Star Ocean: The Second Story (スターオーシャン セカンドストーリー, Sutā Ōshan Sekando Sutōrī) is a console role-playing PlayStation game developed by tri-Ace and published by Enix. It is the second game in the Star Ocean series. The game gives the player the choice of playing as Rena or Claude, with the journey evolving and ending differently depending on the choices one makes. It was also the first game in the Star Ocean series to be released in North America (in 1999) and Europe (in 2000), courtesy of Sony Computer Entertainment. A PlayStation Portable remake was announced prior to the 2007 Square Enix Party event and released in Japan in 2008 and in North America and Europe in 2009. The Second Story's gameplay is broadly similar to that of most RPGs. The player goes from town to town and dungeon to dungeon, following the central story and occasionally branching off to perform side quests. Characters gain Experience Points from battle and level up as a result, becoming gradually stronger as time passes and more battles are fought. However, The Second Story is a member of the Star Ocean franchise, and as such features various deviations from the standard RPG format. Battles are much more action-oriented: they take place in real time, during which the player has manual control over their character, as opposed to choosing options from a menu. Battles take place on a broad battlefield, over which the player's character can move without limit, allowing them to trade blows face-to-face with the enemy or circle around for a flanking attack. The other party members (up to 3 others) are controlled by the game's AI; the player may change an ally's Strategy to one of six different pre-determined options (ranging from "Spread out and attack" to "Save your Magic Points" to "Stand Still and Don't Do Anything"). Source: Wikipedia, Star Ocean: The Second Story , available under the CC-BY-SA License.