planet, Expel, and needs to wander through the planet in order to find a way back home.
The other protagonist is Rena Lanford, who showcases the more fantasy angle of the game’s setting. Rena is a local to the planet of Expel, though she can’t remember her exact origins and features healing powers unlike any other person on the planet, which causes her to want to uncover the secrets behind her upbringing. Not long into the game’s runtime, the two characters run into each other irrespective of who the player has determined to be the primary protagonist for that playthrough. Claude and Rena undergo a journey around the world of Expel (and beyond) to discover a way off the planet and to unearth the mystery of Rena’s origins, with additional plot reveals gradually unweaving a greater threat to Expel that can only be quelled by Claude and Rena. Once they form a party with each other, Claude and Rena spend much of the adventure together, meaning that players won’t miss out on significant chunks of the story depending on their protagonist selection. The difference between the two characters’ campaigns is relatively minor. Selecting the game’s protagonist primarily decides the framing of the game’s opening and what characters get more focused on during certain story segments.
After selecting a protagonist and going through the game’s intro with either character, one thing about The Second Story R becomes immediately apparent: the game’s incredible presentation. From the onset, it may seem a bit silly to think that Star Ocean: The Second Story has received two remakes, but it’s impossible to not look at this second remake as justified given how gorgeous it is to look at in comparison to the original game and Second Evolution. Mind you, the PS1 original and PSP remake are still both pleasant-looking video games in their own right, but The Second Story R features an art style that skyrockets the game’s aesthetics from being fine to featuring some of the greatest eye candy in any JRPG. For a few years prior to its release, Square Enix has been liberal with the art style they’ve dubbed as “HD-2D” - a style that utilizes 16-bit aesthetics with diorama-esque depth by combining 2D sprites and 3D environments. Games like Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy, and Live A Live’s 2022 remake have all used this art style to great effect, but Star Ocean: The Second Story R’s direction of the art style feels wholly unique from those that came before. While Square Enix never actually used the term “HD-2D” when marketing the game, it’s clear that The Second Story R is using a variation on the art style that places more focus on the camera dynamically moving through the game’s 3D environments and scaling the 2D character sprites accordingly.
It’s a visual style that should, in theory, make different aspects of the game clash with each other. But, if anything, this game’s visual excellence serves as a reminder of why using 2D characters in 3D environments always manages to hold up better than with 3D characters navigating 2D environments. Games like Xenogears and Paper Mario have managed to visually age much better than games like Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Cross because of the way sprites can naturally fit into a three-dimensional setting in a way that character models simply can’t replicate in a two-dimensional environment. The Second Story R is a strong reminder that creating a strong art style is all a developer truly needs to do when wanting to create a unique visual identity for their game. A strong art style can make a game’s look feel more pronounced than with just better graphical fidelity. Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness and The Divine Force both look fine, but they have a tendency to look a bit flat when it comes to art direction despite having far more detailed character models and environments compared to this remake.
Put simply, The Second Story R does more with less, in that it leans heavily on its art direction to give the game a greater visual identity, and the game is better for it. Even when compared to Second Evolution, The Second Story R looks as good as it does because simply moving through the world feels so dynamic. The way light and shadows reflect off of the 2D character sprites creates a beautiful blend of nostalgia and realism in a way that consistently looks remarkable.
Another aspect of The Second Story R’s visual facelift is its new character portraits. The PSP Star Ocean remakes both featured character art that appears very…minimalist, for lack of a better word. Character portraits feel as if they’re drawn to include as little detail as possible, which works in that it creates a cuter anime aesthetic. However, I was of the mindset that First Departure R’s more vividly detailed and stylized character portraits were an objective improvement over what had come before. The Second Story R takes the increased fidelity of the character portraits and makes them even more detailed, complete with animations on characters’ faces and mouths. The result is character art that looks truly fantastic. In the game’s Status screen, players can switch between the character portraits made for each version of The Second Story, which makes comparing the different art styles for each iteration of the game easy to do. Moreover, this option really highlights just how much of a glow-up every single character has gotten in the new art for The Second Story R. From more details on clothing to the characters’ more expressive faces, every character here looks brilliant. Whether players are looking at the game’s character sprites, the beautiful 3D landscapes, or the detailed character art, they can rest assured that the game is a pleasant visual experience no matter where they turn.
