Preview: Star Ocean The Second Story R Feels Like a Brand New Experience

Star Ocean The Second Story was one of the first games I ever played on the PSP. After working a job in high school a little over a decade ago, I saved up enough cash to get a the handheld with a few games, including the second entry in this series I hadn’t previously touched. My newfound JRPG spirit felt this game calling to me, and I enjoyed it. Now, it’s a chance to return on new platforms, with a demo offering a first taste of the game.

The story of Claude C. Kenny and Rena Lanford was a decent one, even if it didn’t quite hook me in the ways I hoped. Having played the PSP version all through the way through to the end from Claude’s perspective, I was marginally optimistic about the upcoming remake since the game was enjoyable but didn’t feel too special to me at the time. After playing Star Ocean The Second Story R for a few hours on Nintendo Switch, I can confidently say that this is one of the biggest surprises of the year for me. The prologue demo lets players experience up to three hours of the starting game, including three towns, two dungeons, and a couple of bosses. The best part? Your save carries over when the full release happens.

Since I played from Claude’s perspective the first time around, I used this opportunity to check out Rena’s point of view. This, coupled with the incredibly detailed remake environments, created an experience that legitimately felt almost entirely new to me. Despite some familiarity with the characters, there is enough distance and freshness to this remake that you could almost tell me it’s a brand new game in the series and I’d believe you.

For starters, there is the absolutely stunning visual design of this game. While not quite HD-2D in the vein of Octopath Traveler II and the like, it has this oddly beautiful blend of remade 2D sprite characters on top of a fully 3D and visually-arresting world. There is such rich detail in all of the towns, dungeons, forests, and locations you visit in this demo.

This modern 3D visual style creates such a unique juxtaposition with the nostalgic and intentionally old-school character designs. It helps, too, that the 2D portrait art used sometimes in cutscenes is much richer than the ones in the PSP version. I just wished they were used more often in the trial.

I could go on for days about how tremendous this art style looks in the early hours, including some of the best lighting I’ve seen in a game. The colors looked terrific on my Nintendo Switch OLED screen and it rivals the recent Square Enix games I also loved visually, such as the aforementioned Octopath Traveler II and Triangle Strategy.

When it comes to the gameplay, this is where a bit of the simplicity from the original game remains. Star Ocean The Second Story R features a pretty untouched gameplay system from my time with it so far, with mostly the same hack-and-slash action gameplay as before. The game wasn’t too hard in the opening hours, usually seeing me mashing the same attack button repeatedly outside of the occasional healing art.

So far, this game doesn’t do anything too deep gameplay-wise and that goes for the dungeons as well. The opening dungeons are rather straightforward, with a couple of branching paths that lead to treasure, optional enemies, and the like. Even still, battles go by so fast with the tactics you can give to party members that I actually appreciated the more fluid and simplistic nature.

This allowed me to spend more time exploring the world map, going from town to town, and seeing the world in this newfound way. I barely remember the story, too, so the transition to Rena’s perspective offered plot points that were surprising to me and did just enough to reel me in for the full release.

Even though I only played this game a little over a decade ago, I’ve never experienced a remake like this where I played the previous form and the new version almost feels like a brand new title. This has me so excited to continue following the storyline of the lost space guy Claude and his elf-like friend Rena in stopping a monstrous magical globe for a second time. This could be a real treat for both familiar existing fans like myself and newcomers alike.

Star Ocean The Second Story R releases for Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, and PC on November 2, 2023. A prologue demo is available right now on all platforms.