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Star Ocean The Second Story R

Recently finished Star Ocean The Second Story R, last year’s remaster of a remake of second Star Ocean game. It was fine. It was pretty average PS1 jrpg with some polish. Some of the issues are on me, I didn’t enjoy the battle mechanics, and some of that could be that I’m bad at games, but I do blame the game little bit.

Star Ocean was created by some of the same people who made original Tales of Phantasia, and that shows in few ways, importantly the battle system is very similar to Tales of. You fight in real time, smacking enemies, using special skills that you get plenty of, but can only use 4 on active character. Meanwhile your party is controlled by AI who ether stands back and instantly wastes all it’s MP on casters or rushes in and dies on melee fighters. There is also Perfect Counter, if you dodge enemy’s move you get some mp (or was it SP in this game) and do a counter attack. I stopped trying that after first quarter of the game, because while the timing is somewhat lenient, the punishment for missing is extremely harsh and the battles become such a particle mess that good luck trying to see when enemy is flashing red. Example below isn’t even game at it’s worst, but maybe one gets the idea.

On more positive note, Second Story’s handling of characters is super neat. Just the fact that outside of the two main characters every party member is optional, and there are more potential party members than room in party and that there are characters I never even saw, or just saw in passing is amazing. And while some spent most story scenes just standing around, others had enough dialogue that I almost forgot that I could have told them to fuck off when they wanted to join my party. Also ability to go to town and tell party to split and each individual goes to hang out on their own, is neat. Also you can choose which of the game’s two main characters you follow, which gives some unique scenes. Different main perspective and ability to build a completely different party has made me think that I might want to eventually replay the game, despite all my other negativity towards it.

So I mentioned how tri-Ace the developer of Star Ocean was made by some of the people who made Tales of Phantasia. And Tales of Phantasia has scene where newly developed super magic weapon is used to destroy an army of monsters, tri-Ace people must have really liked that bit, because they did it again in Second Story. Fantasy kingdom builds a big cannon that destroys an army of monsters and even leaves a huge crater on the ground in a scene that was impressive and shocking. It made my thoughts to race, sure the weapon was made against the threat of monsters, but what after that, what does it mean for this world when one kingdom has magical super weapon of potential mass destruction. I wondered such things, the game didn’t seem to care. Now the game is one with lots of optional characters, optional dialogue, lots of things I could have missed, but my experience any horrifying implications of such weapon were ignored and focus was on “rah rah we blew up the monsters and now we gone and destroy the rest of them”. And that was that.

That somewhat describes my overall feels of the story as whole. It was fine, but I wish there was bit more and maybe there is, maybe I lacked the characters or information that gave things that felt lacking the extra bit of depth I would have liked. And it’s not like I ask much I’m simple person, easy to entertain. As it is, my favorite aspects of the story where probably the ones where it most leaned into the game being basically a Star Trek episode.

That was Star Ocean The Second Story R for me. I don’t feel like I had missed too much having never played it or any other Star Ocean before. And while I wasn’t super into it, I still have Star Ocean the Divine Force on my wishlist, wanting to play that eventually and maybe see how does more modern Star Ocean look like.

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Summoning, binding, warding and dismissal being four different disciplines, just gave me an idea for a rpg party...

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fromsoftware comic

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Estelle Bright wedding outfit ideas.

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I made a new version of my Cooking by the Book edit starring Marcille and featuring Falin (contains spoilers)

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Sephiroth in Rebirth: "it's me, Cloud, I'm Sephiroth, speaking to you inside your brain, listen to me, Cloud, leave the girl, we don't need her, come with me and join my Reunion, we'll have swordfight times in space, doo-doo-doo-doo, yeah, you need me, Cloud, your free will is an illusion-"

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Thoughts scattered like Sakura petals on wind.

Finished the first Sakura Wars on Sega Saturn tonight and, if it wasn’t obvious from my previous posts on it, I loved it. Enjoyed the whole journey and will definitely play the rest of the series. Not right now, Unicorn Overlord comes out tomorrow, but I feel I will get back to Sakura and Wars sooner rather than later. Can’t wait to find out, if Paris is indeed burning. Also I already had wished it, but now even more, I want Sega to make new Sakura Wars games, and maybe, if they please, PC re-release for the recent PS4 one.

There is part of me who already wants to replay this game. I want to see some of the scenes I missed and I want to see the finale with Kanna as my romance partner. (I went with Sakura on my first playthrough, not because I liked her the most, but because I just easily gravitate towards the default options.)

