Star Ocean: The Second Story R is a remake of 1998’s second entry in the space-centric role-playing universe of Star Ocean, but despite its many improvements, the core design of the original game remains almost fully intact. This includes its offering of dual protagonists, one of which you’ll have to pick as your main character at the beginning of a playthrough. If you’re wondering which you should pick first, we’ll give you some information below without going too far into spoiler territory.
Regardless of whether you pick Claude or Rena for your playthrough of Star Ocean: The Second Story R, the game’s mainline narrative will remain the same from beginning to end. However, the two characters will witness many major events from their own perspective, giving you a bit of additional insight into how they feel about what’s happening. Additionally, they’ll each have access to one exclusive recruitable character. This means that you’ll have to play through the game twice if you want to see the full story of the two recruitable characters and see what they bring to the table in combat.
Here are three key things to keep in mind when choosing the character for your first playthrough:
With all of this in mind, our opinion is that Claude makes for the best character for an initial playthrough due to his clearer view of the story and overall combat abilities making the first half of the game a bit easier. However, if you’re partial to the idea of getting the strongest character in the game or have already witnessed Claude’s playthrough, Rena is a perfectly viable choice, too. Either way, the game features over 80 endings, so there is plenty of incentive to play through the game multiple times with both characters.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.