Star Ocean The Second Story R has real-time combat, with the player being able to control any of the four or fewer active party members they have at a time. Some battles can jump in difficulty, requiring players to properly use their active party members to play to their strengths while also using the various combat mechanics to defeat the enemy.
While each party member has unique skills and abilities, each falls into the set role of either a frontline fighter or a back-line battle or support character. Learning how to properly use your party and the battle menus can help make any fight much easier, even when out-leveled.
Breaking The Enemy
Star Ocean The Second Story R features a unique combat system in the form of breaking enemies’ defenses. Under the enemy’s health bar will be shield icons that will start off red. As you damage an enemy with attacks, abilities, or spells, the red from the shields will go down until every shield is gray.
When this happens, the enemy is “Broken,” leaving them briefly stunned and taking only critical hits. The shields regenerate after only a few seconds of taking damage, so it’s important to focus on a single enemy with multiple characters to try and break their defense and deal the most damage possible.
Using The Right Party
There are many possible party members players can find and recruit, being either close combat fighters or back-line mages who can cast offensive or defensive spells. It’s important to have an equal mix, usually of 2 and 2, to make sure there are frontline fighters keeping the enemy away from the mages while they cast spells.
Friendship Ratings between party members are an important part of the possible endings to the game and combat AI mechanics. Depending on the Friendship Rating between the two characters, they will either fight alongside each other or support each other more or less. When forming a party, be sure to pair up characters with high Friendship Ratings to get the most out of the game’s AI in terms of teamwork.|
Spell Casting & Using Items
The real-time combat system does have a few features in place to make sure players don’t spam powerful spells or healing items to keep battles even. Casting spells will have a cast time, with it greatly increasing depending on the power of the spell. This longer cast time makes frontline fighters even more important, as getting attacked by an enemy will interrupt a cast and cancel the spell.
When using items in battle, only a select few healing items and battle items can be used. After using an item, there will be a small red icon on the HUD that displays how long it will be until another item can be used, with this timer being universal for all items. Both spells and items can be accessed through the battle menu, which can be opened at any time and offer a brief pause to combat while the right option is selected.
Tactics
In the Tactics screen of the main menu, players can organize their party members and formation. The party formation determines how your party is set up in combat and the location where each party member will gravitate towards. The Assault Formation is used to bring backup party members and old Star Ocean heroes into battle after a recovery time to use quick and unique attacks to assist the active party.
Formations also determine the bonuses the party gets as pick-up spheres in combat. Glowing spheres are dropped by defeated enemies, and after a certain number are collected, will offer a stat boost to the entire party determined by the formation.