Not exactly the biggest RPG series out there, but still a noteworthy one. I never actually finished a Star Ocean game before this one, but I played them all (other than blue sphere) and I really like playing them from time to time.

I’m not a HUGE fan of the series, but I like them anyways, so here are my impressions!

Read on!

Looks and sounds
The character models are pretty good… As long as the game doesn’t do any extreme close-ups, where it becomes obvious that some parts were badly done (the…hands…). And the models look a bit too… doll-like. Especially Lymle, she look completely lifeless. But the style is pretty nice. Anime style, of course, but with a bit of realism too. Some characters more than others. Though your team is filled with the anime cliché looks, some characters like Commander Kenny look a lot more real. There’s quite a few space ships too, and they look pretty cool.

Through the course of the game, you go through various space ships and planets, and all of those look very nice. You get a large variety of environments and such. Spaceships, deserts, forests, plains, mountains, caves, ruins, corrupt planets, past civilizations…  All of those are very well done.

As for the sounds… Well the music is okay, nothing memorable, but it all fits well (is it just me or do I say that a lot?). The voice acting is… a bit all over the place. Some voices are fine, I quite like Edge, Reimi, Arumat and Myuria. But, on the other hand, you have Meracle, Lymle and Sarah, who can be very annoying. I got used to Lymle pretty fast, but Meracle and Sarah still bother me. Otherwise the game sounds okay.

Story
Well… There is a story in the game, but it’s mostly handled in an “episodic” fashion. When you get to a new planet or area, a new story starts. Most of them have important story elements to the actual story, but they can stand on their own pretty well too. Each, of course, affects the characters’ development.

At the beginning, you’re in control of Edge Maverick (most clichéd name ever), a member of the SRF, and after a few events on Aeos, after crash landing on the planet following a problem while in warp, you become captain of the Calnus spaceship, and you have to search for a new planet for mankind, since Earth is pretty much inhabitable after World War 3. On the way there, you learn about/fight things called “Grigori”, which are trying to destroy the universe. So it’s your job to save the universe. That’s basically it.

When on other planets or areas, you either learn more about Grigori, or go through other side-stories, some that have to do with the Grigori, some that don’t.

Also, this game takes place before any of the other Star Ocean games. I don’t know how the plot twist in SO3 affects the story here, but whatever. This is also before the UP3 is established, so it’s “fine” to interfere with under-developed planets and such.

I feel they managed to do a pretty fun story here. YES the characters are cliché and annoying, but they’re well developed so it’s fine. YES Edge goes through a bit of an emo phase for… quite a while, but it’s completely understandable. In the end it’s still an entertaining story.

There’s a lot of references to previous Star Ocean games and you even visit a planet from one of the previous games (though quite a while in the past). Even Welch Vineyard is back… Though I can’t say if she’s the same Welch as in SO3 or not… She looks quite different but… I dunno…

The story is done through many cutscenes, and that’s where the game kinda annoyed me. There’s a lot of them, and most are just boring conversations with nothing else happening, and, except for a few exceptions, they all use the in-game graphic engine so it’s not rare that you get extreme close-ups on characters and see the defects on the character models. Not that they’re bad, but it’s annoying to not be playing for almost 2 hours, listening to characters talking. At least the cutscenes are skipable.

Gameplay
The basics are no different from the usual RPG. Go around fields, fight enemies, get money, buy new equip and go along with the story. Since it’s pretty basic in that aspect I’ll skip to the interesting parts.

Fighting
Star Ocean games always had a fun Real-Time fighting system, and frankly all of them were very fun. And this one is no exception. Like previous SO games, you have different attacks depending on the distance between you and your opponents, and you can link normal attacks to special attacks. Special attacks can also be linked to other special attacks (and if you have a certain skill you can link more and more, and each time you chain a special attack the damage increases). The basics from SO2 and SO3 are all here, and, in my opinion, they’re refined. Everything works really well.

Added here are Blindsides and Rush mode. Blindside is a move where you charge, and when your targeted enemy’s attack is about to hit or about to start, you move in a direction. Then, if the timing is right, you’ll get to the enemy’s back, he’ll be slightly confused, and for a few attacks all your hits with be critical for sure. It’s not unbeatable though. Some enemies can counter you (making a critical hit on you) when you blindside. If you have the skill, you can “double blindside” which prevents you from being countered, but otherwise you have to learn which enemies can or can’t be countered.
Rush mode is a power-up of sorts. It uses a meter that’s under your HP and MP, and when it’s full you can use it. There’s 2 things to do with that. You can either launch a series of special attacks (cutscene-style… kinda) or use it as a power up. When it’s a power up, you get more attack, more defense, you’re able to do critical hits (you can only do that otherwise with Blindsides or a skill) and you get no knock-back at all from attacks.

Another new element is the bonus board. This is a series of 14 slots that fill up with gems if you accomplish certain conditions in battle. There’s 4 gems you can have. 10% experience bonus if you finish off an enemy with a critical hit, gems that heal 1% HP+MP heal after battle if you kill an enemy with just special attacks, a +1 party SP gem if you get an ambush and a +10% Fol (money) if you kill 2 enemies at once. You can get any combination of those up to 14. So that means you can get 140% extra EXP per battle, and you can easily farm party SP if you get lots of ambushes, or you can save on healing items by healing a small percentage of HP/MP every battle. The choice is yours, and it’s a pretty fun and useful system.

