I think this has been the best jrpg remake without question. It took me down memory lane and at the same time made it convenient with fast travel and made it a little bit more fun with fishing lol they nailed it with the visual style too. From start to finish, fantastic!
Kinda crazy that this was developed by Gemdrops of all studios (developers of Crystar) with absolutely no previous experience in remakes. I would love to know how they got the job from SE! And curious to see what they will do next!
I played the original version on my ps1 way back. seeing this and getting a chance to play it was so nostalgic. i love everything that they added and the guild quest will surely guide you with all the game mechanics that I have never bother doing on my first time playing so2 in ps1. good job for this. its makes me 20 years younger when I played it.
I don't understand when people say things are too easy "if I make this sword early game". Just... don't use the sword? It's really that simple. You can just choose not to equip it. Like, okay, if the battles are too easy with the base weapons for areas you go, sure, that's an issue, but if it's to easy because YOU made something to make it easy and then choose to USE that item, that's on YOU, not the game. C'mon now.
It is absolutely on the game devs. Using a sword, easily created, by the games biggest feature, should not break the game. That's like saying 'don't level up', or 'don't equip any weapons' if you want a challenge. Most games get it right. So2 does not. I shouldn't have to choose between using the games systems, or being challenged. Finding that balance is part of the game development process.
@@HellFireRPGs While I get what you're saying, if it were an item you could get through just playing, I'd agree, but it being an item you can craft by specifically choosing skills to build and aim for - you would not be likely to stumble on that in your first playthough, but on your second, sure. Just like you'd know the weaknesses of enemies and how to fight specific bosses on a second playthrough and that would make it inherently easier. The chances of you accidentally creating a broken weapon is very slim on your first go around - you have to aim for that. And even then, you can choose not to use it - but I'm one of those people who don't really care overmuch about challenge as long as the game and story is fun, so take that as you will. XD We can agree to disagree on this, and I think that's fine.
This is probably one of the best reviews of the game I've watched. You went into the right amount of depth when comparing the differences between the PS1 version and this remake. Several other reviews didn't really bother with your level of detail. I had already purchased the game at launch, but your video helped me feel even more confident that this really is a top-notch RPG (and superior remake). Thank you!
Thrilled that Star Ocean is alive and kicking! I thought Divine Force deserved more love, but the PC port issues made it almost unplayable on my CPU. Glad this one is receiving almost universal praise and supposedly butter smooth on everything but Switch.
I am glad to hear some good Motoi Sakuraba music again. Tales of Arise also had a good score. But this one reminded me a bit of his Golden Sun music (my favorites)
There are a small handful of games I played as a child that helped to define my taste in games going forward and the PS1 release of this game is one of them. I wanted a remake of this for a really long time. I tend to be pretty frugal when buying games and I've been on the fence about the $70+ price tag on this title. After watching this and seeing all the quality of life changes I still feel the price is still a little steep, but I'm much more comfortable with buying it now. Thanks for the review!
currently at lacuer, having tons of fun with this game; glad i waited for this remake to play this classic. i hope we get more of this new style retro remakes, it looks great; could be even done better with the ninokuni graphical approach, for some rpgs, not all.
@@HellFireRPGs yea gemdrops took a good rpg and made a great remake. I wish the Suikoden and other games from that era got that same treatment. If I was those companies and want easy money I would be at those devs door saying sup.
I still think I like the ps1 original more in a lot of ways, but I'd definitely recommend this to new players. The combat changes really brought down the experience on harder difficulties for me, and not having random encounters made dungeons easy and boring imo.
@@HellFireRPGs I mean, ya'll choose what load out to equip. You can easily make it more challenging by not making broken weapons and armour for where you are, or if you DO make them, not equipping them. It's really that simple. XD I accidentallied a big number weapon, so I just left it in the bag until I felt I needed it. :shrug:
Skip the 5th one. The divine force is great it has some call backs to 2 and 1. I really liked the last hope but I seem to be in the minority. 3 was okay but plot twist is kinda lame I think.
