Amazingly, despite my work schedule I still managed to finish a rather old-school RPG. I finished Star ocean: Second Evolution for the PSP today, clocking in 30 hours of playtime. I have to say I quite enjoy playing RPGs on handhelds. RPGs are usually rather long games so it’s nice being able to handle them in bite-sized chunks while commuting, et cetera.
Star Ocean: The Second Story was probably one of the best Japanese RPGs to come out of the Playstation era, despite the lackluster translations of that time (hey, it was pre-year 2000, all translations were pretty bad then!) Now comes the PSP enhanced remake, featuring a brand new retranslation, anime cutscenes, new VAs, an additional character, et cetera. The works! I’ve been playing it during off times for about two weeks, and pretty much had Claude overlevelled most of the time since I never removed him from the party.
With the PS1 version I never managed to complete the optional stuff like the Cave of Trials bonus dungeon and the harder difficulty levels due to lack of time. Hopefully the handheld version will allow me to do those things; I will probably play the Rena story on one of the higher difficulty levels.
The PSP version is spot-on awesome, and makes me want to play Star Ocean: Til the End of Time again. I’m glad that there are still some good games coming out on the PSP despite the high level of piracy on the platform (not that I’m helping =/) Hopefully Sony comes out with a handheld that can support the PS2 generation of games.
Star Ocean: Second Evolution is a very deep game with a decent story and great battle system plus lots of extra stuff to do, so it’s highly recommended, especially for fans of the PS1 version.
Side Note: Luckily, I haven’t tried Star Ocean: First Departure. I say luckily because it’s supposedly quite bad. It was a generation ahead of Second Story so I guess they weren’t very good then.
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