A unique battle system highlights an otherwise generic RPG that accomplishes what it set out to do relatively well.
Before even getting to the first battle, veterans of Japanese RPG's will notice a rather uncommon feature - selecting a main character. Ensign Claude Kenni, the son of one of the heroes from the first Star Ocean, is surveying some mysterious ruins on a planetary survey when he's instantly whisked away to the Shingo Forest on the planet Expel. There he meets Rena Lanford, a member of the planet's pre-industrial society, which complicates matters as Earth law states that no citizen can interfere with such a primitive planet's development. He finds out that an object that fell from the sky that the locals have named the Sorcery Globe has been causing some natural disasters, and he is asked to go investigate it with Rena. No matter which main character you select, the other will be in your party for the vast majority of the game as they meet up very early in the story. The difference is that the story is seen through the perspective of the main character - one wondering where he is and how he can get home, the other wondering what's wrong with her world and who her mysterious traveling partner really is. There are some dungeons very early in the game where the two characters are split up and you must complete on your own, but there is no significant change in the story from one character to the next.
Throughout your journey you'll run into random encounters, which are spaced out at a decent pace. Up to four of your party face off against enemies on a polygonal landscape. You control one of your characters, which is your main character at the start of the battle but you can switch to any character during the battle, while the AI controls the other three according to specified parameters. While there is an option to make battles turn-based, the game is obviously intended to be played in its active mode. When you have no commands inputted you are free to move your character around the battlefield in any direction, almost as if you were controlling him or her on the world map. The most basic attack command will have your character run up to the selected enemy and hit him once. The refresh rate before you can input another attack is generally pretty short, less than a second on most characters, enabling a string of attacks to be executed on an enemy. Spell casting is interrupted by attacks, so attacking a spell casting enemy nonstop is very powerful and effective. Unfortunately, this effectively degrades the battle system into little more than mashing the X button for more than half the time in battles. Also, once a command is entered it cannot be cancelled, which can sometimes cause your character to chase his nimble target around the battlefield for a while. You can, however, use this to your advantage by running away from an enemy that has you in its sights, leading him right into your waiting allies. Backing an enemy into the invisible sides or especially corners and beating on them is also very effective, and can potentially take the challenge out of some boss fights once you get them firmly locked down.
Your characters are split up into two basic subgroups: fighters and mages. Each of your mages learn new spells as they reach certain levels, and each mage has a unique selection of spells. A spell usually has a casting time of a second or two depending on which spell is being cast, and another spell may not be cast again for a couple seconds afterwards. Outside of battle, you may select whether or not you want each individual spell to be available for the AI to cast. This proves very useful, as the AI can sometimes cast certain situational spells a little too liberally. The spell casters tend to be rather specialized; Rena has a wide selection of curative magic, while Celine knows few spells that are not offensive. Fighters are largely similar to mages, except that in the place of spells they have killer moves. They get fewer killer moves relative to the number of spells that mages get, and they may only memorize two at a time, mapped to the L1 and R1 buttons. These moves, which consume MP much like spells do, give each character unique attacks that often deal more damage than just standard fighting. Each character also has an AI setting that governs their actions. Fighters can use killer attacks frequently, conserve their MP, quickly react to protect their mages, gang up on the target an ally is attacking, and other similar moves. Mages can be ordered to do nothing but heal the party as necessary, use offensive spells conservatively or liberally, melee when not casting, and so forth.
Character growth is more than just gaining stats and spells or moves when you level up. Each time a character gains a level they also gain a certain amount of skill points. These skill points can be applied towards various combat skills or other abilities. Each ability can be raised ten levels, and the cost of an increase varies by the skill and what level it currently is. The combat skills give you a chance of performing various actions like counterattacks, parries, extra damage, and so forth, with the chances increasing the higher the level is. There are other skills, ranging from writing to cooking and crafting to mineralogy. Many of these abilities give specific stat upgrades with each level. Increasing the levels of certain combinations of abilities will increase the level of the character's specialty skills. For example, your cooking ability increases as you increase your skill in recipe, good eye, and kitchen knife. Naturally the higher your cooking ability, the more likely you will be able to both successfully cook food from raw ingredients and craft rare foods. There are many other abilities like alchemy, blacksmithing, and musical talent. In addition, if multiple party members become proficient at certain abilities, then you will unlock super abilities that all party members help create. One example of this is the ability to publish if you have enough writers. There are many things that can be crafted, including from better weapons, better restorative items, music that increases the experience points you earn, and even reproducing rare items. The one big downfall is that some of the better items require rare ingredients, and can have a high failure rate. The failure rate is high enough that you may consider loading a saved file after losing ingredients to a few failed attempts. This may actually be what the designers had in mind, as there's an option to load a file quickly right from the main menu.
