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News Star Ocean The Second Story R (Switch /PS4+5/Steam), November 2, 2023, [Update]: Demo now available

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Bokuringo

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Two worlds. One fateful encounter.

Introducing a modern 2.5D remake of one of our most beloved titles - #StarOcean The Second Story R.

Landing on Nintendo Switch, PS5/4 and Steam on November 2, 2023.
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Edit: Gemdrops in charge of development:


[Title Announcement: SO2R]

After 25 years long years, the "STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY" remake is coming out on Nov. 2nd✨

Expect beautiful 3D visuals & extra exhilarating battles...and more updates soon😍

Oh, and Gemdrops is handling all the development for this one😎
#SO2R
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I did not expect this art style

as someone who started with Star Ocean 3 and pretty much disliked the series since, convince me that this is good
 
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Good lord it looks delicious! Give the same treatment every PS1 classic, Square, especially... XENOGEARS!

Hopefully we'll get rest of the SO games on Switch too, no matter how mediocre they are.
 
If you're unfamiliar with Star Ocean and are only gonna try out one of them, this is probably the one to try. It's the most "classic RPG" of the bunch and has a lot of neat ideas for the time. The later games are still good for the most part, but they are a, uh, more acquired taste. This one is a little bit easier to cope with Tri-Ace being Tri-Ace.
 
9-Volt said:
Good lord it looks delicious! Give the same treatment every PS1 classic, Square, especially... XENOGEARS!

Hopefully we'll get rest of the SO games on Switch too, no matter how mediocre they are.
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Yeah, it’s the first thing that came to my mind seeing the remake style.
 
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Man, this seems like HD-2D pushed the wrong way. Stuff like Octopath is at least trying to ape the look of an SNES game and usually keeps the characters at about the same proportions on screen as they'd be in an SNES game, but here it seems like a more modern dynamic 3D world and camera with giganto zoomed in pixel characters on top.
 
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Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.

- I'm coming, I'm coming. Earthquake !
9999 HP on the whole team
Game Over

I. can't. wait.

The game comes literally one week before my birthday, what more could I ask ?!
 
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This caught my attention in the direct. I never played any of the games, never heard of them at all for that matter.
Now I LOVED all the HD2D games from Square.
And I like Xenoblade, BD, Secret of Mana etc.
Would this game be for me?
 
This was my favorite announcement from the direct. The style is gorgeous!
 
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Game of the direct for me.

Seems odd that they picked this for the 2DHD treatment after the first one just got a sort of remaster but hey, I’ll take it, it’s the best in the series.
 
I bought First Departure R like 100,000 years ago. I should probably play it.
 
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Favorite new announcement from the Direct for sure, though Pikmin 4 was my highlight overall

Never played a Star Ocean (though 6 from last year looked nice) but this looks very much up my alley
 
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hannibunny2411 said:
This caught my attention in the direct. I never played any of the games, never heard of them at all for that matter.
Now I LOVED all the HD2D games from Square.
And I like Xenoblade, BD, Secret of Mana etc.
Would this game be for me?
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Star Ocean is a series made by a "rival" team from the Tales of games.
Both series have the same composer, Motoï Sakuraba (Valkyrie Profile, Golden Sun, Baten Kaitos).

In Star Ocean and especially the second game, you have a Skill system that allows each of your character to create items, armors, weapons, restoration, food, but also learn to play instruments and then make special music that gives buffs in battle, they can even learn to make a copy or any item in the game.

But then, once two or more of your teammates learn the same ability, you unlock the "Team Skills", where your entire team add their skill level to make even bigger items.

The Item Creation system in Star Ocean is a staple and SO 2 is the best in this category. You can even make fake gold to sleep freely in inns, cheat vendors, cheat the XP system... you can steal items from every single NPC... including all your team mates in all the cities with Personal Events. Just make sure they don't see you doing it because your affinity with them will drop quite a bit.

The affinity of each character also play with how much they care for each other in battle (sometimes a character can go berserk if they see a loved one killed in battle). It also impact the numerous endings of the game (+70).
 
Mandos said:
Should really start my copy of the first one on switch
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I've had that one wishlisted for years, never pulled the trigger cause I'm antsy on new RPG series lol.

but wow, this was one of the standouts in the Direct. I might make this my November game.
 
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Ah! I called it in the Direct thread!

Probably the highlight of the show for me as well.

Also SE, you don't have to pretend, this is HD-2D just applied to PSX era visuals. We know.
 
I'm so happy, this is one of my favorite RPG, despite its flaws.

Since there's quite a budget this time, I really hope the game will be translated in french.
The original PS1 game was (badly) translated in french.
The PSP Remaster wasn't, for no good reason.

Don't mess up this time, Square.
 
Koren Lesthe said:
I'm so happy, this is one of my favorite RPG, despite its flaws.

Since there's quite a budget this time, I really hope the game will be translated in french.
The original PS1 game was (badly) translated in french.
The PSP Remaster wasn't, for no good reason.

Don't mess up this time, Square.
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I've got some great news for you then. The game is being translated into multiple languages, see here.