Other aspects of the game’s presentation, although not as impressive, still help the 25-year-old bones of the game hold up well. Second Evolution’s Japanese and English voice tracks are reused here, with an additional Japanese dub being made available exclusively for this remake. Additionally, The Second Story R reuses Second Evolution’s soundtrack, though players can opt to switch to the original Second Story’s PS1 soundtrack at any time. Lastly, menus and UI have taken a bit of a minimalist approach here. What were once more oblique text boxes for dialogue have now become a subtle shadowy backdrop for text, making the game’s many dialogue-filled events not feel as intruded by sizable boxes of text. Unlike First Departure and Second Evolution, both of which used character sprites to represent characters, The Second Story R smartly opts to feature character portraits on its main menu, alongside more appealing visuals to indicate progress towards a character’s next level. These are all relatively small visual improvements that come together to make a big impact. It additionally helps that many of the game’s essential menus automatically have shortcuts on the D-Pad, meaning that players can quickly access the most important menus in the game. The general snappiness of menus helps keep up the pace for the player’s actions too, though this perhaps only brings to attention just how much Star Ocean: The Second Story R leans on menu navigation - something that goes on to become one of the game’s biggest issues (more on that later).
On the topic of pacing, that’s typically what has helped make Star Ocean stand out from other action RPG franchises. Much like the Tales of franchise (a series that many of Tri-Ace’s original development staff worked on), Star Ocean has always featured fast-paced action combat that ensures most battles take less than a minute to complete. The rate of dealing attacks, the immediacy of using items, how quickly battles transition to and from the overworld and the dedicated combat spaces - it all happens at a snappy pace that keeps things moving rather quickly throughout the game’s entire runtime. Likewise, The Second Story R very rarely makes things needlessly wordy during the main scenario. Players that want to get a move on and go from one town or dungeon to the next will rarely have much down time before getting to where they want to be. Second Story R’s plethora of quality-of-life improvements, including being able to fast-travel to any location at a moment’s notice, help a lot in this regard. Even when taking the time to complete side quests and optional events, players can consistently move forward in the game at a quick pace. This goes on to make the player feel like they get to accomplish a lot in a relatively short amount of time - doubtlessly a boon in a genre that can be notoriously slow at times.
Star Ocean: The Second Story R’s combat is fast-paced and mechanically dense, with the Break, Assault, and Formation systems. Despite so much happening so quickly, The Second Story R’s combat system is deceptively straightforward and walks a fine line between simplicity and customizability, allowing for dynamic builds and strategies. // Image: Square Enix
At the center of this is a gameplay loop that primarily revolves around combat, levelling up, gaining SP to improve Skills, and using said Skills to create items and benefits to assist in combat. The Second Story R’s battle mechanics are mostly in line with what’s available elsewhere in the Star Ocean franchise. Characters have access to a basic attack combo as well as two Arts that the player can use to deal devastating physical attacks (which increases to a total of four as the story progresses). As players deal damage quickly to enemies, they can pause at any moment to either cast offensive or supportive spells or use items that can heal or buff party members, among other effects. It’s a fairly basic but nevertheless effective combat system that makes winning battles feel satisfying without ever feeling braindead. Lots of thought needs to be particularly put toward mechanics new to Second Story R: the Break and Assault systems.
As the player inflicts damage on enemies, they will gradually chip away at an enemy’s Break Gauge, not dissimilar to that seen in other Square Enix titles like Final Fantasy VII Remake. Once depleting an enemy’s Break Gauge, their defense will be broken, allowing the player to temporarily deal massive damage. This recontextualizes how the player needs to consider what Arts they want to have access to when building out their character compositions. Some Arts are more specialized in dealing damage, some specialize in depleting the Break Gauge, and some serve as a hybrid between the two. This leaves room for players to strategize what Arts to assign to characters in order to efficiently break enemy defenses to gain an advantage in combat. Another thing that players need to take into consideration is their selection of Assault characters. Also new to The Second Story R and a new mechanic to Star Ocean as a whole, players can assign a character outside of the active party to a direction on the D-Pad. Once their cooldown is fully charged, players can unleash additional characters to perform attacks on enemies, similar to Tales of Arise’s Boost Attacks. For party members not used in combat, players can select what Art they want a character to use as their Assault action, further opening the door for players to strategize how they want to balance their breaking and damage-dealing capabilities.
The Assault mechanic also opens the door for some fan service, as the player is rewarded for various side quests throughout the game with additional Assault actions that can be made by characters from other Star Ocean titles. This exclusively takes the form of other protagonists of the series, but it’s a neat inclusion, nonetheless. What’s important is that Assault actions have great utility in battle. It, in conjunction with the new Break system, helps make combat remain exciting throughout the game’s runtime. Don’t get me wrong, though - when I use the term “strategy” when referring to this combat system, I’m using it quite lightly. Star Ocean has always been a series with relatively straightforward combat systems. First Departure R and presumably previous versions of The Second Story have comparatively vanilla combat systems that can make players feel like they’re going through the motions after a certain point. While that still manages to somewhat be the case in The Second Story R, the inclusion of the Break and Assault mechanics, alongside things like Formations that reward the player with buffs the longer they go without dying or getting ambushed by enemies, gives the player more to mentally chew on as they play the game. These additions are subtle, yet they go a long way at making The Second Story R’s combat feel consistently satisfying.