Everything I've seen certainly looks better than if they'd just ported the PSP version across. The character art's a major improvement, as the PSP's was... bad. Flat colouring, lacking any shading or detail. I'm of two minds when it comes to the quality of life stuff. Being able to Private Action on the fly is nice, and having enemies on screen instead of random encounters is honestly just something that should be standard. Not too sure about the fast travel and Private Actions being listed though, as part of the fun of them for me was seeing if there was anything new going on with your party as you progressed through the game. One thing I noticed when looking up videos is that there seems to be a glitch when what was originally the start of disc 2 occurs. It seems to only play the introduction of the music rather than kicking in with the full track when Rena realises where they are. Pity really, as I like that version of the track. Maybe it'll be patched.
I know what you mean. I hated it in ff16, for instance, where all the side quests were clearly marked for you. This took away any sense of discovery. I don't mind it here, purely for the reason that many PAs are timed. I dont want to be checking everywhere after every major event.
"Slightly jumping backwards which is something I never found useful" Oh, you mean the dodge mechanic? It's most useful on Universe mode. Also with certain battle skills leveled, you can use that to counter attack and do lots of damage to an enemy's shield. But yeah, this game was an excellent experience for me, even though I practically broke the game. Claude just becomes immortal at a certain point thanks to the crafting system.
Do you think the imbalance in difficulty has to do with the improvements in the battle system and ease of use for the item creation system? It seems like without building the game from the ground up you would have a hard time improving the faults from the old game without breaking the difficulty or having to rewrite all of the battle mechanics and creating artificial walls of difficulty to make it more "balanced".
The first game was a alsp imbalanced, but this is even worse. It's definitely because of the the easy IC, but also all the exp bonus' you can get. Apparently they rebalanced the difficulty, but it was nowhere near enough.
Played,beat, and still own the original SO2 from back in the day and just got the remake. I can't wait to boot this remake up tonight and relive all the joy I had back in 1998 along with quality of life improvements including not having to turn my PS1 upside down in order to prevent overheating. 😜
As a Star Ocean player , breaking the game early to finish the game as quickly possible and skipping everything because i've plays more than 30 times the game , is actually why i love the serie.. The game for me only starts when the Game is Finish. The Post Game Content Star Ocean offers , is the only reason I play the game 30 times. After you beat the game at UNIVERSE and beat all post game content bosses , then you start doing SOLO RUN , Solo Dias , Solo Chisato , I even saw someone did Solo RENA , can't wait to see the SOLO Celine runs and beat the game at UNIVERSE and all Post Game Content bosses and arena. I can break all the story in 8ish hour and i'm really slow player , then the game starts , i always finish with a 200 300 hours saved game at the end anyway because the STORY or game you call , is the tutorial battleground for me. Star Ocean III Till end of Time is the best from the serie for me since the post game content is WAY WAY WAY bigger with Sphere 211 and also the 4D Mode. My Biggest deception with Star Ocean II Remake is where is the 4D Mode ?
@@TheRoleplayer40k I'm very picky about these things. I prefer JP w/ English subtitles since the early 80s on 99% of anime and vgames. But this game was an exception for me in that I could go either way. You're a purist; I'm almost a purist. We're more alike than you think. At any rate, my opinion on English voice-acting--no matter how well done it is--is obviously not going to matter to an absolute purist.
I really think this is the best video game remake I've ever played and definitely the best RPG remake. They managed to take the original which was already good, improve it and all the while not lose the soul and charm that made the original a cult classic. I hope developers are taking notes for future remakes because this is how it is done.
Pay attention Capcom, Atlus, Bandai, & Sega. If you ever want an RPG remake half as good as this one. THIS is the standard Square Enix set. That was already raised by the FF7 Remake a few years ago. Simply insane.
I tried the demo and couldn't help but notice only having 2 shortcuts for abilities in battle and got stale and spammy real fast. Everything else looks great but trying to understand how combat keeps getting praised. Does this somehow change or get better as you progress?
It's still quite spammy, but it's so much better than the original. Later in the game you can chain your ability into another one, so this allows for four to be equipped at a time.
Yeah, Combo Link makes things MUCH more interesting, finding neat KM combos of moves they work well together is super fun. Extrapolate that to all the characters, including ones you have to play through a second time to get (since you can't fit everyone in your party the first time) and it really goes keep things interesting.
I'm having the exact same issue with the va. It's so, so very bad. It actually detracts from my enjoyment. But I'm enjoying the demo so far and am excited to finally have some time to dig in.
