It's been less than six months since TOSE's impressive port of tri-Ace's decade-old development debut, but twenty years have passed between the loosely related narratives of Star Ocean: First Departure and Star Ocean: Second Evolution, an enhanced reworking of the franchise's definitive high point on ye olde PlayStation. The Second Story, as it was, remains a firm favourite among fans of the science fantasy RPG series, and with a next-gen sequel waiting in the wings in the form of Star Ocean: The Last Hope, there won't likely be a better time to revisit the delightful tale of Claude C. Kenny and Rena Lanford than now.

Navigate through a few menus and when you're quite finished gaping at the gorgeous new introductory FMV, courtesy of anime megalith Production I.G., Second Evolution presents you with a character select screen. New players will take the decision lightly, but the choice isn't so simple as which avatar you'd rather have as your in-game representative; at the outset of the story in particular, Claude and Rena are often apart, and depending on whether you venture forth as a son living in his father's shadow or as an unassuming country girl with blue hair and the cutest cat ears you ever saw - and no matter, either, if you're a seasoned series veteran or newly enraptured by its outright hybridisation of sci-fi and fantasy - the experience you'll have with Second Evolution will be distinct in several senses. We're not just talking about multiple ending, either; your initial decision means that you'll meet unique characters through the thirty or more hours it takes you to explore the outer reaches of Expel and beyond, you'll see different, but always lavish cut scenes, and your choice of perspective will alter your perception of several plot points, pivotal and capricious alike.

A single trip through Second Evolution will satisfy most players but the character select mechanic's clever implementation means that those redoubtable few with an appetite for more will have plenty to keep them busy. In any case, there's more going for this sophomore Star Ocean than replay value alone. Certainly the story is the best and most involving of all the narratives that tri-Ace has crafted to date. As the only child of Ronyx J. Kenny, a great hero of the galactic Federation, Claude has understandable reservations about following in his oft-lauded father's footsteps but, when we join him, he's nonetheless on track to do just that. He's lately been inducted into the ruling power as an Ensign under Ronyx's command and his first mission - to survey a strange energy field on the planet Milocinia - is simple enough. However, Claude, as though seduced by the strings of some melancholy song in the distance, gets a little too close to the device that's causing the anomaly and he's transported, in an instant, to another world. Expel is a beautiful planet by all accounts but it's unlike any place Claude has known - "underdeveloped," he observes rather coldly. He intends not to interfere with the natural evolution of any indigenous life that he might encounter yet when he sees a young woman in trouble - Rena has been relaxing in the forest bordering her humble village - he rushes to her aid. With his father's phase gun, he ably fends off the creature that was terrorising Rena and he escorts her back home. It is there that he's told of the Sorcery Globe, a meteor that landed on the peaceful planet just a few months ago and brought in its destructive wake all manner of monsters; it's in Rena's idyllic little township that Claude, although initially reluctant, comes to learn of a grand destiny, distinct from that which his father had laid down for him, and it's at this point that things begin in earnest.

Second Evolution is slow going to start with, repetitive and rather aimless at times, but consider the first few hours of button mashing through a veritable deluge of voiced dialogue and occasional textbox asides as a slow burning prologue of sorts, or at worst some not quite necessary scene setting, and you'll find that things pick up considerably thereafter. Once you venture out from Rena's village to probe the great expanse of unknown that lies prone on the road ahead, Second Evolution reveals itself at last. Expel is an extraordinarily rewarding place to explore, both in aesthetic terms and in the gameplay mechanics that open up to you the longer you play. Alongside the menus and interface, the intuitive item-crafting system from First Departure has been supplanted here wholesale and, even the second time out, its depth surprises anew; the more time you sink into exploring its myriad intricacies, the more satisfying crafting becomes. The skill system, whereby you allocate points earned in battle to further the specific abilities of each member of your party, is equally absorbing, and you can expect to spend a good deal of time deciding which experience paths to take each character down. There are enough side quests to keep even the most committed RPG fans going for twice as long as it takes to beat the game otherwise, not to mention the sculpting and publishing diversions, nor any of the other activities you can engage in during the lulls between story events.

