Immersive, excellent, and in every way impressive for a handheld remake of a console RPG.
Star Ocean: Second Evolution is a remake of the PlayStation classic Star Ocean: The Second Story. Though I have yet to play the original version, through SO:SE, I understand how many people have come to dub this entry as the best in the series.
SO:SE tells the story of Claude C. Kenny, a young Earthling ensign that just wants to prove that he's more than just the son of respected Admiral Ronyx J. Kenny, and Rena Lanford, an Expelian girl in search of the truth. Through an accident, Claude is transported from where he was to Rena's planet.
First off, one would say that SO:SE pretty much plays like any action RPG found in the market. This is quite true, except that Second Evolution is much more than that. The staple RPG elements, like the great story, music, and characters are joined by impressive shenanigans such as a deep skill system and Private Actions.
The Skill System directly affects the performance of your characters in the game, which allows you to tailor the game to your liking. Certain talents and abilities are only acquired when one learns certain skills, and these help you in battle, in identifying items and, yes, even in shopping. This makes it so that each gamer plays in a sort of unique way, prioritizing one skill or the other.
Private Actions, while seemingly useless, actually trigger friendship and romance boosts between the main character and the various party members. Your decisions entirely affect the endings that you get, and these numerous endings are reason enough to play through the game at least twice.
Adding to the replay value is the fact that you can choose characters to recruit. Given the chance to have another character join your party, you can decide to turn him or her down or let him or her partake in your adventure. Again, this affects which endings you get, and calls for another playthrough or two, especially since there are character-exclusive recruits and you can't recruit everyone all at the same time.
The battle system is pretty good. You can assign Special Arts on the shoulder buttons for each of your characters, choose which people are on your battling party, decide the general action of each party member and so on. The equipment system, while not exactly that different compared to other RPGs, is pretty good. The effects of the stats can be felt in battle.
Second Evolution is, in every regard, an old-school RPG. It's not spruced up with Crisis Core-style eye candy, but one could definitely appreciate how it looks like. Sprites blend seamlessly with the pre-rendered backgrounds in towns and dungeons. Reflections in the water, mirrors and clouds and birds flying overhead are neat little touches. The world map is rendered in full 3D. All the important playable characters and NPC's have been given beautiful portraits. Certain scenes are now animated excellently, and the details are definitely likable.
Music is great. While not packed with a lot of melodic tunes, they're easy enough on the ears and are of excellent quality, which makes the fact that most BGMs are reused forgivable. Excellent voice acting comes with Second Evolution, and one could definitely see the effort here.
Replayability is also high. With a great number of endings for each of the characters, Private Actions, secret dungeons and modes, Second Evolution could be played for months and months. Oh, and did I mention the fact that there are almost no random encounters on the world map?
Indeed, Second Evolution is a masterpiece. Whether you played the Second Story or not, this is definitely worth adding to your game library.