The fast pace of combat also means that players will go in and out of battles quite quickly, and with fast battles comes fast progression - and this is where Star Ocean particularly shines. Every time the player defeats enemies or levels up, they acquire Skill Points (SP) and Battle Points (BP). BP is fairly straightforward as it’s primarily used to level up Arts and spells to make them stronger, more potent, etc. BP is also used to level up Combat Skills, which unlock a lot of perks that trigger in battle - from making spellcasting times shorter to randomly making physical attacks hit harder to increasing movement speed during battle. The real star of the show, however, is SP.
Characters have access to various Skills that accomplish various different things when leveled up. The Knife Skill, for example, will increase that character’s Strength by 10 every time that it is leveled up (to a maximum of Level 10). Alone, this is a great Skill to consider for more DPS-focused character builds, however what makes this Skill additionally meaningful beyond its stat repercussions is how it synergizes with other Skills. Another Skill players can invest SP into is Recipe - a Skill that doesn’t affect stats on its own. But when the Knife, Recipe, and Keen Eye Skills are leveled up alongside each other, they form the Cooking Item Creation ability, where a character can now use ingredients to cook food items that can be used to heal party members. Skills can combine to create Item Creation Skills, Specialties, and Super Specialties that all have unique effects that, when taken full advantage of, can break the game’s balance wide open. Having access to the Customization Item Creation Skill and the Blacksmith Super Specialty, for example, will give the player the ability to create weapons and armor using materials they acquire throughout their journey. The higher the level of these Skills, the greater the probability these Skills have at successfully producing weapons and armor. If the player prioritizes these Skills, they can end up acquiring weapons and armor with far greater stats than anything the player can find in a shop.
This is just one of many ways that using Item Creation, Specialties, and Super Specialties can give the player a lot of freedom with regard to how they develop their characters. Whether it is with creating weapons, armor, accessories, items, and food with Item Creation, increasing the encounter rate, the amount of EXP, SP, and BP earned from battles with Specialties, or summoning a Bunny to quickly move around the World Map with Super Specialties, the player has access to a wide variety of abilities when smartly allocating their SP. It consistently feels rewarding to take full advantage of these systems, especially since they often allow the player to become overpowered and overleveled quite quickly. Instead of most RPGs where overleveling can make players feel guilty for exploiting EXP gains, for example, Star Ocean: The Second Story R makes exploits part of the fun. It feels fun and rewarding to exploit these Item Creation, Specialties, and Super Specialties because the player has to earn the right to use them. Players’ ability to become overpowered is not truly an exploit, but a reward for being clever with the game’s progression system.
This system is seen in other Star Ocean titles, but what makes it so especially good in The Second Story R is just how fast the menus are. Other games in the series can make taking advantage of the Item Creation or Specialty systems feel clunky by comparison thanks to slower menus or needless animations for Item Creations. A theme throughout The Second Story R is that of great quality-of-life features - while there are animations that play when using Item Creation, they can be quickly skipped and cancel into menus seamlessly. Other quality-of-life improvements include auto-saving and fast travel - both of which go a long way at tightening the pace for an already quick game.
That said, as fun as it is to interact with the game’s Item Creation system, it does bring attention to the fact that the game relies heavily on menu navigation. Once I got in the midst of taking full advantage of multiple Item Creation and Specialty Skills, I would have instances where I would be fumbling through menus for well over half an hour. After a certain point of navigating through menus as much as I was, I couldn’t help but wonder if there could have been alternate solutions to making the Item Creation and Specialty systems not feel so coldly menu-based. When playing, my mind gravitated towards the Concoction mechanic from the Bayonetta series, of all things. In that series, players can create restorative items by placing ingredients in a circle, then performing a circle motion with the control stick to create the item. It’s a stretch to even refer to such a thing as a minigame, but it makes the very experience of creating an item feel more involved for the player. I found myself wishing for something akin to that in The Second Story R. I think having a way to break up the monotony of navigating through so many different menus would go a long way towards making such a major mechanic of the game more fun to engage with.
