Finishing Star Ocean Second Story R

Thursday night, I finished another JRPG — woo-hoo! Star Ocean: Second Story R kept me entertained for about 38 hours playtime, and nearly every minute was well enjoyed. I liked it so much that, around half-way through the game, I bought Star Ocean: First Departure R for my backlog. Finishing the game almost didn’t happen though.

With the default difficulty setting (Galaxy) from the start, combat wasn’t tough until about a third of the way through when a difficulty spike surprised me. I worried a bit because I wasn’t sure I could backtrack to my last file save without re-treading a lot of ground. But I managed to find a way to grind a bit, restock my supplies in between rounds of battle, then make progress.

spoiler ahead — Fast-forward to near the end of the game. I started fighting the first set among the Ten Wisemen. It was tough, like running a gauntlet; I barely made it out alive. A little while later, I faced-off against the second set from the Ten Wisemen and was destroyed by repeated paralysis and petrifaction — end spoiler

In a tired frame of mind, I put down the controller with some dismay. Didn’t feel like grinding to “git gud.” Could I just quit the game; I was close enough to the end anyways.

But I only half-wimped out.

Resuming play a few days later, I did what I knew I needed to do: equip items to nullify those status effects, tweak my party formation, and…I decided to drop the game’s difficulty to “easy mode” (Earth).

What a difference!

At this point, battles were just hard enough to be mildly challenging while keeping me engaged. And I killed off that Ten Wisemen set number two. Then, in the same short gameplay session, I ended up beating the next set. I was 8 down, 2 to go!

The last two final battles were great, lots of cool new magic spells and special effects, my fingers flew all over the controller buttons, my eyes darted between the on-screen info to stay on top of my ever-depleting HP and MP. This game has an “item timer” that I watched like a hawk in these last battles, strategizing the right moment to use the right item in conjunction with my characters’ abilities to either attack or heal. My main guy, Claud, was useful for DPS and his healing specialty.

All in all, Star Ocean: Second Story R is a lovely game that plucked my 16-bit nostalgia strings just right; a good old-school JRPG is a great thing. I enjoyed the characters’ personalities and interactions. And while action-RPGs aren’t my preference, battles had just enough timing, setup, and choice strategy to keep things engaging.

Oh, and the ending(s) I got…Claud and Reyna’s was surprising and splendid — I think it was the most romantic one possible.

Update: Now I’ve got to rate or rank this game to see where it stands in my Top Ten JRPGs.