Sometimes I like to replay the whole series to remember how good they were and then remember how thoroughly this one killed the franchise outright.

These dudes were so fucking lazy that they just allow you to make a shit ton of money in level 1 and just always have a high ass stockpile to always buy upgrades that you'll never really use. Every treasure that you find on the map is rarely over 150 coins yet just pick pocketing guards will have a 2/3 chance to net you a 200 or 500 coin worth item, completely negating the point of bringing treasures back. And for some reason ALL OF THEM ARE TIMED but not because they're booby trapped or something realistic like that. They just are and they vanish instead of blowing up if you aren't fast enough to get back to the hideout.

I'm probably the only person irked by this specific change but I really hate that if you jump from a high spot you will now have a hard landing animation on Sly when his whole schtick is being nimble and light on his feet, and makes movement just a little worse. Speaking of movement this game has the most innacurate system for environment interaction out of the entire franchise. You'll try to land or latch onto something and regularly you'll be flung to something off screen or the animation will just give up and you have to reclimb something or fall into a pit, or with the spire jump if you jump off too quickly the game will give you this short hop that will just fling you into pits. I didn't know I was playing every Assassin's Creed.

I ain't usually easily offended but as a black man myself The Grizz is a fucking wild ass character that for all intents and purposes should not have been allowed to exist. That is just out and out no debate a racist caricature of a black person. Like not even Tsao and Mz. Ruby were this bad.

This game overall is just a case study in character assassination but anybody who knows anything about this game has heard this insanely valid criticism ad nauseum so I'm not gonna repeat it.

Your existence.
Is God's failure.

"Hey bud you wanna play Helldivers rn?"

"I'd love to man but I got work."

"Aight ima catch you later then"

proceeds to solo-queue and hate life for 30 minutes

"Hey man im off work wanna play?"

"Y E S"

Proceeds to actually have fun

Only good bug is a dead bug.

Game only good when killing bug with friends tho.

They really turned it around from that first beta. If the game released like that I would have sworn off Arcsys game forever. It was so bad I was on the fence on buying it for about a month until the 2nd beta came out and course corrected from the original one.

I still think this game should have doubled-down on the use of simple inputs and traditional inputs. They are actually pointless now and I keep doing them because i'm used to playing regular fighting games and everytime I do one I think "I am playing suboptimally stop doing this." But I literally can't

God Dammit.

"Why the fuck would anyone actually play Reiko, dude? Why actively play the nigga that is only known for being Shao Khan's professional stan?"

And then I watched him Bloody Sunday DDT someone once and was like

"Oh."

If you think this game is worse than the original you are smoking that pack, my dude.

Starkiller actually functions and air combos aren't absolutely worthless. Traversing the levels isn't horrid due to the ridiculous amount of oversized collision boxes on objects that are bigger than the object they're attached to. The percentage of annoying enemies to fight has gone from 90% to around 10%. Getting stunlocked into death is gone. falling into a pit isn't an instant death. Fuck I wish there was a remake of FU1 that was just this game if I had to ask for the most bottom of the barrel remake of it.

"But the story is worse!"

Come on, bruh. We gonna act like the first game's story was good? Starkiller is a mary sue who drops whole ass starships from orbit into the planet but is also simultaneously the dumbest person ever. I ain't about to take this even a lick seriously. That game's biggest claim to fame is the whole star destroyer segment but actually PLAYING IT sucks balls.

I would rather take this forgettable experience over the original forgettable experience. And I do mean forgettable because I literally played this game back in like 2010/2011 and forgot every single thing about except for vague flashes of the ending.

But it's whatever, man. Can't wait to come back to this in another 13 years after having forgotten both of them again.

I played Force Unleashed 2 on the wii growing up but never got around to playing the original until I got a used copy a few days ago.

This game is fucking terrible in a myriad of ways that I can only sum up as "Damn they really had no idea what the fuck they were doing."

