If you have fond memories of the original, this game is an easy recommend. This is a top-tier remake that clearly understands what was good about the original, but is also not afraid of streamlining some of the 25+ year old cruft and making a few welcome modernizing changes. Judged purely as a remake, it may be the best one I've played, and as game on its own merits, I think it is great.

If you are not familiar with the original game, then it becomes a much less clear-cut a recommendation. For all that I just described it as great, Star Ocean 2 is not particularly good on the traditional axes of evaluation. The plot is mediocre in the extreme. The characters are alright, but their interactions are often awkwardly written. Even with a couple tweaks, the combat is pretty bad by modern standards.

So what does this game have to recommend it? In the context of a console RPG from 1998, it is filled with a ridiculous amount of stuff around a skill and crafting system, creating a game that clearly wants to be broken over your knee. You can often craft gear way more powerful than what you will get from chests or shops, or items with wild effects completely out of line with the mundane story. It feels intentional that you spend 30-50% of your first playthrough messing around in menus. It is possible to get arguably the best weapon in the game (before the post final-boss content) around 40% of the way through the game. You can collect royalties on books you published. You can forge a document that lets you tell an inn-keeper that you get to stay at their inn for free for the rest of the game.

As might be concluded from the previous paragraph, the difficulty of the game can be uneven. If playing on a higher difficulty, and particularly at the beginning of the game, it can be easy to completely steam roll random encounters, and then get destroyed by the next boss. Don't be afraid to turn the difficulty up and down. When you fail an encounter, the game gives you an opportunity to change gear/party, as well as the difficulty.

As mentioned above, this game is a remake of a game that is now more than 25 years old. It has made a lot of good changes to modernize the game, but at its core, it is still a game from 1998. There are a lot of reasons to give this game a pass. It truly isn't for everyone. But if all my warnings haven't scared you away, check it out. I have difficulty thinking of games that do the same sorts of things as this game; it truly sets itself apart.

Not recommended.

The short of it: Like its predecessor, what is marketed to be a compelling space opera is anything but. The veneer of depth and ton of skill menus don't save a script with less to say than that robin hood episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and some severely lacking gameplay. It's an epic about barely anything.

The long of it:
This is a semi-unique party-based action jrpg with a choice of two main protagonists. The effect of the choice you make is fairly small. There are further characters that can be recruited, some of which are mutually exclusive. You won't know which are unless you read a guide in advance as even after the choice is made it's not clear why the other character(s) will have been lost. There's a maximum party limit of 8, which would give the game decent replayability if it was worth replaying.

There is an expansive skill system with skills like music and art and pickpocketing and machinery. While a lot of these are really cool in concept, they tend to be much less impressive in practice. I probably spent as much time in menus as I did actually playing the game, with only a few things to really show for it. It's a very uneven system that isn't even fully available to play with until the endgame, but at least it's an interesting diversion. Almost every character in the game has three items to steal, which is dedication on the developer's part and helps realize the game world- even if the plot and setting seek to undermine it.

"Star Ocean" is straight up a misnomer for most of these games. Having big sweeping star systems in the title screen, images of a ship in space, naming the difficulties "earth, galaxy and universe", having a moon hairclip on the heroine and having little stars over everyone's portraits for level up XP is much ado about nothing; this is not a space opera by any means. I don't know if it's been willfully mis-marketed or if someone ridiculous is being insistent, but you don't really do anything in a spaceship and the vast majority of the games is tooling around on a... sorta medieval planet with a sword. It's either dishonest or stupid, and I'm not sure which- though based on the writing, I'm leaning towards the latter.

So, what works?

The music's really nice. I think the base tracks were already pretty decent, but they clearly did a good job filling out the tracks here. Nothing too memorable besides the title screen and the town/dramatic music, but credit where credit is due.

The anime character portrait art is pretty phenomenal and although it is only partially animated in each pose, it's still pretty stylistically impressive. It lends a lot of credence and gravitas to the idea that this game is telling a grand, timeless story- but it is not.

