Star Ocean: The Second Story is one of the great gems of the original PlayStation’s vast JRPG catalog. Regardless of one’s feelings on the first, third, fourth, fifth, or even last year’s sixth main🐻line entry, there’s an enduring adoration, a reverence among a certain generation of RPG fans for the epic dual-protagonist adventure starring galactic explorer Claude C. Kenny and magically-gifted villager Rena Lanford.
If there was one thing Star Ocean 2’s fans have wanted more than a remake, it’s reassurance that any prospective remake would be in the right hands. After a recent video call with director and development producer Yuichiro Kitao, character designer Yukihiro Kajimoto, and producer Kei Komaki, I’m convinced the upcoming 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Ocean: The Second Story R - a subtle nameꦦ change, but an important one - is right where it needs to be.
“We want the players who di🐼d play the original to have a new experienceဣ, at the same time as their nostalgic experience,” Yuichiro Kitao explains.
It’s the team’s overarching philosophy toward the remake, and this approach is visible in Star Ocean: The Second Story R on many fronts. It’s the transformation from an overhead quasi-three-dimensional style in the original game into more thoroughly 3D towns and fields, even though the classic pixel-based character sprites are retained. We see it in the new battle mechanics and additional quests, even as the general difficulty of foes is increased slightly to accommodate the slew of new actions. It’s there in Yukihiro Kajimoto’s refreshed character portraits, so fil🅠led with fresh details, but maintaining the spirit of the original aesthetic. Checks and balances are what come to mind when speaking with the creators. For everything new, a respect for the old.
“We haven’t just made the game more difficult. We’ve added in new side quests, we’ve added in stronger enemies, there are other ways the players can experience new content,” Kitao continues. “Part of the reason is that, compared to the PlayStation version, the general tempo and speed of battles [in the remake💫] has increased quite a lot. Character progression through leveling has also increased.”
There’s more to do, too, and that can cause skillful players to tear through the game now if left completely unchecked. Kitao cites ꦬthe ability to perform a backstep mid-battle to regain MP. There are also new mechanics, like the Break and Assault Action systems. Taken altogether, Star Ocean: The Second Story R would be a universal♔ly easier game. Rebalancing existing content is thus of utmost importance.
Star Ocean: The Second Story&🦄rsquo;s world occupies that common area among original PlayStation RPGs in which the backgrounds aren’t quite 3D, but they’re no longer 2D, either. They’re 2.5D, with a slanted overhead perspec♋tive that makes it work, rather than the behind-the-character camera angle seen more typically in fully three-dimensional games.
But Star Ocean: The Second Story R, in surely its most blatant makeover, brought those backgrounds up to 3D - notably without doing the same for the character models. Your party members and the hundreds of NPCs inhabiting the world remain sprite-based, and the camera remains in the classic overhead style. It’s the sort of thing that 🐎sounds odd, but works well in practice, so naturally I wꦦanted to know what compelled the staff to go this unexpected route.
“I’ll speak first to the fusion of the sprites with the environments and the backgrounds,” Kitao answers. “The reason I wanted to keep the pixel sprites for the characters is because that&rs🐠quo;s how people remember them. Players who played the game initi🍌ally will have those strong memories of them. I wanted to treat that with respect. At the same time, just using them as they were in the original wouldn’t bring anything new. So what we’ve done is we’ve developed a dedicated shader that adds lighting, shadow, and that extra touch of graphics.”
“And then for the environments, in the PS1 they were pre-rendered as well, and what we did was we sort of looked at it from the perspective of, ‘What if you were a pixel sprite in this world? What would it look like to you? What wo✅uld the🌳 world look like, what would the town look like?’”
That was somet𝔍hing I’d never considered, and I couldn’t help but tell Kitao I’d be thinking about it the whole time I’m playing the game. Zooming in on the character sprites again, I asked Yukihiro Kajimoto whether he had a unified vision in mind from the start on redesigning classic heroes like Claude, Rena, and the rest.
“When I played the PS1🍬 version of Star Ocean: The Second Story, I was a student. I wasn’t a creator yet, myself. So, when I was given this work, first and foremost, it was an absolute honor. And I was like, ‘is it OK for me to be doing this?’ I was a little unsettled!” Kajimoto credits the trust given ൲to him by the producers as the reason he was able to focus on the task at hand and deliver the new designs.
Kei Komaki, an Assistant Producer for last year’s Star Ocean: The Divine Force and a guiding hand in The Second Story R, emphasizes to me where that trust stems from. “I personally really love [Kajimoto’s] illustrations. But more than that, he’s worked on the Star Ocean series for so long that I really think the fans trust him. And then another point was that I wanted to see how he’d approach the character designs from a more realistic perspective. I asked him, ‘could you explore what it would look like if these character designs and illustrations from the 1998 game were modern people who existed today?’ The ideas he came up with, in terms of clothing, little details, he just had so many 🎀ideas, so much he could bring to this.”
I didn’t want to let Kitao, Kajimoto, and Komaki off the hook without asking them at least one nerdy question. I am, after all, a lifelong fan of Star Ocean 2. There’s a recruitable character named Dias Flac who fits the cliche of being incredibly powerful early on, but tapering off substantially enough by game’s end that it&♑rsquo;s generally inadꦑvisable to bring Dias with you to the final battle.
Dias, of course, has the whole a💜ngsty anime rogue swordsman look down to a tee, so naturally, I’d use him anyway. But with all these mechanical changes en route for the remake, I had to know if there’s a brighter future for my blue-haired blade-bearing prettyboy.
“First and foremost, I don’t think what I’m about to talk about relates specifically to Dias,” Kitao begins with a grin. “You have a four-player party that you’ll be entering battles with - but you’ll also have the Assault system where other party members can jump in, interrupt, and perform an attack. And because of this system, I think there are much fewer characters this time around that you won’t want to use by the end. Obviously, they have their strengths, weaknesses, but I don’t think there will be characters wh🅠o ♍aren’t of some kind of use the whole way through.”
Komaki added some further thoughts on the matter. “Don’t worry. Dias is stronger.” Well, then! “We’ve adjusted the various skills, and traditionally, I think weapons in Star Ocean have been balanced quite dramatically.” It’s true that devoted players could grind it out with Star Ocean 2&rsq𒁃uo;s in-depth item creation systems and end up with weapons far beyond what is necessary to complete the game. This is the sort of gear you’ll want if you’re up to the challenge of the post-game bosses. “You can now give Dias quite a ridiculous weapon, perhaps.” Oh, I will.
Some remakes strive to reimagine a game so boldly, you’re essentially playing something entirely different. Others are so intent on preserving the essence of the original that they come across as straightforward remasters instead. There are successes and failures in both fields, but Star Ocean: The Second Story R seeks to have its R🔯PG cake and eat it too, preserving and reimagining in equal, careful measure. It’s a tall task, to be sure, but I can tell the team has thrown their all into making it click.
We’🌱ll know firsthand soon enough, as Star Ocean: The Second Story R launches on PS4, PS5, Switch, and PC on November 2nd. A playable demo is now available for download.