Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (28)

Maybe it's not the best of screenshots, but I wanted to show a battle screen; it actually looks a lot better than in the real game when filtered like this. What you can see here is Claude showcasing his mortal technique known as Head Splitter on the boss of the bantits in the Heraldry forest near Mars. Remember when I told you about the similarities between the planet Expel and Earth? Oh, you don't... Well, I jokingly mentioned that one of the few differences is gravity: you can tell by looking at how high Claude manages to jump in this screen. I think this special move is as close as you can get to a realtime version of the trademark 'Jump' ability of Dragoons in Final Fantasy games. An additional note: if you happen to control a character other than Claude in battle, be sure to disable Head Splitter as soon as he learns it, or else he'll start using only that move over and over until he runs out of MP (yeah, special moves use MP just like spells).

Claude and Celine confront the boss of the bandits, who has turned into some monster-like creature; unfortunately you can only see Claude in the screenshot, but it's no great loss. On the top of the screen you can view your characters' HP and MP; since it's always restated somewhere in every RPG, I think I'll mention that once a character's HP reaches 0 by taking too many hits, s/he falls lifeless on the ground, and if that character's relationship with other characters is high enough, you may hear them shout his/her name or say something like 'What have you done!?'. Pretty neat, huh? Fortunately, as is the case with most RPGs, a fallen character isn't dead and, assuming that the others win the battle, you can carry him/her around as if s/he was alright. Of course s/he will still be out of commission in the next battle until you provide some healing (by using specific items or spells), during or outside battles. A fallen character doesn't gain experience in battles, s/he just lays there in place doing nothing.

On the same screen you may notice an OK icon with ITEM under it: when a character uses an item in battle, this icon changes for a few seconds, and nobody can use items during that time. The hourglass icon next to it simply serves as a memo for when you can take action: when it's red, you can't move or act with your characters, generally because an instant spell is in execution. What's an 'instant spell', you ask? It's a spell that stops every action on screen when cast, for the duration of the entire animation; most spells in the game are like that, and unfortunately the most powerful ones are also the ones with the longest animations, which means waiting and doing nothing while they're unleashed. I hear that problem was solved in the PSP remake of the game.