What's mixed?

The Length. It took me 40 hours on the second hardest difficulty (Universe) to beat the game, and that was with the help of some overpowered gear that seriously sped up the fights as well as some grinding. I also wasted a lot of time doing sections out of order to see what was possible and what wasn't early on. Despite playing for 40 hours, it felt like 80 with all of the menuing FOMO and the high enemy HP. Conceivably this game could be beaten much quicker on a lower difficulty.

The Graphics. I mentioned the character art before, and there are also some stunning cutscenes and boss art. However, this game has a weird habit of blending cutscenes with sprites and having very awkward movement for the player sprites. It's a bit strange.

The progression. The skills and battle skills are a lot of knobs to turn and it seems like there was some thought put into not unlocking too many battle skills at once. That said, the pacing is very awkward- one character who has at least one dragon head doesn't get a skill that makes use of that dragon head until like, level 70. After the first half of the game, non-heal, non-buff, non-cure magic characters end up not being worth using.

What doesn't work?

The Battle system. There are a handful of really good fights through the game and a couple good generic enemies, but especially on universe and above the game basically gives super armour, HP bloat, damage bloat, and teleportation to compensate for their meagre AI. An interesting counter system is generally lost in the sauce as in the early game there's often too many enemies to counter and in the late game it's rarely worth it. Your own character's AI and your allies' AI are similarly miserable, with characters routinely making questionable spacing decisions due to issues with the Y and Z axis. Some of the hard encounters don't really have good gear to counter or exploit it, and there's kind of a lack of elemental weapons outside of fire. I had a fire sword with paralysis that stomped a lot of the first half of the game but after that I never saw a single status effect work on an enemy. A lot of wizard enemies have the same hp value as the knights defending them and can't be easily knocked out of casting (and mute seemed never to work).

That said, some of the last few boss fights in the game were really fun and even kind of inventive. They'd probably be more fun if I could see what was happening under all the spells, but still.

The writing: The antagonists' plan in the first half is somewhat interesting and breeds intrigue and there's a couple interesting bits in the second half (and even some good character moments) but even for a JRPG of this time period some of the writing is just not very good. The motivations don't really progress beyond "Need to stop Bad Thing" and every time it seems like something's about to be morally ambiguous, any interesting questions are drowned in a shallow pool of water. A lot of the characters are not consistently written and a lot of characters join you for the weakest of reasons and have no connection or stakes within the plot or even particularly seem to have a job or goals. The romantic triangle at the end of the first third of the game is also just particularly insipid with characters asking about motivations of a character when they should be gearing up for the fight of their lives. The resolution to the game's plot is exceedingly weak to the point where you're not sure why anyone here did almost anything.

In conclusion:
This is a lot of spit-shine for a game with nothing to say and fairly mediocre and mashy gameplay. Even the Phantasy Star series is going to scratch the science fantasy RPG itch better than this. Tri-ace's other series were better. Some interesting ideas that don't really work here, don't buy the hype.

Great game! Still suffers from some of the pacing issues and simplistic combat that the original had, but overall a really fun experience.

The visuals are mostly beautiful, and I actually like the contrast between high-fidelity 3D and pixel art; although, I do think they should have upped the sprites to being 32x64 or larger.

Brilliant remake of a classic JRPG that has exceeded my expectations. The remake we didn't ask for, but it has managed breathe new life into the best Star Ocean game. If you've played the original I highly recommend playing this. This is now the definitive way to play Star Ocean 2.

Good game overall has its quirks. Never played the original.
- Max Determination
- Max Penmenship on Claude
- Max Survival and Training
- Max Scouting
Easy XP farm without fighting gg
Then max Customization/Alchemy GG you won the game

The story is okay. It falls apart as you go. The beginning is never explained. The end doesn't make sense as well. A great deal of plot holes. Gameplay is fun though. I'd buy on sale not for full price imo.