PS1 Star Ocean: The Second Story (Europe) PSX ISO

[Spike's iconSpike]

(Europe) (Disc 1).bin CRC-32: 70b5a08f SHA-1: ec50870f552c30a2b64e67815ebc4cc8ca5de516 (Europe) (Disc 2).bin CRC-32: 61b85cf3 SHA-1: 75985e3ff9b55e95ab4649915746abfd228e03c3 (France) (Disc 2).bin CRC-32: b3b45aae SHA-1: 641a8b6dbd2a31dabf3a46b88651903a53156b5e (France) (Disc 1).bin CRC-32: a32a30b3 SHA-1: 20aad0e9d0081b2df6358fab9628a842936caad0 (Germany) (Disc 2).bin CRC-32: 8f737405 SHA-1: 3e1ece964aa98d525e114505c64a952b027d26da (Germany) (Disc 1).bin CRC-32: 7e108565 SHA-1: f0660f487af5800e261985ddb3c0c326cd90a949

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• Star Ocean: The Second Story (Europe) PSX ISO
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[BardBun]

not to be mean, but is there any reason to play the PAL version over the NTSC-U version? wouldnt PAL just be 50ghz instead of 60? I believe on modern tvs and monitors it makes no actual difference...

The PAL version (though only the english one, not the German and French ones) has a better english translation, a few wonky parts or stuff that didn't make sense in the english NTSC version were fixed. As example the dialog in the Heraldry Forest during the Mars quest is much better now.
There is only one bad thing: "Gamgee" and "Sophia" were changed to "Jamjee" and "Suphia". The rest of the english translation however is better and improved over the NTSC version while staying true to its charme and of course being accurate to the japanese version. (the German and French versions however are direct 1:1 translations of the NTSC english version, so they suffer from the same wonkyness here and there)

Game mechanics were improved, for example you can now hold the X-Button to accelerate the Item Creation process. (halves the time for creating an item, essentially allows you to create double as many items during the Orchestra song)

Several bugs, crashes and some black screen freezes were fixed, though not all of them. (most notably, it can still happen in the Cave of Trials when exiting)

As these versions here are most likely to be played on an emulator, on Duckstation you can force NTSC mode for the PAL Star Ocean 2, which works perfectly and makes it the "ultimate" english version to play, as there is a significant "smoothness" different between 25 FPS and 30 FPS. (the game itself swaps between 60/50 FPS in the camp menu and field maps to 30/25 FPS on the world map and in battles)

All in all, play the PAL version and force it into NTSC mode for the best experience.

The japanese PSOne Books version is also based on the PAL version, both are version v1.2.

 

[jatzu]

Still waiting for a working Undub. The existing Undub crashes the game unfortunately.

What, you don't like it how the VO for Claude constantly swaps between him saying "Claude has advanced forward" and "Crawed has advanced forward"?

 

[StopTheCatastrophe]

Still waiting for a working Undub. The existing Undub crashes the game unfortunately.

 

[ct9983]

not to be mean, but is there any reason to play the PAL version over the NTSC-U version? wouldnt PAL just be 50ghz instead of 60? I believe on modern tvs and monitors it makes no actual difference...

 

[4C374552A1CA2638]

Crawd has advanced forward, HEH.

Spoiler: Walls of game talk here.

This is an action RPG. There are two protagonists, and while they share the same overall plot, they each have exclusive scenes to justify two or more times through the game. You have eight party slots (four who see combat, four in reserve, and Claude and Rena are both mandatory) but you may need a guide or need to be thorough to recruit some of the other available characters. Worse, some characters are mutually-exclusive (recruit A, can't recruit B; recruit B, can't recruit A), and Claude and Rena each have one character that only joins when they're the protagonist! I think my first time through with Claude, I only ended up with five total characters, and all but Claude were mages.

I liked the Private Action system. When outside of town, you can hit the prompted button to have everyone split up in town, and this is where you can manipulate the relationship values between characters. Most of the time, you'll just get generic lines when talking to party members, but there are sometimes events triggered on progress through the story where you or someone else can gain or lose invisible points with one or more party members. Usually you have a choice that can go well or blow up in your face, sometimes points change outside of your control. The relationship values are part of the game's claim to having nearly 90 endings, but these endings are just very short 'where are they now?' scenes. There are endings for each character alone and each character paired with every other valid person, so it'll take some time to see each and every one.

This version is fine, but try not to mash Cross to clear the after-combat windows when finishing battles since, at least in the US release, there's a decent chance to cause the game to transition to black and freeze. There's a large post-game dungeon where this happening is devastating since there are no save points there. Ask me how I know. The PSP release is better overall even though the voice cast is totally different, and I honestly miss the 'morphing 3D' effect from the PS1 when using Item Creation even if it took longer. There's one additional character added which means even more endings. The Second Story R is a great remake, too.