Overall the fighting system is really fun, and kinda deep. There’s a very big variety of enemies that have countermeasures to blindsides, weaknesses, different attack patterns, and are just overall killed in different ways. And boss battles are kinda tough and really intense. They can last over half an hour.

If I would be asked if the battle system has anything wrong with it, I’d know exactly what to mention: The targetting system. You can’t change target. At all. The only way to change target is to get close to an enemy and hope the game changes target for you. Otherwise, try getting the target you want, and lock to that target by pressing the left analog stick. It’s annoying, but after a while you get used to the crappy targeting.

Leveling and other stuff
The main leveling is nothing special. You get EXP, and when you have enough your level goes up and your stats get a preset boost.You get EXP from battle, of course, but it’s not rare that you’ll level OUT of battle. Opening chests, gathering resources, using a disintegration ring, completing item orders for shops and finishing side quests all give EXP. I was actually surprised when I leveled up once just by opening a chest, it was pretty weird the first time.

Skills are back, of course, but they’re much different than in SO1 and SO2 (completely forgot how they were in SO3 actually…). You can boost a variety of skills. Passive skills that affect your item creation, item drops on certain enemy types, resource gathering and other stuff, battle commands, passive battle skills, and special attacks can all be boosted. You learn special attacks by leveling, but other skills must be learned from books, which you can either find in chests or buy in shops. You can boost your skills in 2 ways: use individual SP (which you get when you level up, exclusive to that character) or use party SP (you get some of that when you open chests, gather resources. use a disintegration ring or complete item orders and side quests(one amount of points that can be used by anyone)).

A new system here is the BEAT system. It’s really simple. There’s 3 beats. S is an attack oriented beat that gives boosts to your blindsides, B is a defensive beat that gives boosts to Rush mode, and N gets the accumulated stat increase of both other beats but doesn’t boost either blindsides or Rush. For computer-controlled characters, using B is the best way to go, since they never use blindsides and they actually do use Rush mode. For the character you control, it’s all a matter of preference, I use S because I like the attack boost.

Item creation is back, but it’s a bit simplified. First you have to create recipes. For that you put characters in groups and start the process, and a clock will turn. Each time it does a full rotation 1 party SP is depleted. When groups get an idea, you get that recipe. Depending on groups and their aptitudes in item creation, you get different kinds of recipes. Then you can actually create the item. That’s very simple. You only need the ingredients, and the item will be created without chances of not doing it right. So that’s good, you don’t have to waste ingredients and risk getting a bad item, you always get exactly what you want. It’s a bit time consuming though, when you get a lot of characters in your party, you have a lot of groups to try in the recipe creation part. There’s also synthesizing, which involves “fusing” items together to add factors (extra stats) to the desired item. This can get you EXP boosts, FOL boosts, and boost for any other stat.

Like most RPGs, speaking to everyone in towns is very important. Not only do they help getting more involved with the worlds in the game, but they sometimes give side-quests (some that require item creation, other that just require finding certain items or people, stuff like that). And to add even more side-quests, most shops “request” items, which you can deliver to them later, or give to them right away if you have the required items. Those give lots of Fol, EXP and Party SP.

Dungeons are not bad. They’re a bit simplistic. Some are just battle after battle until you reach the boss, and others have puzzles or mazes to get to the next rooms. The puzzles are pretty cool… the first two times you do them, but when you’re required to do them like 10 times in the same dungeon, it can get annoying. Here you also get disintegration rings. These rings have the power remove certain obstacles from the way. Some are required for puzzles in dungeons, other are optional but useful when you’re looking for extra chests and such. Some chests are also blocked by certain elements and you must have rings to open them. Each ring has a limited amount of uses (light ring has 1 use before having to be recharged). You can recharge rings using a special skill (which requires certain stones), some rings can be recharged at certain spots in dungeons, and some NPCs can be paid to recharge them.

Overall
This is a very fun game. If you’re an SO fan, a lot of the story is pure fanservice. If you’re not, the story can still be enjoyable… and if all fails you can consider it a parody of anime and RPGs and get a good laugh out of it. The characters are massively clichéd but pretty interesting nonetheless. The battle system is really fun, despite the targeting system. The leveling is deep enough for an RPG veteran, and simple enough for an RPG newb. The item creation is simplified, but I hated always getting bad items in previous SO games, so it’s fun to actually always get what you wanted to make. Cutscenes are average and can get really long (in the last disc, there was a section of about 2 hours where I didn’t play at all), but there’s one in particular with a pretty nice spaceship dogfight…. So at least not all the cutscenes are boring. And the comedy isn’t too bad either… sometimes. The main game is fairly long, lasting around 40-50 hours on your first run depending on how much stuff you do.

If you’re an Gamer Point whore, you’ll find yourself replaying this game a LOT to get all the points. Battle trophies on all the characters (well, you’ll get quite a few anyways if you want to boost your characters’ level limit), finishing the game on multiple difficulties, there’s a huge amount of side-quests… There’s a lot of content in this game, that’s for sure. The one annoying thing, if you’re gonna do side quests, is the disc swapping. Going to certain planets or areas will require certain a disc in the drive. It’s a bit stupid since even early PS1 RPGs had all the area data in each disc, but in normal play this won’t affect you at all.

Overall, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a solid RPG, and a must-play for any RPG fan who have an Xbox 360.

jobocan Games, Review