You wouldn't believe the gaming festivities I've had since the turn of the new year. No, I haven't had any new games bought for me, however, I seem to have a new symbiotic relationship with the website www.emuparadise.org with all of their available titles for download. Sure, my state-of-the-art (last year) computer isn't capable of running Tales of Symphonia or any other Gamecube title, however, it is fully able to emulate Playstation titles, which may very well be the finest generation in all of gaming history.
I say this because of the wide variety of games available for the Playstation, especially in the RPG category. I can't really call myself a gamer completely as there are some genres I don't play at all and avoid with a passion - FPS and survival horror in particular. But if a game stars a blue haired hero stranded on a new world with a sword then damn straight I'll give it a shot. I don't promise it'll be good (I'm looking at you, Star Ocean: Til the End of Time), but I'll give it a shot.
This brings me to a title that I wish I had the chance to play when I was a kid. Star Ocean: The Second Story. In the very start of the game, you choose to play one of two main characters. Claude Kenni is a boy from Earth who is a student at a Space-based Military Academy. Rena Lanford is our blue haired heroine who lives on the planet Expel gifted with the ability of healing. I know what you're thinking, that this is going to be one of those anime-based games where all the characters are very cliche. Actually, it's not that bad on the cliches. You just have to keep an open mind, really.
The story is different based on the hero you decide to play as, coming down to which characters may or may not permanently join your group. When I played recently, I chose Rena, so I didn't get to see how Claude was whisked away to the world of Expel or the kind of technologically advanced society he comes from.
Rena lives in a little country village called Arlia on the fantasy-like world of Expel with her mother, every day going into the nearby Shingo Forest for a walk. One particularly average sunny day, Rena goes for a walk and she's attacked by a demonic ape of some sort, and Claude rushes in with his space-age technology to save her after being blasted from a planet far on the other side of the galaxy to there. Seeing the beams of light from his gun and the alien clothing he wears, Rena believes that Claude is a "Warrior of Legend" who has come to save their world from all its ails. She decides to lead him to town, wondering about the place called Urth that Claude says he's from, and telling everyone important in her life about how he saved her with his "sword of light". Claude doesn't buy it for a minute, of course, and the mayor of Arlia tells Claude about the Sorcery Globe which crash-landed on the faraway continent of El. This ball of technology seems to have made all the animals turn to monsters, caused stress among leaders of the world leading to wars, and has destroyed the lives of countless citizens. The people of Expel have no way of understanding it, as they are still in the times of swords and sorcery. After saving Rena from a possessed childhood friend, the pair set out in the world to discover what exactly the Sorcery Globe is as Claude believes it may be his only chance to get home.
After this, the game opens up to the player. What would you like to do? Level grind? Explore some dungeons? Cook up some tasty meals? Pick the pockets of every person you find? Gain affection points with characters? Look for new characters to add to your party? Build your own weapons and armor? Yep. While linear in narrative, you can stop that narrative pretty much any time you want to do whatever you feel like doing. You can walk out of a dungeon you're fed up with and spend the day having your characters write books that will affect the relationships between themselves and other characters if you feel like it, provided you have the talent and the skills you need to do it.
Skill points come to a character every single time they level up, which you can spend on various skills learned by reading text books or buying books from the nearby skill guild. You might not think that the skills "Kitchen Knife", "Good Eye", and "Recipe" would be handy for going on a world saving adventure, but if you learn all of these skills, you open up the command "Cooking" and if you have ingredients on you, you can attempt to cook. While you may have cooking available to you, however, if you do not have the talent "Sense of Taste" then your cooking will always remain unsuccessful and you won't be able to make anything edible - however, if you keep trying, the talent can open up for you, depending on how well the character is able to adapt to that sort of talent. (This isn't just for cooking, but for any other talent based skill, too.) Cooking is not only useful to sell your dishes to stores for a profit, but each and every character has a favorite food that acts as a personal elixir for them outside of battle. It also increases their mood, so if you feed a character their favorite food, then do a private action with them, more than likely you'll get positive affection points between those two characters. This is just one of the many options open to the player at any time he or she feels like going about it.
Another is building your eight character party the way you want it to be. Out of the cast of eleven playable characters, you can only have eight. Aside from Claude and Rena, the rest of them are completely up to you. Do you want Ashton, the dual sword wielding gentleman with two dragons on his back; or do you want the busty blonde alien chick, Opera, who uses a bazooka? If you go get Opera, do you also go and get her handsome whip-slashing boyfriend Ernest, or do you want to win her heart for your own? Do you want to have the family-oriented herbalist Bowman, or the teenage mechanical genius Precis? Sometimes when you get a character, you can't go and get others. If you play as Rena, you have a chance to get her childhood friend Dias, but if you play as Claude, he will not join the group at all. Instead you'll get the little boy who invented the Lacour Hope, Leon, who looks up to Claude like a brother. To see all of the story, you have to play a multitude of times, which really adds to this game's replayability. My last playthrough, I had the party of Rena, Claude, Celine, Opera, Ernest, Bowman, Dias, and Chisato. When I play again, however, I want to have Ashton instead of Opera, Precis instead of Bowman, and Noel instead of Chisato. Just to see what those characters can do and how they affect the character development.
Oh, and one other thing, this game has an astounding 87 obtainable endings. Personally, I don't know any other game with that many endings. By doing private actions and increasing affection points, you can have any character get with any other character. Some are much harder than others, but if you want to have an ending where Ernest marries Rena instead of Opera, for example, it's possible. But if you want to have an ending where Ernest and Bowman get together, that's also an option. It's very open-minded and progressive that way, out to please every single type of fan who might pick this game up.
Simply put, Star Ocean: The Second Story may not be perfect, but it's easy to get lost in. The character development as the story progresses is very nice, and all the things you can do in between dungeons can take up so much of your game time, you'll be surprised. If you like games that have a lot of options for the player, then this is one for you, even if you don't like RPGs. And the combat system is NOT Final Fantasy-esque turn-based combat either. It plays like Tales of Destiny but on a completely 3D battlefield. It's fast, it's intense. It doesn't completely bog you down.
Trust me. I highly recommend this title for anyone who likes RPGs, or customization. Though it may be hard to get a hold of without getting it via emulator. Last I checked it went for $110 on Amazon. However the game was remade for PSP as Star Ocean: The Second Evolution, which contains much of the same features and some added extras.
Play it. You won't be disappointed.
Thanks for reading.
Much love,
-Suzuri
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