Just 100% this game a few weeks ago and loving everything they did with the game. If there's one thing that they fumbled with the game though was the new game +. I do wish It had an option to start the game again from level 1 and just keep all my items. It's pretty boring just steamrolling everything in new game +.
Welllll, I just bought this on Steam cause I never got to finish playing it in PS1. I'm pissed. I watched another reviewer who said you could switch between voice actors but didn't say they were shitty English ones and the others were only in Japanese. This pisses me off a lot.
![Ranking the Star Ocean series [Star Ocean I, II, III, IV, V, VI]](/img/1.gif)
I think this has been the best jrpg remake without question. It took me down memory lane and at the same time made it convenient with fast travel and made it a little bit more fun with fishing lol they nailed it with the visual style too. From start to finish, fantastic!
Absolutely!
Crazy how such a young and relatively unknown studio pulled one of the best, most faithful remakes ever. They're destined for greatness.
Hoping square turn to them again for the next big remake.
the best game remake ive ever seen, developers and game studio gotta take notes.
Agreed. The devs knew exactly what was needed.
xenogears should benefit a ton from these kind of quality remake.@@HellFireRPGs
Mafia 1 best remake ever
Kinda crazy that this was developed by Gemdrops of all studios (developers of Crystar) with absolutely no previous experience in remakes. I would love to know how they got the job from SE! And curious to see what they will do next!
They worked with SE, right? Interested to see how much input they had creatively.
Setting the bar for future remakes
I played the demo and liked it. It's on my wish list and will pick up on a sale.
I played the original version on my ps1 way back. seeing this and getting a chance to play it was so nostalgic. i love everything that they added and the guild quest will surely guide you with all the game mechanics that I have never bother doing on my first time playing so2 in ps1. good job for this. its makes me 20 years younger when I played it.
I’ve been loving this so far! Such a great game
I don't understand when people say things are too easy "if I make this sword early game". Just... don't use the sword? It's really that simple. You can just choose not to equip it.
Like, okay, if the battles are too easy with the base weapons for areas you go, sure, that's an issue, but if it's to easy because YOU made something to make it easy and then choose to USE that item, that's on YOU, not the game. C'mon now.
It is absolutely on the game devs. Using a sword, easily created, by the games biggest feature, should not break the game. That's like saying 'don't level up', or 'don't equip any weapons' if you want a challenge.
Most games get it right. So2 does not. I shouldn't have to choose between using the games systems, or being challenged. Finding that balance is part of the game development process.
@@HellFireRPGs While I get what you're saying, if it were an item you could get through just playing, I'd agree, but it being an item you can craft by specifically choosing skills to build and aim for - you would not be likely to stumble on that in your first playthough, but on your second, sure. Just like you'd know the weaknesses of enemies and how to fight specific bosses on a second playthrough and that would make it inherently easier.
The chances of you accidentally creating a broken weapon is very slim on your first go around - you have to aim for that. And even then, you can choose not to use it - but I'm one of those people who don't really care overmuch about challenge as long as the game and story is fun, so take that as you will. XD
We can agree to disagree on this, and I think that's fine.
This is probably one of the best reviews of the game I've watched. You went into the right amount of depth when comparing the differences between the PS1 version and this remake. Several other reviews didn't really bother with your level of detail. I had already purchased the game at launch, but your video helped me feel even more confident that this really is a top-notch RPG (and superior remake). Thank you!
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you found the review helpful 👍
Thrilled that Star Ocean is alive and kicking! I thought Divine Force deserved more love, but the PC port issues made it almost unplayable on my CPU. Glad this one is receiving almost universal praise and supposedly butter smooth on everything but Switch.
Yeah, I loved the Divine Force. That, or this remake, are my favourite two in the series.
I am glad to hear some good Motoi Sakuraba music again. Tales of Arise also had a good score. But this one reminded me a bit of his Golden Sun music (my favorites)
The game is absolutely amazing! We need more remakes like this.
There are a small handful of games I played as a child that helped to define my taste in games going forward and the PS1 release of this game is one of them. I wanted a remake of this for a really long time. I tend to be pretty frugal when buying games and I've been on the fence about the $70+ price tag on this title. After watching this and seeing all the quality of life changes I still feel the price is still a little steep, but I'm much more comfortable with buying it now. Thanks for the review!
currently at lacuer, having tons of fun with this game; glad i waited for this remake to play this classic. i hope we get more of this new style retro remakes, it looks great; could be even done better with the ninokuni graphical approach, for some rpgs, not all.