SE is so weird though, "let's price this attractive, full remake 50$/E and localize it in multiple languages" this time in Italian too, which they've skipped like crazy for last year's releases, while others are premium priced on console (SO 6 in europe is 70), priced the same when they're more on the side of a remaster (TO: Reborn) AND not localized in as many languages.

I guess it just shows how much they trust their HD-2D line to be profitable?
 
They did a lot more work than I was expecting. I thought it would just be a port of the PSP version.

Star Ocean is weird in that it should be a series that I loved but I'm actually kind of mild on it. I tried to get into Star Ocean games multiple times, including 2, and they never clicked. But I did play the latest SO to completion and I actually really enjoyed it. I'm hoping the enhancements and potential improvements to SO2 will make the game finally click. Game looks beautiful as do the new character portraits.
 
Vernal said:
I've got some great news for you then. The game is being translated into multiple languages, see here.

SE is so weird though, "let's price this attractive, full remake 50$/E and localize it in multiple languages" this time in Italian too, which they've skipped like crazy for last year's releases, while others are premium priced on console (SO 6 in europe is 70), priced the same when they're more on the side of a remaster (TO: Reborn) AND not localized in as many languages.

I guess it just shows how much they trust their HD-2D line to be profitable?
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Thank you !
 
Great compromise with the art style. HD-2D looks fantastic, but it isn't something that can be applied to everything. Seeing Square branch out with the artstyles for their remakes is a good sign.

A Xenogears remake in this style would be fantastic, think it's an inevitability at some point.
 
0
This looks really good, and it seems like I can start with this game and it's the best of the series.
How good is the story? Or is it a more gameplay focused jrpg?
 
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Maxrunner said:
Was the original a Playstation game? Seems only Sony consoles gets Square Enix exclusives...and then people wonder why Ms wants to buy companies lol
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if MS wants to those AAA games, they need to counter offer Sony

if MS wants games like this, they need to create a space where these games can sell well
 
ILikeFeet said:
if MS wants to those AAA games, they need to counter offer Sony

if MS wants games like this, they need to create a space where these games can sell well
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I just find strange that the best selling console which happens to be from a japanese company too, cant seem to get an exclusive from a Japanese third party....
 
I was in a this-could-have-been-an-email meeting when this was shown in the Nintendo Direct so I was only partially paying attention and thought this was a remaster of Star Ocean: Second Evolution on PSP.

I’m much more excited about a full remake.

 
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Maxrunner said:
I just find strange that the best selling console which happens to be from a japanese company too, cant seem to get an exclusive from a Japanese third party....
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it's strange to all of us, but I stopped trying to rationalize it. all the theories has too many holes, to the point where the simplest answer (they just don't wanna) is the least swiss cheese
 
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I haven't played this game since the PSP remake, this is a definite must buy for me. At the beginning of the Switch era if you were to tell me that Square Enix would be one of the console's biggest supporters I would have laughed my head off, but they have really shined on the system.
Aostia82 said:
is this some sort of new frontier for the HD2D style?
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Nah, only Team Asano has made use of the HD2D aesthetic. I'm sure the team behind this game were inspired, but this is it's own thing.
Maxrunner said:
Was the original a Playstation game? Seems only Sony consoles gets Square Enix exclusives...and then people wonder why Ms wants to buy companies lol
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There have been plenty of SE exclusives on the Switch: Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default II, Triangle Strategy, Dragon Quest Treasures, Harvestella, TWEWY Final Remix, Collection of Mana, and Collection of SaGa. Even Live A Live was a console exclusive until recently.
 
Another trailer straight from the SquareEnix YT channel (featuring a part of "Rena's Theme") :



BTW, Motoï Sakuraba is updating the entire soundtrack of the game.

This mean an orchestral version of "Integral Body and Imperfect Soul". The song that tells you "You're going to die without any mercy".

Warning :
No spoiler in the video, but this is the final boss theme song.

 
So SQEX calls the art/graphics style for this one 3Dx2D, huh?

Looked a bit confusing at first, but i dig it. HD2D and now this, SQEX AA teams bring the creativity in the company.
 
I can't wait for this!

I'm completely blind to the story so I'm going to try to go into this fresh! Star Ocean has always been a blindspot and this looks great!
 
Bonejack said:
So SQEX calls the art/graphics style for this one 3Dx2D, huh?

Looked a bit confusing at first, but i dig it. HD2D and now this, SQEX AA teams bring the creativity in the company.
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Square should really call a spade a spade ;P It's not a bad idea though, they've already kind of oversaturated the HD-2D brand, better to try and give this a different spin.

Obviously it's not quite the same thing as the games that preceded it, but SO 2 R wouldn't exist the way it is without Octopath (which is no doubt the most important game for the company in years, on its influence alone), and that's perfectly great of course! Well... exept for the tiny interception of people who love SE's RPGs and flat out dislike this look.



Thinking about the game's artstyle a little more I feel like it looks good but not quite as good as the SNES inspired HD-2D titles. Like, in the tweet above it's great, but at times the more pronounced geometry and post-processing make it less cohesive. I feel like they can get away with the ultra post-processed look better with stuff like Octo or TriStrat because they have a more abstract quality to their 3D environments, here it doesn't quite always work.
 
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