The encounter mechanics, meanwhile, will be familiar to anyone who's played a Star Ocean game, whatever your platform or era of choice. And I'll be honest: they're the reason the franchise's only PS2 entry, Till the End of Time, still lurks on my exponentially more daunting pile of gaming shame, despite a few attempts to power through in the years since its release. After forty hours with TOSE's first PSP port, however, they've become as familiar to me as your more traditional, PlayStation-era, Final Fantasy style, turn-based battle systems. That isn't to say you don't take turns - you do - but enemies don't wait around, pushing back their claw-cuticles, while you ruminate over your next move. There aren't too many options in any case; you can pull off basic combos with a selection of melee and ranged weapons or you can use special arts (which is to say magic) that are mapped to the portable's shoulder buttons. You only have direct control over either Claude or Rena, depending on your decision at Second Evolution's outset; AI routines control the remainder of your party, covering you when need be and reliably carrying out standard attacks in the interim. You can change their tactics in a pinch but the old-guard AI director is adequate enough that there's little reason to and the pace of battle is refreshingly fast for it.

You'll love it or you'll hate it, is what the battle system in Second Evolution and indeed any Star Ocean game comes down to. Widespread standardisation of certain troops common to the majority of Japanese role-playing games means that some gamers simply won't be prepared to accept such a dramatic shift, but then, an ocean of ill-advised complaints about Final Fantasy XII's brilliantly game-changing real-time battles look to have Square Enix back-stepping against good reason for the long-awaited thirteenth instalment, and though Second Evolution's encounters are hardly as exciting as those in that last landmark RPG, it can't be faulted for pushing the envelope - and a decade ago, at that. Sadly, I can't be as understanding about the utterly unchallenging default difficulty, nor the auto-tracking camera that accompanies battles in the all-but desolate voids they seem to take place in. There's no getting around the fact that it will idly lock onto enemies on the opposite end of the battlefield and suck any notion of challenge or strategy right out of encounter after encounter, be it a random battle or boss fight. Neither is it easy to overlook the recurrence of the sporadic problems that AceGamez' own Sam Atkins relates in his review of First Departure; when there are enough enemies on the battlefield, the camera skips and stutters from target to target like a woefully broken robot.

Unfortunately, the problems with Second Evolution don't begin and end there: this is no Mother or Earthbound, let me be clear, but the story, for all its charm, for all its whimsy, is so relaxed, even come to crisis point, that it can be hard from time to time to take as seriously as its narrative expects. The new translation, while certainly preferable to the amateurish iteration it outmodes, is perhaps as slavish as it is faithful; along with the largely insipid so called "private action scenes", wherein you might come across an optional side story if you're very lucky, it can be cumbersome enough to bring what little momentum Second Evolution manages to generate to a juddering halt - and next to the spectacle of the beautiful new backgrounds that Production I.G has generated for the PSP reworking of The Second Story, the spare remnants of the original artwork stick out like forgotten limbs numbed by a night's sleep in a lamentable position.

Second Evolution is a far cry from the whole new experience that Square Enix teased its loyal base of gamers with but there's enough new about it that some new issues have cropped up. None of them are so intrusive that they should spoil anyone's enjoyment of the game though and if you can muscle past the snail's pace story and a disappointing battle system, Second Evolution is absolutely worth the not inconsiderable amount of time that you'll spend with it. It shows its age, but what of it? Only a very few games are better a decade on and this PSP reworking fixes and updates just enough of The Second Story that this classic experience is now distinctly more palatable for today's gaming public. The graphics really are much improved, even side-by-side with last year's First Departure; the interface has never been better; the sound is spot on if you've a decent pair of headphones at hand; and the production values, for a glorified port, are not to be sneezed at. Star Ocean: Second Evolution shouldn't have much difficulty attracting new players - the eternal allure of the Square Enix logos on the box should see to that - and although it's by no means perfect, neither as a port nor as an exercise in the preservation of an experience that is important to many, as long as you can accept the quirks of an RPG that stood apart from the pack ten years ago, you'll find more than enough here to last you through the last gasps of Winter, by which time you'll have The Last Hope to contend with. Final Fantasy XIII, that herald of the golden years, might be a year out yet, but for all intents and purposes, the RPG has landed on the current generation of consoles at last.

Reviewed by Niall Rough for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).