The greatest remake for a “good” rpg. I wish many many games from that golden time get this treatment.
Agreed. Most people would consider the OG A GREAT Rpg, though. I just couldn't see it.
@@HellFireRPGs yea gemdrops took a good rpg and made a great remake. I wish the Suikoden and other games from that era got that same treatment. If I was those companies and want easy money I would be at those devs door saying sup.
I still think I like the ps1 original more in a lot of ways, but I'd definitely recommend this to new players. The combat changes really brought down the experience on harder difficulties for me, and not having random encounters made dungeons easy and boring imo.
Definitely made the game easier, but I'm so happy for the removal of random encounters, lol
@@HellFireRPGs I mean, ya'll choose what load out to equip. You can easily make it more challenging by not making broken weapons and armour for where you are, or if you DO make them, not equipping them. It's really that simple. XD
I accidentallied a big number weapon, so I just left it in the bag until I felt I needed it. :shrug:
great review on a great game, I'm only 4 hours in but really loving it!!
Thanks 😊
This and Live-A-Live remakes are extremely high grade remakes
Live A Live was a literal masterpiece.
That is true.
I'm glad someone else is acknowledging how utterly awful, simple, and soulless the psp remake's art was. Rena looked like a baby, it was so weird
Haha yeah... really bad. I was being nice in the review, lol.
just finished the game last night. LOVED IT! are other Star Ocean games any good?
Skip the 5th one. The divine force is great it has some call backs to 2 and 1. I really liked the last hope but I seem to be in the minority. 3 was okay but plot twist is kinda lame I think.
Everything I've seen certainly looks better than if they'd just ported the PSP version across. The character art's a major improvement, as the PSP's was... bad. Flat colouring, lacking any shading or detail. I'm of two minds when it comes to the quality of life stuff. Being able to Private Action on the fly is nice, and having enemies on screen instead of random encounters is honestly just something that should be standard. Not too sure about the fast travel and Private Actions being listed though, as part of the fun of them for me was seeing if there was anything new going on with your party as you progressed through the game.
One thing I noticed when looking up videos is that there seems to be a glitch when what was originally the start of disc 2 occurs. It seems to only play the introduction of the music rather than kicking in with the full track when Rena realises where they are. Pity really, as I like that version of the track. Maybe it'll be patched.
I know what you mean. I hated it in ff16, for instance, where all the side quests were clearly marked for you. This took away any sense of discovery. I don't mind it here, purely for the reason that many PAs are timed. I dont want to be checking everywhere after every major event.
"Slightly jumping backwards which is something I never found useful"
Oh, you mean the dodge mechanic? It's most useful on Universe mode. Also with certain battle skills leveled, you can use that to counter attack and do lots of damage to an enemy's shield.
But yeah, this game was an excellent experience for me, even though I practically broke the game. Claude just becomes immortal at a certain point thanks to the crafting system.
Interesting. Never had to use it since I demolished everything 😃
I got it for PS5. I look forward to playing it.
Do you think the imbalance in difficulty has to do with the improvements in the battle system and ease of use for the item creation system? It seems like without building the game from the ground up you would have a hard time improving the faults from the old game without breaking the difficulty or having to rewrite all of the battle mechanics and creating artificial walls of difficulty to make it more "balanced".
The first game was a alsp imbalanced, but this is even worse. It's definitely because of the the easy IC, but also all the exp bonus' you can get. Apparently they rebalanced the difficulty, but it was nowhere near enough.
Played,beat, and still own the original SO2 from back in the day and just got the remake. I can't wait to boot this remake up tonight and relive all the joy I had back in 1998 along with quality of life improvements including not having to turn my PS1 upside down in order to prevent overheating. 😜
Ah, fun times!
Enjoy! You're going to love it!
TY@@HellFireRPGs
Wish they would remake Star ocean 4 international version and add previous star ocean characters like this too.
I really like Star Ocean 4. But I hope 3 is next. That game had so much potential but, I really didn't like it.