I wonder if now that I’m not playing it anymore the opening song would stop playing in my head constantly. It’s really good, fun, song, but it has taken over me. It’s hype when op plays on climatic moment and it’s fun way to start play session, but when first thing in the morning I hum it while going to bathroom, that’s too much.

Also on the op, I was going to make a post about it earlier, but I didn’t get around to it. I feel it’s opening beats remind me of something. Hearing it tickles my brain in the “I recognize this” -way, but I can’t tell why.

Also in completely unrelated way playing game set in early 1900’s Tokyo with demon invasion, made me think how I want to replay the Raidou games. Could reexamine (and confirm) my hot take that I think people who say that Raidou 2 is superior, are wrong.

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Yumi

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"Oh hello ma'am. HI, hello, nice to meet you."

Out of curiosity, what's her voice actor. Mayumi Tanaka and what has she done. She is Monkey D. Luffy! And she is Krillin! Also Krillin and Luffy share a voice. Never knew that.

Also related fun thing I noticed. Maria Tachibana's VA has also been Luffy, in one shot OVA that came out before the currently still-ongoing anime. Two Luffies in the Sakura Wars cast.

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Maria Tachibana ‘Sakura Wars 2’ SEGA Saturn

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Sakura Wars has full on "on next episode" anime bits! I'm so loving this game already. Also there was scene showing that Sakura has some of that classic anime heroine sass and attitude.

Looked up the voice actors and what other things they have done, because some of them felt familiar and saw that the little French Girl is Renne from Trails. That makes her feel little intimidating when she's voiced, though when she isn't voiced I'm imagining her with strong french accent, which balances things out.

Also I'm sad to note that for a famous, popular, theater troupe, the gang's victory pose sucks.

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Started playing Sakura Wars tonight. Having wanted to check it out for the longest time.

Game stars by introducing some of the pretty/cute girls of the cast and the character I ended up caring about most was the drunkard boss.

Also half the girls already hate me at the end of the first day. It be like that sometimes.

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Joker: Just one bad day.

Tim: That's ridiculous

Joker: That's all it tak-

Tim: A whole day???

Joker: What?

Dick: what?

...

...

..

Joker: The day thing is supposed to be really short, like its- its supposed to surprise you, your supposed to say Just One Day!!?? 'o' surely not!

Jason: Wha, how did you say that?

Tim: Dude, I'd only need like 5 minutes

Dick: FIVE??

Joker: W- I-

Tim: They don't even have to be bad

Joker: I dont-

Tim: Like, 5 really annoying minutes

Dick: Tim-

Tim: I'd kill all of you.

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"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one that had ogre in it,

And that has made all the difference."

Other people in the tabletop writing world have talked about the "quantum ogre" and how it relates to the idea of illusionism: not the school of magic from D&D, but the idea of presenting the players with the illusion of choice when in fact all paths lead to the same outcome. The quantum ogre is the commonly used example: presenting players with a branch in the fiction and regardless of which path the players take they will run into an ogre. Usually because the GM has planned a kickass ogre encounter and wants the player characters to really encounter that ogre.

The idea of course is that if the player characters will end up encountering the ogre then that choice was meaningless. Which I agree with. But here's the thing: even if we lock in where the ogre is (whether it's at the end of the left path or the right path), the way the situation is framed there actually isn't an informed choice to begin with.

The only situation where the quantum ogre could possibly work as an illusion is one where players are actually making a choice without any context. And I feel the bigger problem lies there: it doesn't ultimately matter if the left path takes the players to the ogre encounter and the right path takes them somewhere else, because the framing of the question makes it seem like the players are not actually making an informed choice.

There is one situation where a quantum ogre can emerge outside of player choice, but in that case the illusion is different: if the players encounter a quantum ogre because the GM decided to fudge the results of a random encounter roll because they really wanted the party to encounter an ogre, then the illusion isn't one of choice but one of a random procedure being followed when in fact the result was previously authored.

Ultimately it's a question of signposting: if one path takes the characters to the ogre encounter that path should have signs of ogre on it. Whether the characters recognize them as ogre signs is a whole nother matter, but if you've signposted an encounter well enough your players will feel like they actually made an informed choice and the various clues you gave them about the possibility of the ogre will make sense in context at the latest when they see the ogre. ("Oh, that explains all the uprooted trees along this path.")