[Editor's note: Urashima really really really loves Star Ocean: The Second Story. -- CTZ]

During the year 1998, my love for RPGs grew quickly after playing a little game called Xenogears. After playing that, I developed a huge interest in Role Playing Games, and began to scour my monthly issues of various gaming magazines for more information on the newest RPGs. It was in one of these issues that I stumbled across a preview for Star Ocean: The Second Story. I don't remember what the preview said, but after reading it and seeing the screen shots, I was intrigued. So, on July 19th, 1999 I got the game as a birthday present, and to this day, I have never spent as much time with another console game as I did with Star Ocean: The Second Story.

116 hours and 52 minutes on one save file, out of five total. The total time I have played Star Ocean: The Second Story over the years comes to 281 Hours and 25 minutes. I have so far engaged in 6004 battles, acquired 46,219,398 FOL, and only have 3 characters maxed out at Level 255. So yeah, I've played me some Star Ocean over the years. While all this is sort of embarrassing to admit, it shows the amount of love I have for this game, and for the series in general. This game not only turned me into the tri-Ace fanboy I am today, it also started my love of non-traditional or active, real time battle systems in RPGs. 

After playing Star Ocean: The Second Story, along with other titles over the years like many of the Tales games, Valkyrie Profile, and of course Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, I can barely stand to play traditional turn based games. I first realized this when I tried playing through Final Fantasy IX, and found myself getting really bored with all random, turn based battling, feeling the need to spam Air Slashes and Mirror Slices at foes instead of waiting for my turn to come up. To be fair, though, the story in Final Fantasy IX didn't really excite me all that much.

Even today, I still can't really get into RPGs with turn based battles, one example being Lost Odyssey. If it wasn't for the story and the Ring system built into the combat, I would have been bored with it fairly quickly.

(Please Excuse the poor quality of this image, I was unable to find my Digital Camera and was forced to use my phone.)

So you might be asking yourself, "How one person can spend almost 12 days of his life, total, playing one Playstation RPG?" Well, setting aside comments like "having no social life" the answer is simple: It's the absurd amount of things you can do in this game beyond the main story.

First there's Star Ocean's signature Item Creation system. With this system, you can create works of art, identify unknown items, customize your weapons, cook meals, build machines and bombs, compound herbs into remedies, use Alchemy to turn ore into more valuable metals and precious jewels, activate an ability to search for random items on the field that you wouldn't be able to get otherwise, create duplicates of items with a magical camera and write books that can teach new skills to other characters.

If you do these tasks enough with a character, you have the chance of unlocking a Talent within the character. For example, Claude can't cook very well in the beginning of the game because he lacks a "Sense of Taste." Well, sure enough, if you have him cook enough dishes and raise his cooking skills higher, he can attain a "Sense of Taste." In doing so, his success at cooking will rise exponentially and he will also gain 100 SP he can use to round out his other Skills. There are 10 talents in all, but only 9 of them can be unlocked by everyone. Sadly, only magic users are able to gain the "Blessing of Mana," so no casting Southern Cross for you, Claude!

If that wasn't enough of a time sink, you also have Super Specialty skills, that combines the Item Creation and personal skills of your party in order to perform tasks as a group, which enable you to do the following:

Cook even more exotic food with "Master Chef," have your characters perform in an "Orchestra," create new armor with "Blacksmithing," haggle with shop keepers with "Identify All!" in order to either increase or decrease the prices of items you buy and sell, call a giant bunny named "Barney" that you can ride on for faster travel with the skill "Come On, Bunny!," or forge documents like Life Insurance policies that can be used to get you lot of money with the ability "Reverse Side." You can also write novels with the skill "Publishing" that you can sell to a Publishing company in game, and receive an absurd amount of money in royalties for their sales. For example, I just checked with the publisher in game and I received another 168,000 FOL in royalties which brings my FOL total to 46,387,398. FOL is the greatest name for a currency in a game, ever. I challenge you to find better!

