![]() ![]() Visually, Second Story is a bit of a mixed bag. Turns out this cost me not one but TWO optional characters! Ah well… Not a big deal, I just didn’t want to take the time. I never really had the patience to go through many of the Personal Events, as they required re-entering towns under different conditions. Luckily, the game gives you tons of stuff to there, too much sometimes! There several optional quests, completely missable side characters, Personal Events to give you more insight into character relations, and even more to do after the game has actually “ended”. There’s a pretty good roster in this game, but I never got too terribly attached to any of them. It’s hard to look past the ultra stiff writing, as it does rob many of the characters of personality, and that’s very unfortunately. That’s not to say that the story is at all bad, just that it’s fairly generic and, at least on the PS1, presented in such a way that it doesn’t feel like the main draw of the game. I feel like Second Story is a game that’s carried by its systems. I call it a minor bug, but really it had me throwing my controller a few times… Additionally, the PS1 version of the game has a minor bug with combat, where if you close out of the battle results screen too quickly, your game will freeze. While it’s possible to pause everything and micromanage each of your characters, this never felt particularly effective and only served to grind the battle to a halt. What I didn’t like was that, ultimately, there was very little room for any actual strategy. ![]() Combat itself is fast and frantic, and generally pretty fun. This goes a step further by allowing you to pick and choose which abilities your party members can and cannot use, adding an excellent level of control to the flow of combat. Attackers get similarly appropriate options. These presets run the gambit, allowing casters to go all out, conserve MP, act as support, or be dedicated healers, and more. You fight in real time, taking control of character directly while your other three party members follow whatever AI preset has been assigned to them. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if level professions didn’t take such a massive amount of skill points…įinally we arrive at combat. Unfortunately, since Claude can’t use rods, he can’t craft them for Celine either. Celine has a rod that, through a high-level Customize skill, can be converted into a much stronger rod. In this way I was able to craft a very powerful sword for him to use. For example, Claude has a high level Customize skill, allowing him to turn weapons into other weapons. That’s fine, but what I really dislike is that characters cannot benefit from other characters’ professions. Different types of professions are leveled up by learning different types of skills, and these professions are maintained uniquely to each character. For what seems like such an integral system, it goes entirely unexplained! Even after gleaning a little bit of understanding, I was left not liking what I was working with. The game throws crafting materials at you left right and center and implies that the system is vital to progressing through the game, but never actually tells you how to use it. Professions, on the other hand, never sat very well with me. ![]() This levels out later on, and I never felt bad for taking advantage of it in this way. The system is also quite prone to abuse, especially early on, allowing you to pool your Skill Points and dump them into cheap Skills with massive stat gains relative to where you are in the game. Skills offer a certain level of character customization, allowing you to decide how each character excels, even if their base stats wouldn’t normally have them work as well that way. The Skill system dictates how your characters grow, both in combat stats and abilities, and in how effective they are in different professions. Underlying it all is a Skill and Profession system. To top it all off, you have an Equipment Wizard that will automatically equip any new upgrades you find, which is fantastic. Shopping for items is different, with you effectively lining up all your buys and sells before locking the entire transaction in, but after getting used to it it works really well. There’s tons of customization options for changing window tints and button arrangements, as well as control for how your party members behave in battle. Menu navigation and other standard issue JRPG fare all handle perfectly fine. While gameplay for the most is very good, depending on what you’re actually doing in Star Ocean it can range from “Great” to “Archaic and obscure”. ![]()
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