On the subject of menus, I found myself getting a tad frustrated by the layout of certain menus when it comes to optimally leveling up Skills. The Writing Item Creation Skill, for example, lets a character write a book that allows another character to read it to level up a Skill without spending SP. However, checking what level another character’s Skill is so that I know how many books I need to write for them inevitably necessitates me to flip-flop between two different menus that are a couple button presses apart from each other. Going through this repetitive, clunky process is a chore that almost made me not want to go through with the process, even though the gameplay benefits were well worth the trouble. Instances like this highlight the problems that arise when designing gameplay systems built around menu navigation. While the system itself is rewarding, I couldn’t help but wish for there to be another, more efficient way to facilitate a gameplay system like this. It stands out as clunk in an otherwise sleek package.
What helps encourage the player to engage with this system beyond just the stat improvements and access to Item Creation and Specialties is the plethora of Missions available to the player. Missions effectively serve as the game’s side quests, as many of them task the player with making a certain number of items with a certain Item Creation method, killing a certain number of monsters, taking a certain number of steps, and so on. The tasks themselves are merely incentives to engage with every aspect of what the game has to offer, but what makes this system effective is its meaningful rewards. Money plays a valuable role when taking advantage of the Item Creation system, as the player needs to buy materials to even perform different kinds of Item Creation. If completed, Missions shower the player with money, equipment, and even more Assault character and Formations that the player can implement in their battle strategies. It’s yet another instance of a fairly basic system that’s executed quite well and synergizes quite nicely with other facets of the game’s design.
Private Actions allow players to see additional events that let the game’s cast interact with each other in cute and sometimes substantial ways. At worst, these are harmless comic relief to the main narrative. At best, they serve as strong character-building moments and even open the door to recruiting new characters. // Image: Square Enix
In fact, I find myself viewing Star Ocean: The Second Story R in a whole as that way - simple in premise, but effective and strong in execution. While that certainly works for delivering a fun Action RPG with a satisfying pace and narrative framing, it unfortunately causes the game to feel underwhelming with regard to story and character writing. Star Ocean has primarily opted to tell fairly straightforward stories, and that remains to be the case here. As Claude and Rena venture throughout the world of Expel, they seek to uncover the secrets of the Sorcery Globe - an otherworldly presence that only Claude realizes is actually a meteorite from the cosmos. Much of the journey to the Sorcery Globe is filled with obstacles preventing the party from making progress towards their goal - some arbitrary, such as the case with the party having to get royal permission to sail across the ocean, and some compelling, such as the instance of an entire city getting washed away due to the natural disasters brought about by the Sorcery Globe. This is one of few instances where The Second Story R shows instead of just tells, but it manages to be the exception more than the rule. Lots of major plot reveals happen through dialogue and only partial glimpses of events - perhaps this is a carry-over from the lower budget and limited resource capacity available for the original PS1 game, but it ultimately leads to many story elements lacking cohesion and stakes.
An involved story with complex lore and a larger universe simply isn’t the mission with this game’s story. The Second Story R is undoubtedly more focused on offering a smaller character-focused narrative in a sci-fi and fantasy hybrid framing - and to that end, it does a competent job. The two characters that get the most attention are obviously Claude and Rena, and they both have solid character moments that lead to entertaining but not revolutionary development. Claude and Rena both exhibit character tropes and go through character arcs that have been explored in other games and media countless times before, so the primary way that The Second Story R sets itself from other stories is the way its characters engage with one another. Thanks to the game’s Private Actions - optional events/cutscenes that offer deviations that focus on character conversations -, the cast of The Second Story R all get some solid opportunities to interact with each other. While these scenes are often fun, they do highlight how some characters get far more development than others.
A lot of that is due to the fact that every character aside from Claude and Rena is optional. While the game certainly nudges the player towards welcoming certain members to join their party, the player is always given the option to deny other playable characters from joining the party. This means that new recruits to the party often are optional rewards to side quests, completing deviations in the game’s story, or rejecting other characters from joining the party. The optional characters on display here are a bit of a mixed bag. Some characters like Celine and Dias do a solid job at fulfilling a supportive role in the overall party’s dynamic, while other characters like Ashton and Precis fall in the awkward realm of being both underdeveloped and leaning on either comic relief or ship-baiting to fill out their personalities. As a character-focused story, Star Ocean: The Second Story R has shockingly little to work with, and as a narrative focused on worldbuilding and lore, there really isn’t a lot to grab onto here.
