None of this would be as noticeable if you could save anywhere you wanted but that option isn't present. Star Ocean: The Last Hope uses the outdated save point system where you can only back up your progress at predetermined places.
While I find a compelling story, delivery, and character evolution to be critical to the overall experience in a JRPG, their shortcomings in Star Ocean: The Last Hope are not large enough to spoil the overall game. That's all thanks to the combat and leveling mechanics, two aspects that had me completely engrossed and kept me coming back for more. The action is all real-time with the option to pause and issue specific commands and you won't run into any random battles.
Fights do take place on a separate battle arena that you warp to upon running into a monster, but you'll have complete control over your combatant throughout the fight. The rest of your squad up to four of the eight members can be brought into battles at one time is controlled by AI, but you are free to swap from one character to the next at any time during the fight.
Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to shape a team to your specific style of play quite easily. A few new additions have been added to the formula for this outing, including a jump ability that lets you dodge attacks or swoop around behind enemies for a blindside strike. For me, the craziest part about Star Ocean: The Last Hope is that I was still excited about fights at the end of the game after battling through thousands upon thousands of baddies.
With the Bonus Board -- a reward system for finishing off enemies in specific ways during fights -- I found myself power leveling in tough dungeons just to continue improving skills and unlocking new ones.
Even at level 70, my squad still has room to grow and is continuing to unlock new symbology spells and special attack arts. There is a lot of depth to the character building that, combined with the great combat, really sold me on Star Ocean. This isn't the sort of game where you'll level up and just watch a few stats increase, then rinse and repeat.
Alongside that standard is a complex item creation system, the ability to combine weapons and items to make more potent equipment, a great deal of optional skills that you can purchase and improve, and more.
Though each character holds a preset role and can only equip specific equipment, I still found that there was quite a bit of hands-on building and management of the squad to be had. The vast majority of these are simple fetch quests. Just about every single shop you come across in Star Ocean offers a half dozen or so delivery orders. Complete them and you'll get some cash, experience, and the sense of satisfaction that comes with helping a faceless character in a videogame.
Don't knock it 'til you try it. These are generally fetch quests as well, though they feel more rewarding than the delivery orders since they come with a small tale rather than a text listing. Look a little bit more and you'll find some larger side quests with more meat on them, including a coliseum to test your strength against a variety of opponents. Also, there are races atop giant pink bunnies. Then there are the bonus dungeons and bosses to tackle.
These really drive home one of Star Ocean's best qualities: You can get out of the game as much as you choose to put into it. I very rarely found myself confused as to where I should head next or how to tackle a particular section of the game, which makes this a nice pickup for the average gamer. Yet, lying beneath that straightforward game is a slew of reasons to keep playing and exploring for those of us that are a bit more hardcore. And if you fall into that hardcore category, you'll likely take solace in the knowledge that you'll have to play through the entire game multiple times to see everything.
Beat the game once and you'll unlock a harder difficulty. Beat that to unlock the ultimate mode. You can carry all of your collection data Battle Trophies are back and boy are they ever numerous over from one play through to the next -- something you'll have to do if you want all of the achievements. But the best reason to play the game a second or third time is to see the different endings.
The Private Action system, a series of optional story sequences that help to flesh out characters and determine which game ending you see, which you may remember from Star Ocean: 'Til the End of Time, is back here in a more accessible form. The last Star Ocean game was notorious for forcing players to do lots and lots of backtracking, wasting hours wandering the game at specific times to get Private Actions and collect other hidden goodies.
There is very little back tracking in The Last Hope at all and most of the Private Actions can be done on board your starship, the Calnus. With this streamlined approach and the Private Actions emphasis on relationships between characters, the whole system feels like a rudimentary form of what we saw in Mass Effect. Star Ocean: The Last Hope clocks in at hours of playtime if you stick to the beaten path and power through it. At its worse, they're absolutely unbearable.
Anyone hoping to escape the lackluster dub will be disappointed to hear that the original Japanese audio is not preserved here, though you do have the option to turn off battle quips from individual characters. Celebrated composer Motoi Sakuraba returns to lend his talents to the Star Ocean series once again, and though the voice acting doesn't work, his soundtrack is perfectly suited to the various locales visited, situations faced, and battles fought.
To infinity and beyond! When it's all said and done and you've finished the game, there's still plenty more to do. Besides offering two unlockable difficulty settings, there are tons of side quests to complete, items to create, recipes to discover, bonus dungeons to explore, and bunnies to race.
You can collect dozens of battle trophies for each character by performing specific tasks with them in combat. And if you actually are interested in the story, there are multiple endings to see based on the relationships that you form as Edge Maverick throughout the game. If all you're looking for is a strong, narrative-driven role-playing adventure, Star Ocean: The Last Hope isn't going to do much to satisfy you.
But despite its deficiencies in this area, its huge number of extras and its addictive, deeply strategic and tactical combat system make it a lot of fun. The latest entry in the futuristic space opera RPG series is scheduled for a global release in exclusively on the Xbox Upvote 7 Leave Blank. The Good Incredibly fun and strategic combat system A variety of huge, beautiful environments to explore Simple, powerful crafting system Plenty to do and collect once you've finished the game The Bad Cliched story and characters Awful camera system Emotionless, doll-like characters are just plain creepy.
About the Author. Lark Anderson. More GameSpot Reviews. Load Comments 0. Average Rating Rating s 8. Developed by: Tri-Ace Square Enix. Published by: Square Enix. Genre s : Action Role-Playing. The detailed graphics look like Star Wars gone psychedelic, with crazily over the top outfits and more bright colors bouncing around than a disco party at a clown college. It has a young but gifted main character named Edge Maverick, believe it or not and a small battalion of seven customizable cohorts whose stiff, overly cartoon-y voice actors miss as much as they hit.
It sends this on a vast adventure built around an epic concept — you start off looking for a new home for humanity after World War III trashed our home planet, and things actually get bigger from there. There are side quests, many of which seem oddly unimportant considering the urgency of your main goal, but you do them first anyhow. And you can make things out of the various animal parts, plants, gems and debris you find.
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