Star Ocean: The Last Hope Review

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(More customer reviews)"Terrible graphics!!!"
That's what stands out when I read all of these reviews. I find nobody that thinks these are great graphics. Hmm. I'll get back to this.
Anyway, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the fourth of the series. Its roots are in space and time travel, and often takes place on faraway planets, though its protagonist is generally from Earth. The first Star Ocean (Blue Sphere) never came stateside; instead, we got Star Ocean: The Second Story. During a time when the first PlayStation was hurting for role-playing games, this was a breath of fresh air. It introduced concepts that were new to gamers but taken for granted since: synthesis, cooking, and customization. In truth, The Second Story was really a 100+ hour game if you wanted to accomplish all there was to do.
What The Second Story also brought to the table was challenge. Other games were hard, but TSS is known even to this day as having one of the worst final bosses in RPG gaming history, a man known only as Indalecio. His original form was bad enough, but when you went to a certain private action, he became "Unlimited Indalecio", a true GOD that gamers were not worthy of. Being level 99 didn't do you any good either. That's not even counting the bonus dungeon's boss, Iseria Queen, who is even worse. Bottom line - the game was blatantly difficult near the end.
Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time was released on PlayStation 2, and it wasn't well received by gamers, mostly because for the most part it deviated from what made Star Ocean so good. But what gamers don't see is that the third game actually added a piece of gaming goodness to the overall series. It introduced a new character in Welch Vineyard, adored by fans, almost to cultish dimensions. It also had a lot of small "throwback" things like science centers named after famous inventors in the previous and subsequent games, and bonus dungeon battles with notable characters from the past. It wasn't a bad game really...and didn't get the fair shake it deserved.
Not too long ago came two PSP remakes: Star Ocean: The First Departure and Star Ocean: The Second Evolution, based on the first and second Star Ocean games, respectively. While the gameplay is identical, these are definitely remakes in that a number of things were changed, most notably the difficulty of the second game being toned down and the skill tree being a lot more friendly than before. For those that never played the first game, First Departure was a great opportunity to find out what the first game was about, and when you play it, you get a better sense of the overall storyline.
Enter The Last Hope. This story takes place prior to the events of the first Star Ocean (using First Departure as a reference point), so if you never played the other games, a lot of the things you'll notice won't go over with you, but if you did play the others, you'll hear music that will remind you of each game, and meet characters that you either recall from the other game or who must be related to others from the previous games. There's definitely a lot of fan service to be had here.
Your protagonist is Edge Maverick, a young crewman on the Calnus. A disaster on Earth has rendered the planet unsuitable for human life, and the SRF (the organization you belong to) has been ordered to seek out habitable planets to identify their viability as a new place to live. If that story sounds familiar, at least somewhat, it's actually quite close to the story in Star Trek III: The Wrath of Khan, and one of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes where terraformers are attempting to find planets that would be suitable for colonization. Unlike those however, a space "bubble" knocks you and your other ships off course, causing you to crash land on your first planet. While the plan appears to be quite like Earth, there is a darker side (this story is commonly seen on the original Star Trek). You can hopefully see where I'm going with this...there's also some instances of time travel that are quite interesting, yet infuriating at the same time. You'll end up hopping from planet to planet to achieve your objective.
Now that you have a sense of the basic storyline, let's get to the game itself. As mentioned before, it spans three full DVDs; that's over 13GB of data, for those too lazy to do the math. You can do the install to the hard drive, but be forewarned that there is a going speculation that doing so causes the game to freeze. I did experience a freeze, but I can't confirm for a fact that the install was the cause. I do installs to keep my drive from going out, and don't intend to stop anytime soon. Part of the problem with the spanned disks is that different planets are so large that they literally exist on specific discs. I know other games have the same issue. The problem is that if you wanted to go back to an older planet (and you will have to, for mining and such), you need to insert that disc. What I don't know yet is whether or not you can just install all three discs and avoid the disc swapping altogether. I assume you can, but haven't yet tested that theory. Seems though that you'd still need to swap discs, since the 360 requires the disc be in the drive in order to even access the stored data.
The music in the game is quite excellent, but for the fact that the tracks are quite short indeed. Older Star Ocean games also had short tracks, but keep in mind they were limited by the space on CDs during the PlayStation era. Either they kept the tracks short in order to emphasize the nostalgia, or they just didn't have the space left over to accommodate the music tracks in full. Of particular exception are the tracks from older planets like Roak (First Evolution) where the music from that game is playing, instantly inciting nostalgia. The extremely short, repeating nature of these beautiful tracks is the only issue here. As far as the voice acting, people are complaining about it, but I found it quite good, honestly. I mean compare this voice acting to Infinite Undiscovery or Tales of Vesperia...and you see there is no comparison. At least in this game, the personality of each character is brought to life extremely well, except for maybe Reimi (because she sounds like every other video game heroine). Part of the measure of good voice acting is whether you are emotionally moved by the character when they're speaking about something - and yes, some people don't get moved at all by game characters - but when someone like Lymle is expressing how sad she is, in a way a child definitely would in the same situation, you can't help but appreciate the voice acting that much more.
In terms of challenge, I found the game to be quite balanced compared to other RPGs of this style. Regular enemies for the most part are not difficult; you do get multiple difficulty settings to choose from, but even on the harder settings you can still reasonably work your way through the majority of regular enemies. They're aggressive, but your characters are even more aggressive. Once you master all of the nuances of battle, you will find yourself breezing through the majority of battles without a scratch. The challenge comes in when you encounter bosses though - these behemoths (and they're always behemoths, aren't they) will almost always give you at least a slight challenge, whether it's juggling you in the air, blasting you with flames or freezing you to death. But that's how it should be, in my opinion: regular enemies are moderately challenging, bosses even more so, but neither so difficult as to throw your controller against a wall.
Speaking of battle, the gameplay engine in The Last Hope is a throwback to the older Star Ocean games who really pioneered the action battle along with the Tales series...but The Last Hope threw in just a little bit of uniqueness to break the mold. Here you control your main character as he hacks his way to victory, and yes, you can take control of your other characters as you see fit. But this game offers some flavor. You can do some short range jumps in the four directions; so to the left/right, toward or away from your enemy. This is great if you need to dodge, or cut down distance to your enemy to effectively defeat them. You can also transition from the jump into the Blindside attack, which allows you to quickly run behind your enemy. If done correctly, not only will you dodge the attack, but you will surprise the enemy and do critical hits on their backside. From there you can throw regular or special attacks; even chain special attacks together if you've got a skill that allows you to do so, racking up major damage. Rounding out the feature is the Rush attack, which can be best described as a limit break. When executed, you and another team member will unleash a flurry of blows to one enemy to multiply the damage dealt. I found myself not really using this, simply because it takes a long time to build up the gauge that drives it, and the damage wasn't all that great compared to regular attacking and special moves.
As you fight and pull of special attacks, you'll build up slots on the Bonus Board, which gives you various bonuses such as Exp and Fol. It also can give you free SP which can be used to build up your skills, or HP/MP to heal you after each battle. But be careful; the enemy can destroy part of your Bonus Board if they hit you hard or frequently enough, so you really can't just bull rush every single fight. You need to pay attention and stay on the move in order keep the advantage. The Bonus Board also apparently disappears when you save and cut the game off, which I understand, but don't care for.
Making a return in a toned down fashion is the item creation feature. In Star Ocean 1 and 2, you could create...Read more›