Star Ocean has historically struggled with creating unforgettable narratives with lovable characters. While The Second Story R comes the closest to achieving that, especially with the help of some genuinely surprising late-game reveals and developments, there’s still a lot to be desired from this story that ultimately holds the game back. One of the weakest aspects of the game is its reservation to create environments that feel weirder and more fantastical. Despite traveling to another world in the second half of the game’s story, the new environments that the player traverses are mostly in line with the very environments from the previous world that they’ve spent much of the game in already. Once again, this lack of environmental diversity is likely the case because of the original PS1 game’s limited storage capacity for different environments, but…isn’t addressing previous shortcomings and limitations what video game remakes are all about?
I can’t help but feel that The Second Story R could have and should have gone farther with making greater changes to the game’s narrative and environments to make what is here have more narrative cohesion and punch. Ultimately, though, the narrative has been impacted the least in this latest remake, and this causes the game, despite its recent 2023 release, to still have a dated tinge to it. JRPGs (and even the Star Ocean franchise itself) have come a long way in the way with regard to storytelling and providing compelling characters since the late ‘90s, but The Second Story R’s lack of willingness to adjust and improve aspects of its story and characters highlights the gap in quality between the story told here and other stories in more modern RPGs that are more captivating thanks to being more sharply written. Every remake should strive to make an older game feel more modern and accessible. While that is absolutely the case in terms of gameplay, the story side of the game - a sizable chunk of the game, mind you - feels like it is still trapped in the past.
What makes this a greater shame is that, aside from the lack of adjustments to the narrative, this is a great remake of a solid game. The only major weakness inherent to the gameplay, aside from the menu frustrations that I illustrated earlier, is the lackluster dungeons and puzzles present throughout the game. Most of The Second Story R’s dungeons are fairly straightforward dungeons that only occasionally feature some light puzzle-solving. This is with one major exception, though - the post-game dungeon, the Maze of Tribulations. This 13-floor dungeon is filled with high-level enemies and unique gimmicks for each floor, featuring more involved puzzles that, while not extremely difficult by any means, do offer a solid change of pace that would have been appreciated in more of the game.
Aside from that, there really isn’t much to complain about with regard to gameplay in Star Ocean: The Second Story R. While combat doesn’t necessarily provide the same amount of depth as other JRPGs, I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing. The game’s combat and progression systems are refreshingly simple and don’t try to bite off more than they can chew. The result is a quickly paced game that can see characters become significantly stronger in a relatively short amount of time. And sometimes, it’s just nice to play a game where you can see stats skyrocket over the course of a 20-30 hour journey.
Star Ocean: The Second Story R is most likely the best game in its franchise, but a large reason for its quality isn’t due to larger-than-life ambitions and complexity, but because it embraces the simplicity that makes it work so well. Delivering and executing well on straightforward, simple systems is an often underappreciated facet of game development as many modern developers are chasing the potential of creating bigger, longer games for the sake of appealing to a wider crowd. But Star Ocean: The Second Story R proves that there’s just as if not more value in making a smaller, more focused game shine. This second take at a remake does wonders in improving quality-of-life features to make the game more accessible and snappier to play. Moreover, the additions to combat make a simple combat system gain just enough complexity and depth to feel consistently satisfying, challenging, and rewarding throughout the game’s 20-25 hour runtime.
Star Ocean: The Second Story R is short and sweet thanks to great pacing, unique mechanics, and fun if unambitious combat, yet it still retains a lot of artifacts that reveal its age - many of which arise from the game’s lacking story, characters, and dungeon design. With all that said, this is a game that I find myself grateful to have finally played, as it embodies the snappiness and visual splendor that I’d truly like to see more of elsewhere in the JRPG genre and games landscape as a whole. My journey with Star Ocean that began in 2020 has ultimately led me here, and while the franchise has ostensibly had peaks and valleys over the decades, I think there’s a large statement being made by choosing to remake the highest-regarded entry in the series. I think Square Enix and Tri-Ace are on a great trajectory with understanding and building upon what people like about both Star Ocean and Tri-Ace’s unique approach to developing games.
Through the continued willingness to innovate and make something different, developers can gradually build up to something truly great. I think Tri-Ace is on the precipice of such a thing - they simply need to continue building upon what they’ve done before and inject innovation where they can. The Second Story R proves that they and the series they birthed have a lot of potential when properly refined. The Second Story R is a beacon of hope for Star Ocean and Tri-Ace’s future, and I find reason to be cautiously optimistic about such a future. With further refinement, modernizations, and greater focus on story and characters, this series could write a second story for itself - one where it gets launched through the stratosphere and into true greatness.
Final Grade: B+
Thank you very much for reading! What are your thoughts on Star Ocean: The Second Story R? How do you feel about the Star Ocean franchise overall? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Bluesky @DerekExMachina.com.