The only characters in the game that are not optional are the two main characters. There are a few characters you can recruit, some easier than others, but you are limited to having a total of eight in your party. With so many optional characters it may sound difficult to incorporate them well into the story and develop them, but it is done relatively well. Normally when you enter cities you go as a group, but you also have the option of initiating a Private Action when you enter. When you do so, your party splits up and mingles around the towns while you are there. Talking to certain party members at certain towns during certain times can sometimes open up side quests, some of which can recruit certain characters or gain unique endings. Others allow you to interact with that character and alter how the characters perceive one another. Each character has a certain number of friendship points and romance points towards each other character, with friendship points being largely irrelivant between characters of the opposite sex and romance being similar between those of the same sex. Friendly responses in these Private Actions will cause characters to like each other more and vice versa. In addition, the more battles two characters fight together, the more they'll grow to like one another. When a character falls in battle, sometimes a character with a high friendship or romance value will go into a frenzy. The most noticeable effect of these relationships come in the ending. If characters share a high enough appropriate value and are higher than the values with everyone else, those two characters will have a scene together at the end instead of having scenes alone. There are nearly a hundred different combinations that you can generate for the endings, all depending on how you have your characters interact with each other or fight with each other.
The graphical characteristics of Star Ocean 2 are rather unusual. On the one hand, the polygonal battle maps are very well done, with wonderful backdrops and a few obstacles in the field. The field maps are all on pre-rendered 2D backgrounds and are fairly high quality. While tri-Ace certainly had a thing for generic dungeons in caves, there are other areas that are just wonderful for the era. Of particular note are the high cliffs with waterfalls above the forests at the front lines, the lush Shingo Forest, the exterior of the mysterious pyramid-like ruins of the Hoffman Ruins, and the floating island of the Trial of Love with all of its rotating paths. Certain areas have nice touches, like a mirror-like reflection in bodies of water in villages, or a flock of birds flying by. The spell animations are flashy and of high quality, with some of the animations changing to reflect which planet the party is currently on. On the other hand, the sprites of the characters are a bit blocky and seem to be leftovers from the SNES days, and do not even have animations for basic tasks such as sitting. Also since you sometimes see the bulk of a village on a single screen, the sprites can be scaled down to very small proportions to compensate. Some of the party members look so generic that you can run by them in a city and not even realize that they are indeed members of your party. The 3D world map is of good quality, but the textures can get very grainy outside of a certain radius from your character. Overall the good certainly outweighs the bad, but the bad can stick out so much when it's side-by-side with the good. It just seems odd that a developer would focus so much on quality for the bulk of the game, but let a few relatively low quality elements slip in.
Much like the graphics, the audio in the game is mostly above average with a few things that are of noticeably lower quality. The soundtrack on a whole is rather good, especially the epic theme on the Nede world map, and the calm and melodious tune from the Shingo Forest, which doubles as Rena's theme in various key story scenes later on in the game. While these two stand out, the rest are good but won't be remembered for long after finishing the game. Many of the various town themes do give a good sense of the town you're in, be it lively and regal or quiet and serene. There are also about a thousand voice clips in the game, most of which can be heard at the start and end of battles, when fighting enemies, and when you cast spells and perform killer moves. Since there are so many, the audio quality on these definitely isn't of the clearest quality, but it gets the job done. The voice acting of most of the optional characters is done well and matches each character's personality well. As for the two heroes, that's another story. Claude's lines come off sounding a little too macho, and Rena is so high and squeaky sounds like she regularly sucks on helium. Is she a variant of an elf or a munchkin?
The presence of the two main characters alone gives Star Ocean 2 a high replay value. In addition, there are a total of twelve playable characters but only room for eight in each party. One character can only be recruited with Rena and one will only join Claude, plus recruiting certain characters prevents you from recruiting certain others. You will need to play through the game at least twice to get all the characters. There is also a voice collection, which adds voice clips to a menu once you hear them. Completing a certain percentage of the total unlocks a sound test and a few higher difficulty levels. The level cap is 255 instead of the standard 100, a 13-level bonus dungeon with some difficult enemies and bosses but with good rewards, an amusement park town where you can participate in a couple minigames and a fighting contest, all the different ending possibilities, and a wide range of crafting skills that can be leveled up. The one big point against the overall value is that the main story itself is probably a little under 30 hours long, even if you do a few basic side quests. That includes a few required dungeons that seem to be there just for the sake of being there. One character comments about how powerful you became for passing a trial, with a party member saying they don't feel stronger and the explanation ending there. It's almost as if the so-called strength came entirely from the levels that your characters gained during said trial, because things didn't seem to change at all.
Star Ocean: The Second Story took the safe path in its design, and accomplished what it set out to do. It didn't try to do something new and unique, it just built upon the successful formula from the first game. The story takes a while to pick up, but once it does it is rather interesting and the lead characters are likable if not predictable. The battle system is definitely a nice change of pace from the generic turn-based systems that were common at the time. Those that enjoy Western RPG's but never cared for Japanese ones might want to give Star Ocean a shot, as it seems to have more in common with its cousins from the West than the other Japanese games do. At its heart it's still a quality Japanese RPG that is well balanced in terms of difficulty and pacing. The game itself may be a little hard to find these days, but fans of the genre would probably want to consider picking it up if they find it available.