Fix that voice acting too lol
@@JustinZ83 I only use Jap voices that's why I said the international version lol
As a Star Ocean player , breaking the game early to finish the game as quickly possible and skipping everything because i've plays more than 30 times the game , is actually why i love the serie.. The game for me only starts when the Game is Finish. The Post Game Content Star Ocean offers , is the only reason I play the game 30 times. After you beat the game at UNIVERSE and beat all post game content bosses , then you start doing SOLO RUN , Solo Dias , Solo Chisato , I even saw someone did Solo RENA , can't wait to see the SOLO Celine runs and beat the game at UNIVERSE and all Post Game Content bosses and arena. I can break all the story in 8ish hour and i'm really slow player , then the game starts , i always finish with a 200 300 hours saved game at the end anyway because the STORY or game you call , is the tutorial battleground for me. Star Ocean III Till end of Time is the best from the serie for me since the post game content is WAY WAY WAY bigger with Sphere 211 and also the 4D Mode. My Biggest deception with Star Ocean II Remake is where is the 4D Mode ?
If the new game + would let you to choose what to carry over or start with normal levels, would add more replayability
I wish it'd let you carry over characters (just in battle)
@@EdreesesPieces that would be awesome also, that one could see the different outcomes on story pieces or reach the end with only Claude and Rena
The English voice-acting was superb, IMO. The only issue I had with it at all was the voice chosen for Mirage, and it didn't bother me much.
No one could pay me to listen to English VO in a JRPG
@@TheRoleplayer40k I'm very picky about these things. I prefer JP w/ English subtitles since the early 80s on 99% of anime and vgames. But this game was an exception for me in that I could go either way. You're a purist; I'm almost a purist. We're more alike than you think. At any rate, my opinion on English voice-acting--no matter how well done it is--is obviously not going to matter to an absolute purist.
I really think this is the best video game remake I've ever played and definitely the best RPG remake. They managed to take the original which was already good, improve it and all the while not lose the soul and charm that made the original a cult classic. I hope developers are taking notes for future remakes because this is how it is done.
Yeah, that's just it. It feels exactly like SO2 should.
100% agree. This is the new gold standard for remakes.
Pay attention Capcom, Atlus, Bandai, & Sega. If you ever want an RPG remake half as good as this one. THIS is the standard Square Enix set. That was already raised by the FF7 Remake a few years ago. Simply insane.
I tried the demo and couldn't help but notice only having 2 shortcuts for abilities in battle and got stale and spammy real fast. Everything else looks great but trying to understand how combat keeps getting praised. Does this somehow change or get better as you progress?
It's still quite spammy, but it's so much better than the original.
Later in the game you can chain your ability into another one, so this allows for four to be equipped at a time.
@@HellFireRPGs Gotcha. Good to know, thx for the info!
Yeah, Combo Link makes things MUCH more interesting, finding neat KM combos of moves they work well together is super fun. Extrapolate that to all the characters, including ones you have to play through a second time to get (since you can't fit everyone in your party the first time) and it really goes keep things interesting.
@@SliderFury1 oh nice, around how far in the game do you get that Combo Link?
Do u need to play the first one tho?
I'm having the exact same issue with the va. It's so, so very bad. It actually detracts from my enjoyment. But I'm enjoying the demo so far and am excited to finally have some time to dig in.
Imagine a Xenogears remake
They need to remake Xenogears next
Just 100% this game a few weeks ago and loving everything they did with the game. If there's one thing that they fumbled with the game though was the new game +. I do wish It had an option to start the game again from level 1 and just keep all my items. It's pretty boring just steamrolling everything in new game +.
Welllll, I just bought this on Steam cause I never got to finish playing it in PS1. I'm pissed. I watched another reviewer who said you could switch between voice actors but didn't say they were shitty English ones and the others were only in Japanese. This pisses me off a lot.
Great review. Little bit of a weird intonation ending every sentence bending down. Just use your own voice. Well written, well paced.
It was so much better than original 😂 and psp version was cringe with the awful character portraits
This one is a huge banger but the PERFECT remake so far is SaGa Frontier.
If only ff7 remake is done this way... It would be awesome
Is there a way to turn off voice acting?
Not that I know of. You could probably manually turn down the voice volume slider.
The thing about "breaking" this game is…you don't have to 🙂
Great review, coming from another first time player. Also, hi from Neo! Glad you're still doing the rpg thing
Awesome! Thanks mate. Who are you on Neo?