Star Ocean: The Second Story R is a story-driven JRPG with many playable characters and two main characters. Since players get to choose from seeing the story from either the female Rena's perspective or the male Claude's and get to choose between characters to get in their party, they might wonder if there is an option to romance their companions. There is a sort of romance system in this Star Ocean game, but it’s not like modern friendship and romance systems at all.
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Romance in Star Ocean: The Second Story R
The romance in the Star Ocean 2 remake is very linear. Like many late 1990s JRPG s, the story and track for progression through the world is pretty on rails. However, the end is very elastic, and each ending changes based on the relationship meter between each of the characters.
At the end of the game, after the final battle, players will get to see a quick update on what everyone who was in their party is up to. If the relationship numbers between companions are high enough, there will be a relationship scene between those two characters.
Relationship Meters in the Star Ocean 2 Remake
Traveling together, fighting together, and experiencing story moments together all raise the character's rapport with one another. However, it's also really easy to lose relationships with the other characters based on actions the main character takes. Things like using the pickpocket skill in Star Ocean: The Second Story R will lower the relationship between the character that uses it and all the other characters.
- Fighting in boss battles together raises the relationship between every character in that battle.
- There are potions that can be picked up that raise the friendship levels between one character and all others.
- Pickpocketing lowers the relationship between the one using it and all other characters.
- The Contraband skill can significantly lower relationships between characters and the one that uses it.
- Each character gets the opportunity to create unique books once the Super Specialty Publication is unlocked. The common books raise or lower their friendship level with a character to 16, while the rare books raise or lower the level to 28.
- Private Actions or PAs between Star Ocean 2 characters can raise a relationship level.
- While LP (love points) and FP (friendship points) were counted as two different things in other versions of this game, it has been simplified to FP for everyone in the remake. Whether or not their relationship has romantic overtones in the endings depends on the history between the characters.
Each character has a total affection score for the others out of 40; the level of affection between each character not only alters which of the 99 total endings players will see but also can alter some dialogue between pairings as the game progresses.
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How Relationship Meters Change the Endings of Star Ocean: The Second Star Story R
When a player completes the final battle after 40 or more hours of playing Star Ocean: The Second Story R, a series of follow-up endings will play. What endings a player sees is based on a lot of different things, including who they picked up as companions during their playthrough and the relationships between them. So, for example, if someone has a party with Claude, Rena, Dias, Celine, and Ashton, they will get endings involving only those five characters.
If relationships between all the characters are poor enough, each will get a solo ending, where the player gets a follow-up with each on what they are up to. If the relationships between characters are high enough, players will get the opportunity to see friendship or romantic endings between two characters instead of seeing their solo endings. All told, there are 99 total endings in the remake called Star Ocean: The Second Story R, up from the original 86 in Star Ocean: The Second Story.
- 13 Solo Endings for each of the 13 characters.
- Couple or friendship endings for all possible combinations of characters; this excludes pairings that cannot be in parties together, like Percis and Bowman. If players pick up one of these characters, the game will lock them out of having the other.
- Unique endings that require a certain amount of relationship to be between the characters. For example, there is a different ending for Claude and Rena together if they have high relationship in a Rena playthrough, one if they have max hearts in either playthrough and a third if they have high relationship in a Claude playthrough. This was altered slightly from the way it worked in the original version of this remake of Star Ocean 2.
- If players have eight total characters and each of those characters has an equal affinity for one another, there is a Gather Up ending where everyone ends up hanging out together.
If the characters have identical relationship levels between multiple characters, the game chooses the ending based on a tiebreaker list that has been built into this system. The ending a player sees will be based on how far up the list each of their potential partners is. Here is the order of that list:
- Claude
- Rena
- Celine
- Bowman
- Dias
- Precis
- Ashton
- Leon
- Opera
- Ernest
- Noel
- Chisato
- Welch
How Many Playthroughs of Star Ocean: The Second Story R are Needed to See All Endings?
Want to see all 99 endings in this Square Enix title? In order to see every single pairing, players will need to play through the game at least twice and make a whole bunch of books for each character. One will need to be from Rena's perspective, and she'll need to pick up all the possible characters she can get. Next, a Claude playthrough is needed with all his exclusive characters and all the characters Rena did not pick up. There are several characters that are mutually exclusive, which makes seeing everything in one playthrough impossible.
|
Character Name |
Claude Only |
Rena Only |
Cannot Get With |
Cannot Get Without |
Any Playthrough |
|
Claude |
+ |
||||
|
Rena |
+ |
||||
|
Celine |
+ |
||||
|
Bowman |
Precis |
||||
|
Precis |
Bowman |
||||
|
Dias |
+ |
||||
|
Ashton |
Opera |
||||
|
Opera |
Ashton |
||||
|
Ernest |
Ashton |
Opera |
|||
|
Leon |
+ |
||||
|
Noel |
+ |
||||
|
Chisato |
+ |
||||
|
Welch |
+ |
Star Ocean: The Second Story R is available now for the PC, PS4, PS5, and Switch.