Que Star Ocean: The Second Evolution. Developed by TOSE and published by Square Enix, the game is advertised as an "enhanced remake" of one of the greatest JRPG-styled games to set up camp on the original PlayStation. The definition of "enhanced remake" is surely debatable, however. While the port did a great job of giving the series some well-deserved popularity and can be credited for keeping the majority of the game in tact, there was, unfortunately, a large amount of unecessary changes that upset me and changed me into the old grandpa badgering those GameFAQs kids to get off my lawn. I was hoping more for bug-fixes served with a side of additional bonus material and drenched in superb voice acting, which in this day and age I suppose is too much to ask for. As much as this might upset veterans to the Star Ocean series, this game is still superb and is very promising to those who have yet to touch the original.
Upon receiving the game, I immediately popped the UMD into my PSP. I was greeted with a character selection screen - in Second Evolution, you may choose between one of two main characters to control through the entire storyline. There's Claude C. Kenny, heroboy extraordinaire, your generic RPG leader with a love for shiny swords and hot anime-babes. You can also choose Rena Lanford, a blue-haired magician who lives in a small town on an underdeveloped planet called "Expel". It's always great to let the gamer make decisions, and the double-hero system is said to add lots of replayability, however, apart from a slightly different view of the story and one different recruitable character between the scenarios, the option does not bring much to the storyline.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p105/Icy_X-Cel/Pics/939440_20090116_screen005.jpg
Oh, storyline. If you don't appreciate it before booting up the game, you're going to hit your first snag. The first twenty or so minutes are composed of an extreme amount of storyline development, which for the majority of the time (for those new to the game) makes little to no sense and allows extremely limited control for the gamer. At this time you'll get to experience the voice acting, which is usually a hit or miss. The remake included almost 100% voiced dialogue, and for the most part this is good. A lot of heroes and side characters match their portrait and sound as believable as possible in a medievil/galaxy travelling/spaceships and dragons atmosphere. For example, the big baddies in the game (named the 10 Wise Men) have excellent voice actors and scenes involving them are very interesting and cool. Nothing's perfect though, and for every three that are well done, there's one that just ruins the immersive feeling. Whether the voice actor is being very monotone as if reading off of a script (Celine), or not fitting their character portrait at all (any king in the game, Ernest, etc.), or just being weird (Claude, Rena), you're sure to find a VA that you don't much care for. It comes at a small price, though, as the majority of the voice acting is good enough to capture your attention.
The beginning may seem more like a chore than a game, but if you get through it you'll finally be rewarded with some playtime. You're eventually given complete control of the character to go do whatever tickles your fancy, be it fighting monsters on the world map or exploring a city miles away from your next main destination. As you start fighting more and the game begins involving you, the story begins to pick up and the experience gets better.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p105/Icy_X-Cel/Pics/939440_20090116_screen022.jpg
After leaving the initial town of Arlia and setting foot onto the world map, you'll shortly have an encounter with your first baddie in the game. You have a few different ways of going about combat, depending on who you're controlling and the party you're using. You can choose to take control of a fighter, and either mash X to unleash a flurry of regular attacks, or go double team another monster one of your friendly AI members are targeting, or use some special moves that pump out more damaging, multiple hit, and/or area of effect destruction to overwhelm the enemy. There's also the important mages, which have the ability to either heal/buff the team to help get the job done faster, or unleash some high-damaging spells to support the fighters up front. The battle system is very original and is great fun if you keep an active position on the field. It also helps to create different set-ups and strategies or to use different special moves to add variety to the battle system and keep you focused on the game.
You get experience points after each battle, which help boost your strength up and keep your team top-notch, and upon leveling up you get "skill points" to level up different skills. The freedom of leveling these skills is very fun; you can choose whether you want your hack'n'slash fighter to be a cook and create dishes to heal up the team in bad situations or if you want to give them the chore of being a machinist to create new items for battle. After unlocking item creation skills, you'll need to find materials needed to use it, and then you'll be able to create better items for the party. While the item creation system is unique and important to the game, at times it can become repetitive and very stale and after seeing the item creation screen two thousand times you might be a little wore out. It's a plus on the originality scale but a drop off the fun factor.
The plot revolves around the generic "evil guys want to destroy the world" scenario, and in all honesty there's not a lot of excitement in it. Character conversations can often be quirky, and as stated previously the voice acting is done well, but a lot of scenarios take on a "we have to be the hero " role, and if you find a dispute in the storyline you sure can bet you've got to solve it. The words become laughable at times when the characters make statements such as "We have to give it our very best!" or "Let's try really hard to save the day!". There's also some bursts of major plot development like in the beginning where you lose control of your character for anywhere between ten and twenty minutes. This would be great if there was something important happening, but a lot of the conversations consist of characters not knowing what's going on and trying to think of ways to solve the problem or something of the sort and thus sometimes may lure the gamer to sleep.http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p105/Icy_X-Cel/Pics/939440_20090116_screen031.jpg
The problems I had with the "enhanced port" may seem minor, but most of them are quite a nuisance. The biggest thing is the renaming of almost EVERYTHING in the game, from skills, to items and their descriptions, to towns or supporting characters. Whether they're rediculously small and completely unecessary (Cross to Krosse, Mars to Marze, Lacour to Lacuer, etc.) or just unecessary (Eternal Sphere to Aeterna, Tournament of Arms to Armory Contest, Sage's Stone to Philsopher's Stone, etc.), they're annoying for us veterans and have lead to a ton of confusion for me when trying to help others on other discussion boards. AI was also dumbed down in the remake, and often times they refuse to use their skills or help a teammate, or they'll just stand there while five enemies pelt them from all sides. For whatever reason, they also decided to get rid of the "Full-Active" combat tactic which allowed the player to move however they wanted an unleash an attack from anywhere on the field. They kept "Semi-Active" and "Auto" which makes your character always have a monster targeted for an attack.
If I had to give you an honest opinion on whether or not I think this game is worth $50, I'd say yes. Some of the changes made to the game kill me and a lot of the storyline is annoying, but the overall experience is, simply put, fun. The original was the best game I had ever played, and I've put some 150 hours into the PSP remake. If you have a PSP it is a title you should not miss, despite some downsides.