Anyway, there are, of course, abilities that each of your characters can do individually, beyond what I have already mentioned. Skills like Familiar, which summons a carrier pigeon to your party that can be used to buy Items while you're in a dungeon. Characters can also compose music, and each character has a preferred instrument. Or you can go around Pickpocketing people in towns and cities for some more FOL or rare items. Of course, if you pickpocket or use Reverse Side, too much, characters start to lose relationship points for the one committing all the crimes.

Oh by the way, there is a hidden relationship point system in the game that allows you to form bonds of friendship, or even love, in game by doing certain actions through item creation, in battles, or through private actions. These relationship points determine who ends up with whom at the end of the game, with over 80 possible endings to see. In addition, they can also give characters the ability to burst into a rage in battle if their close friend/lover dies in the middle of combat, increasing their damage output.

(By my second save file, I started using other characters in battle, like Dias and Bowman. On every save file, I tried to experiment with as many different character combinations as possible.)

Private actions, mentioned above, are little scenes that can take place in any town. You activate them by pressing square to enter a town, and your party splits up and goes around to various points in the city. Your character, Claude or Rena, can then find these characters and have a chance to start a small scene with them, that usually always ends up in you making a decision which ultimately effects relationships in the party as well. Buying that necklace for Rena in Mars Village might increase your relationship with her, but you'll not be looked at as favorably by the rest of the females in your party. You also have to use Private Actions in order to recruit some of the game's characters, and your main character selection also dictates what characters you can and cannot recruit to a party. For example, having Claude as your main character means you can't recruit the rouge swordsman, and childhood friend of Rena's, Dias, who is one of the best fighters in the game.

It should also be mentioned that doing certain Private Actions in game also lead to the Story's final boss having his "limiter" removed, making him much, much more powerful. I actually did this without knowing it, and was forced to level 3 out of my 4 party characters to 255, along with equipping them with the best armor in game, in order to defeat him, which is why my first save file has a huge amount of hours played.

Moving on from Characters and Skills, there is also the required bonus dungeon in Star Ocean: The Second Story, known as the Cave of Trials. Thirteen long levels full of epic fights and challenging puzzles, with lots of new loot and skills to be had by all. Even Santa makes a random appearance as a vendor on level 6 of the Cave of Trials. He sells things ranging from rare ore to powerful accessories like the "Tri-Emblem" or even his Boots, which go for a lofty price of 10,000,000 FOL a pair! Once you beat this dungeon, you recieve, among many other things, the Silver Trumpet, which enables you to play a certain song with it, and summon the game's real ultimate boss, the Iseria-Queen, whom to this day, I have yet to beat.

The game also has a voice collection that fills up by meeting certain conditions in battle to hear little sayings from your characters like the following gems: Claude: "Crawd has advance forward! Heh," Ernest: "That was a Queer guy...," and Rena: "I'M COMMING!" That last one doesn't mean what you think it does...honest! The, at times, horrendous Voice Acting only adds to this title's charm. Also, it should be mentioned that obtaining certain percentages in the Voice Collection unlocks new features in the game as well, such as a Music Test and the extra difficulty settings of "Galaxy" and "Universe" to go along with the standard "Earth" difficulty.

Speaking of audio, the music in Star Ocean: The Second Story is wonderful. From the subdued theme of the snowy village of Giveaway, to the fast paced battle themes, Motoi Sakuraba really did a fantastic job with the music in this game.

(I'd love to get my hands on that Limited Edition Star Ocean PSP...The Japanese get all the cool ish.)

Honestly, there's so much game to be had in these two discs that, even with 281 hours invested in it, I still have yet to see everything. Private Actions, Endings, and of course I have yet to beat that damn Iselia-Queen, not to mention beating everything on the "Galaxy" or "Universe" settings. Even with all this time invested in the Playstation release, I can still safely say that I look forward to logging many more hours with this game when it's "Remixed" version, Star Ocean: Second Evolution, releases next year.

Ura-