168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Ocean is an interesting series. To take the ‘space opera’ and ‘mid-fantasy’ genres only to smash them together, playing every trope straight, just shouldn’t work, but it does. This bold combination is exemplified by the second game’s two central protagonists - a girl from a backwoods planet who has mysterious healing powers and an earthling boy who is then teleported down to said planet, kickstarting a fish out of water story that is as much Star Trek as it is Final Fantasy. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Ocean: The Second Story R is the second attempt to modernise this class🔯ic, ✤and boy does it do a great job.

The most stark upgrade is in its graphics. Gone are the old low-res backgrounds, replaced with new 3D environments that are colourful and brimming with life. Keeping the characters as 2D sprites is a bold m🃏ove, and distracting at first, but you get used to its playful aura of retro-futurism. I&rs♐quo;m still not entirely sold, but can’t help admiring how it preserves the old-school charm of the PS1 era. The same cannot be said for the new environments - while they are gorgeous, I miss the striking pre-rendered backgrounds that were so emblematic of the series’ earliest entries.

Combat is still excellent, so it makes sense how very little has changed in Second Story R. Battles take place on a three-dimensional plane, and while the majority boil down to mashing the attack button and timing dodges, harder encounters will force you to use a surprisingl𝓰y large repertoire of support options, including battle items and spellcasters with massive spell lists. Good performance in combat allows you to accrue pickups that contribute to passive buffs depending on your party formation, such as stat boosts, experience bonuses or immunity to status ailments. Failing to impress however will lose you said pickups and force you to start over. It is crucial to pay att🔥ention even in the easiest of random battles, as you’ll want to sustain those bonuses for the tough encounters soon to follow.

Battles inevitably lead to experience points and levelling up, which in turn lead to skill points, which neatly leads me to gush about the talent and item creation mechanics, a highlight of the original and well-preserved here. Characters can invest points into a huge range of skills to be used outside of battle, from the use of a cooking knife to more esoteric skills like piety and whistling. These con🌠tribute to ‘specialities’ that allow you to break the game wide open, such as customising weapons into new items and pickpocketing. This was one of the most engaging parts of the game for me - I love being able to crack open an RPG like this and flatten the difficulty with some effort into its 💙myriad systems. Screw grinding, give me some obscure route to one of the best weapons in the game within the first third of the story, I always say. You aren’t cheating, you’re merely playing by the rules in fiendishly creative ways, something that the very best in the genre are able to accomplish.

For you veterans out there, yes, it’s possible to get the Aeterna in the exact same way you’ve always been able to get it. In🍸 fact, it’s even easier now.

During my playthroughs, I did the usual and abused item creation and specialities to power myself up to unbelievable heights early on, but it just wasn’t as satisfying as it used to be. The transition to the modern age comes with s🦄ome fantastic bonuses - fast travel is wonderful, and you’re alerted to each and every missable event and private action (read: character-specific cutscenes), making completionist runs far less time-consuming.

However, combat is significantly easier. No♐t only are the new assault actions, which let you summon reserve members and the protagonists of past Star Ocean games for single attacks in the midst of battle, a powerful tool, but the basic difficulty seems far lower than I’m used to from Star Ocean - meaning my item creation shenanigans feel far less satisfying and barelꦏy worth investing in, and I’m sure this will be a widely-held opinion from series veterans. Take my advice and play on hard mode from the off.

One new addition did sorely impress me? Fishing. It’s🐷 a simple implementation of a mechanic we’ve all engaged with in a hundred other games, but there’s something so innately satisfying about filling up a fishing log here. It’s such a natural and well-executed addition that it initially made me think I had simply missed the mechanic in the original. I’d get more excited about finding a new beach to cast away upon than progressing through the story.

That’s quitﷺe a feat, mind you. Star Ocean tells a sprawling tale and does a wonderful job of keeping you invested. The premise of an earthling getting stranded in a fantasy 💯world is rather common today with the isekai boom, but Star Ocean executed it really well decades ago. Claude is a fish out of water who nonetheless knows more about the wider universe than most people he meets, giving us a unique POV character to work from. Rena, on the other hand, is a typical ‘girl with mysterious background’ who anchors us firmly in the trope-ridden world of anime RPGs. Their dynamic is wonderful, and every new character who joins the crew is filled with personality, there are no duds here. Well, maybe Welch, who is as one-note as you get for a recurring mascot character, but I digress.

The fact that you can’t acquire all of the characters in one playthrough and you get startlingly different cutscenes if you choose a different main character makes this a perfect game to play twice, with the sec🍬ond playthrough remaining incredibly fresh despite🍌 taking the same journey through the world of Expel and beyond.

Without spoiling things, Star Ocean eventually devolves into schlocky cliché territory, but by that point, you’re firmly on board, ticket purchased and ready to see its jওourney through to the end. Star Ocean: The Second Story got the remake treatment for a reason - it’s a classic of the genre with compelling characters, wonderful storytelling, and oodles of satisfying mechanics. R goes to great lengths to streamline the Star Ocean experience and make it more beautiful (the new arranged soundtrack is glorious), and while it might have sustained a bit of the difficulty that made the 🦩original a triumph to overcome, it still squarely sticks the landing.

A code was provided by the publisher.

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