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Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the latest release in the celebrated science fiction and fantasy Star Ocean RPG series. This prequel set during the aftermath of Earth's fictional World War III combines sci-fi and fantasy elements spanning multiple planets and the vastness of space itself to recount the origins of the Star Ocean Universe. Exhilarating combat expands upon the franchise's famous real-time battle system, introducing amazing graphics and next-generation visual effects brought to life on the Xbox 360 gaming system. Crystal clear graphics. Viewlarger. Compelling combat. Viewlarger. Classic RPG functionality. Viewlarger. Story A.D 2064...Planet Earth was on the brink of destruction as clashes between theWorld Republic Federation and the various nations that opposed it sparked theoutbreak of World War III. Weapons of mass destruction, deployed with completeimpunity razed the land in the blink of an eye. The dire situation forced thetwo opposing factions to negotiate a cease-fire and an agreement was quickly reached,but although the war may have ended, its effects remained. With the deterioratingenvironment, Earth's population was drastically reduced and those who survivedlived a confined existence trapped in underground cities. Eventually countriesjoined together to form the Greater United Nations and turned their eyes skyward,to space. With the establishment of the USTA, the Universal Science and TechnologyAdministration, man began to seek new worlds beyond the stars. AD 2087...The first year of the spacedate (SD) calendar. Thanks to the successof Professor Trillas Bachstein's warp drive experiments, mankind's dream ofa spacebourne existence has inched closer to reality and the USTA secretly beganto implement its SRF project, the Space Reconnaissance Force. Now it is SD 0010,and the first official SRF mission and your adventure has begun. Characters Players of Star Ocean: The Last Hope will meet and interact with a wealth of characters from different parts of the galaxy, each with their own history and weapons of choice. Just a few of the more prominent characters to familiarize yourself with include: Gameplay and Combat Although Edge Maverick is the main character in Star Ocean: The Last Hope,players will of course experience gameplay action in the form of a number of differentcharacters and utilize the signature attacks assigned to each. The game featuresa real-time combat system which allows for up to four party members to remainactive in battle at a time. Improvements to the game's combat system include 'RushMode,' where players can switch out active members of their combat groups forreserve members in real-time; 'Sight In/Sight Out' which allows for timed evasiveand counter moves against enemies; and the BEAT (Battle Enhancement AttributeType) system, through which players can change a character's fighting style atwill. Other actions players will master through gameplay include piloting of thespaceship Calnus, a first in the Star Ocean series; item creation in theform of weapons, healing items and accessories; and Private Actions (PAs), a causeand effect relationship between character in-game actions and the acquisition of new abilities andscenarios. Through the increased flexibility mastery of all these skills provides,players should be able to more easily increase their team and individual teammember's combat experience and status, and so unlock more advanced combat stylesand linked combinations. Key Game Features:
Series prequel - Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a prequel in the classic series, combining sci-fi and fantasy elements, spanning multiple planets and the vastness of space itself to recount the origins of the Star Ocean universe.
Exciting Battles - Exhilarating combat expands upon the franchise's famous real-time battle system, including the amazing graphics and visual effects only possible on Xbox 360.
Compelling Scenes - The game features breathtaking CG movies by Visual Works, the cutting-edge studio whose previous work includes cutscenes for the acclaimed Final Fantasy RPG series.

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