Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Wasnt expecting a great deal from this game, only bought it as a time killer while I recoeved from a broken leg.

Being completly blunt, Im shocked at the scope of this game. so far I've racked up about 20 hours and Im still on the first disc. It's about time a game was released with some longevity.

Story: Spanning many planets, each quite different from the last. From what Ive played the game seems to be split down into micro storylines on each planet. There dosent seem to be a overall "bad guy" like previous JRPG's I've played, saying that, they may just not have surfaced yet.

Graphics: Pretty, nothing mind blowing, but certainly no FF7. Had a slight framerate drop but there was alot going on, this is certainly no Last Remnant.

Battles: Somewhat straight foward and not turnbased. Takes a while to master the "bonus board" which builds up and give your certain rewards, e.g. a percentage more XP, or money ect....

As its not turn based keeping control of the characters your not directly in control of can be a bit of a challange, for the most part they look after themselves and look after you when you need it, but it would have been nice to have a FF12 style gambit system in place.

The only major downside I've experienced is there are quite alot of cut scenes, and quite a few very annoying characters. In fact it's gotten to the point I mute the TV when one or two of them are talking, or skip past the cut scene if it dosent seem story relevent. A nice feature which Square have included is a plot synopsis in the menu, so when you do skip a cuts scene you can catch up in a minute or so.

I cant really give this game a complete score as I havent completed it, but the rating above is based on the first 20 hours of gameplay. Given thats nearly twice as long as most games out at the minute (Im looking at you Red Faction: Guerrilla!) not bad going!

I seriously enjoy playing RPGs. From 'KoTOR' and 'Fallout' through to 'Mass Effect' and 'Fallout 3', many hours have been lost following engaging narratives and exploring sophisticated worlds. On the other hand I have not had much experience playing Japanese style games. After experiencing 'Star Ocean' and reading other reviews of this game I would speculate that you either love it, or hate it. Unfortunately I find myself a member of the second category. Taking 'Mass Effect' as an example I found that every facet of 'Star Ocean' pales in comparison. The characters are shallow and childish, the interactions between them are simple and lack the sophisticated control necessary to simulate realistic relationships. The fighting system (and I realise that this biggest love it or hate it area) is overly complicated and lends itself to button mashing. Finally the graphics whilst occasionally spectacular are for the most part extremely artificial and lacking in any kind of realism . In summary, if you understand and enjoy playing Japanese style games, ignore this review and instead read one of the many others on this page. If on the other hand you don't know much about Japanese games and are instead hoping for something that bares any kind of resemblance to a Mass Effect style game, this review may be of use.

As a big fan of the Star Ocean series, I hoped this would continue to build and improve on the quality of the previous titles. I wasn't disappointed. I'll begin with the pros: The graphics are everything you'd expect from a game on a next-gen console like the 360 and more in some places. The storyline is brilliant, packed with clichés as we all expect and love from JRPGs! You can expect to get around 60-80 hours gameplay if you include the trademark bonus dungeous. The replay value is there for hardcore RPG fans as there are several possible endings to achieve depending on how you interact throughout the game with other characters. Finally, the best thing about this game and previous Star Ocean games - the real time battle system. Lots of fun can be had with it and you will always be looking forward to your next battle. There are no "random" encounters like in Final Fantasy games, instead you run into enemies to fight them.

Now, the inevitable cons. The voice acting - like in SO3 - is pretty poor. One or two characters in particular can start to become annoying very quickly. Also, the necessary disc-swapping can become a chore. It isn't noticeable until you reach the end of the game and have to start travelling back to previously visited worlds which happen to be on previous discs. Finally, at times in the game it seems like there is little direction to help you discover which way to go. It's almost as if the developers had an agreement with the walkthrough guide authors to make certain parts of the game very difficult to navigate through. It is possible to do so without a guide.

5/5 stars from me. On a par with Lost Odyssey, I'd rate SO: The Last Hope as the joint-best JRPG on the 360. If you're a Star Ocean fan and you haven't played this game, you know what to expect and it doesn't disappoint. If you haven't played a Star Ocean game before, I'd advise you to try this out simply for the unique battle system and the epic storyline.

I rated this four stars, but I'd say it's really more like three and half. What I'd like to mention first is that overall I think the previous Star Ocean: Till the End of Time did better with nearly everything.

So, let's start with the good stuff. Graphics are pretty awesome, and the characters are nicely detailed, though I did find the character designs (clothing etc) a little weird. The main characters are supposed to be from future Earth, and yet their clothing looks like from your average Final Fantasy world. I couldn't really relate to that world. Overall there are some nice designs in the mix though. The only thing that looked rather crappy were some of the non-cg space battle cutscenes.

Music is fine. The usual Motoi Sakuraba fare, though I think the overall soundtrack was slightly better and more emotional in the previous Star Ocean.

Battles are fairly interesting as they are, but there's just simply too much of it. You could go an hour or two through a dungeon to get to the next savepoint, constantly doing 20-50 second long battles along the way. You can avoid enemy encounters if you want to, but you'll just miss on EXP, items and Monster Jewel bonuses (kill enough of each type and you can add bonus effects to an equippable jewel). Some areas are not accessible again once you finish them. I can think of at least two such areas. In addition to normal EXP and loot, you can increase bonuses to each by satisfying certain conditions in battle. There's also a feature called Blindsides, which is basically a move that allows surprising an enemy from behind, immobilizing them for a few seconds. Looks nice, but the novelty fades soon.

Voice acting is definitely a mixed bag. Not quite as horrible as the ones in Star Ocean 3 (like Farleen, ugh...). Voices are rather fitting, but the acting varies from decent to emotionless, even when the character's face is clearly showing otherwise.

Battles now have four characters battling at once, which makes the action ever more hectic. Keeping an eye on party members' health is basically only possible by looking at the HP numbers, unlike in Star Ocean 3, where things were more compact and you could simply see when someone is taking damage. Now the battlefields are bigger, and you can't have everyone on the screen at once. Not a biggie, but I'd rather look at characters than numbers. Another thing that's slightly broken is the targeting system. The tutorial says that you always target the nearest enemy when you attack. This is false. If you hit an enemy, and run to another, then press attack, it's almost guaranteed that you'll still attack the previous enemy. The target switches only after a few seconds. Considering the fast pace of the battle, those few seconds are worth a ton of damage you could've dealt, had you had the correct enemy targeted. Fairly annoying.

The story starts really interesting, but falls flat as a pancake once you're a couple of hours to the game. Once things start getting interesting again, the game ends. That's not to say this is a short one. Took me about 50 hours to finish, with good bunch of sidequests done along the way. There aren't nearly as many locations as in Star Ocean 3, and the variety isn't too great either. Interesting places are substituted with even more battles. Sidequests are usually fetching things or even more battles.

Item creation is much more straightforward compared to Star Ocean 3, and you can easily invent and create majority of the items during a normal playthrough.

Oh, right, and you have switch disc to visit some old locations on other planets. Like fetching items or doing a sidequest. Sigh...

Overall, a decent JRPG, but offers very little new compared to Star Ocean 3.

The adventure elements of star ocean are sound along with its combat style, the charactors drivel on about nonsence to each other and the monsters are all pretty much the same, anyway a few hours into the game i reluctently recruited the most annoying charactor since jar jar binks opened his mouth for the first time and ruined a franchise, this destroyed the scifi feel of the game and so the game all of a sudden turned into japanise style game that has you looking at young boys and vunrable younger girls type video game. Suffice to say that the game was very quickly traded in the next day.