Intensely annoying amount of enemies that only attack from off screen with blasters because lol Star Wars and any jet troopers are a chore to deal with because Starkiller's aerial options are fucking terrible and the game has an awful auto-aim which makes the combat unbearable to engage with. Like nothing in this game works right and it's a struggle to do any of his most basic of functions. This game is honestly on par with DMC2 in levels of game quality.

Speaking of DMC did you know this game came out THE EXACT SAME FUCKING YEAR AS DEVIL MAY CRY 4?

THE QUALITY DIFFERENCE IS STAGGERING.

Technically a replay.

But i'ma play Devil's Advocate one more time.

Symphonia 2 is actually pretty fucking good. And it's not for the combat really it's very uh...it's got issues but it's not terrible. Accelerate is a dumb ass skill and making the Echo Tracer effectively ends combat for the rest of the game but it makes comboing loads more fun so i'ma let it slide, aight?

Yeah the Courage line is dumb and cheesy as fuck but let's not act like Symphonia 1 wasn't the dumbest, cheesiest, blandest shit ever written. At least when Symphonia 2 hammers a really dumb slogan for themeing into your head, it actually fucking works. When Symphonia 1 tries to explore anything it either does it poorly or doesn't give it enough attention so it ends up as wasted potential.

Emil and Marta are easily the best written couple in the franchise. And it coincides with Symphonia 2's theming of having courage because they are both cowards to some effect. Emil is a coward in the most literal sense. Scared of his own shadow. Marta is afraid of facing the crimes of the Vanguard and her father so opts to use collecting Centurions Cores as a thinly veiled excuse to keep putting what needs to be done on the backburner. And through their relationship they grow as people and obtain the courage needed to do what must be done for both of their sakes, and the world's.

This game also effectively challenges the ending of Symphonia 1 alongside challenging the new protagonists at every turn. Maybe restoring the world to its natural state wasn't a net positive for everyone after all? Maybe there was some unforeseen consequences that would later come back to bite you in the ass? Maybe your deluded self-righteousness made the lives of others worse? Symphonia 2 tackles all of this so well I am baffled that this fanbase abhors this game as much as they do. Am I saying the writing is perfect? Fuck no. But when it hits IT HITS.

Symphonia 1's party is bland as fuck and written bland as fuck for the entirety of its run time with weirdly placed voice acting/voice direction throughout the game. Symphonia 2 walks in with voice acting in almost every cutscene and suddenly these characters have character and I LIKE THEM. Yeah it sucks like almost everyone from the original game got replaced (except for Kratos who has like 12 speaking lines total) but the new VA's still do a banger job. I actually kinda like Zelos now when I couldn't stand his ass in the original. Symphonia 2 really makes me care about almost everyone in the cast and it does it so effortlessly.

Emil is so original as a protagonist for this franchise and he's such a hard over-correction from Lloyd but he still WORKS. They also somehow made amnesia, one of the laziest and usually one of the most poorly written writing tropes ever WORK. They make a cowardly protagonist WORK. Emil sits firmly at my number 2 spot behind Ludger in favorite Tales protag list if someone were to ask me how I rank these characters. I love watching his journey as a character unfold. They could have easily written something intensely pandering and made Emil just like Lloyd, a generic goodie two shoes hero who always does the right thing because it's the right thing, but they didn't and I'm so glad that they went with what they went with.

You ain't gonna sit here.
And tell me.
That a game where I play as one of the most original protags in this franchise where I have the option to make a party member out of the GOAT of GOAT's optional boss the SWORD DANCER and we get to whoop ass together.
is ass.

This game is raw as fuck.

This fanbase fucking sucks.

Man I cannot wait for the next port in 10 years that's somehow gonna be even worse than this one.

Also my god I always forget just how mid Symphonia is until I eventually replay it every few years. Also losing the source code to the GC version of this game is probably the biggest curse on its existence because everyone knows the PS2 version sucks in comparison and everytime they port Symphonia it's based off of that version.

It's like we're shambling out an old dried up corpse once every decade to dangle in front of the people who grew up playing this game going

"Hey kids. Symphonia, right?"

And then I lose my mind because I am so FUCKING sick of Symphonia please port something else The Xillia's are right fucking there waiting to be ported they don't deserve to rot on the PS3.

