antillese whoa now… not sure why no one has responded to you yet, but you should know that the first two Star Ocean games are fantastic. Star Ocean: The Second Story is one of the greatest JRPG’s of all time IMO. It has a ton of replay value too. I think I’ve spent more time playing that game than probably any other individual JRPG game.
I highly recommend anyone and everyone who likes JRPG’s to play Star Ocean: The Second Story (or Second Evolution). It’s a very good game with incredible depth. It has a lot to offer: simple but enjoyable real-time combat, good characters and optional party members, event-based relationships/romance mechanics that are fun/interesting, crafting, pickpocketing, a fighting arena, cooking competition, side quests, a late game secret dungeon, and a great story with many unique post-game endings that depend on character relationships, etc. The only bad thing I can say about it is that there is RNG that affects certain mechanics, so you may have to save scum to get some items/weapons, but it never hassled me too much (GameFaq’s crafting guides help). There will also be some grinding, but I always enjoyed the gameplay enough for that not to bother me. The remake of the game “Second Evolution” only released on PSP outside of Japan, so if you don’t have one of those, then you’d have to get an original PS1 copy or emulate it. Not enough people have played this game, but it’s truly a gem.
If for some reason you can’t easily play The Second Story, then I would recommend trying out The First Departure, which is available on the PlayStation store. It’s much shorter than the 2nd game, and I don’t think the story is as good, but it’s pretty fun and has a lot of the same mechanics since that version of the first game was a remake using an updated engine from the the 2nd game.
I honestly don’t care for the franchise at all after the 2nd game. I did play and beat Till the End of Time and Last Hope. I personally wouldn’t recommend either, but I know that plenty of people did like Till the End of Time. I’m curious to see what their new game will be like, but I don’t have high expectations at this point.