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Square Enix Unveils Star Ocean: The Second Story R Remake for November 2 Launch

Square Enix announced during the streamed Nintendo Direct presentation on Wednesday that it will release Star Ocean: The Second Story R, a remake of Star Ocean: The Second Story (the second game in tri-Ace's Star Ocean RPG series) , on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, and PC via Steam on November 2.

Square Enix unveiled both an English and a Japanese trailer for the game.

English trailer:

Japanese trailer:

The game will feature a new visual "2.5D" visual style featuring 2D sprites and 3D enivornments with dynamic lighting, made popular in games such as Octopath Traveler. The game will feature English and Japanese audio, and is fully voiced in all event scenes with the cast from the original game, with players able to select from the new voice-over performances as well as the voice-over performances from the Star Ocean: The Second Evolution remaster on a per-character basis. Motoi Sakuraba's soundtrack for the game has also been rearranged with new recordings.

tri-Ace and Enix released Star Ocean: The Second Story for the PlayStation in 1998, and it released it in North America in 1999. Square Enix released a remaster titled Star Ocean: The Second Evolution for the PlayStation Portable in 2008, and it headed West in 2009. That remaster also had a PS3, PS4, and PlayStation Vita port that debuted in in 2015, but was never released outside Japan.

The latest game in the Star Ocean series is Star Ocean The Divine Force, the sixth game in the series.The company tri-Ace developed the game, and Square Enix released it worldwide for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC via Steam in October 2022.

Source: Square Enix's English and Japanese YouTube channel