I CANNOT
FATHOM
BEING DEDICATED
TO SUCH MID.

Demo Thoughts: I'm gonna log this since I can't log or see my own thoughts on remake right now due to the limitations of the site so I just wanna get my thoughts out there for other people to see.

Anybody who knows me knows that I am not terribly fond of this series because anytime I've played any game from this franchise I keep circling my own thoughts like "what in the fuck is the decision making with anything that goes on with these games." where I feel like the people in charge desperately want to make something unique that stands out but the execution is always fucking garbage.

The writing of Star Ocean games have no sense of pacing they always try to rush through everything as quickly as possible and then ask you to care about the things that are going on as well it's utterly annoying.

And then I play the demo for Second Story R and suddenly it's like somebody at Tri-Ace woke the fuck up and tried to make something worth somebodies time for once.

The combat was basic but still very easy to understand and fulfilling to play, and the story actually takes the time to establish stuff and make you care about the main characters from what little I got to play before the demo cut me off. Timed demo's are stupid is my main take away from this. I will pick up the remake at some point. It was legitimately the first time I had ever enjoyed my time playing a Star Ocean game. Not once did the thought cross my mind that ALWAYS crosses my mind when playing these games which is "why the fuck would I play this when Tales games are right there?"

Please.
for the love of God.
I want the quest to find a good Star Ocean game to end here.

8/5/2023: I have finally gotten around to playing it and holy shit this game fucking sucks. Imagine any action game mechanic in any slightly decent to great game in the genre and this game has it. At best the mechanic will just function and at worse it's just handled worse than the game it took it from. The game has like no sense of feedback in anything going on and the stiffness of everything does not help.
I should feel like a flowing goddess of the battlefield but I feel more like a runaway freight train because you cannot cancel any animation at all which is literally action game 101 so you have to commit to long recovery frames of every action you ever take. This feels like a mid-2000's action game from the ps2 era displaced by time.
This is also the ONLY game I've seen somehow fuck up the concept of the enemy flashing red and attacking you with a strong unblockable attack. The flash gets lost in the cacophony of the battles due to how the game will just become unintelligible non-sense between you, your Einherjar, and your enemies doing shit that when these attacks hit you it never feels like you fucked up. Probably because in literally every game i've played that has this in it (which is most fucking action games by the way) it's also accompanied by a loud ass distinctive sound cue to give you an even bigger warning but this game DOES NOT HAVE THAT. Accompanied with the fact this game commits the cardinal sin of enemies being able to attack you from off screen, this is maddeningly annoying combination to deal with. Enemies will just have no tells half the time because the animation work is so poor on everything going on. Either enemies will have a weirdly animated wind up attack that will suddenly get unrealistically fast, fucking up your defense, or so fast you have no time to react and they just get to combo you (this is what the wolves do all the time). Also ain't it grand that enemies get to combo you for free but if you try to attack them they can just spam a backstep/sidestep that is 100% invulnerable until they feel safe from you and just get to drop out of your combos and hit you because you can't cancel any of your animations? It's like fighting the shittier Tales of Vesperia bosses but it's literally EVERY enemy.
"Oh but Tuck why don't you have the arts bar to stun them like the game wants you to?"
BECAUSE I SPENT IT ON EVERY OTHER ENEMY SO NOW I HAVE TO SPAM MY SUMMONS TO GET IT BACK FAST WHICH ADDS TO THE CACOPHONY.
HOLY FUCK.
Another thing that pisses me off is that this game somehow also fucks up execution attacks, which is another thing that even the most shallow of spectacle action games get right. The game is super fucking finnicky about what criteria you need to execute it.
Is the enemy like a fucking centimeter off the ground? Can't do it.
Slightly higher on a hill even though you're right next to it? Eh try it maybe it'll work. Coin toss, really.
Standing perfectly still (which is the most consistent way to pull it off without the game having a stroke) eh maybe coin toss that one too.
Not a single soul working on this game knew what the fuck they were doing when making it.
This game is impressively bad.