Published on
Sunday, May 17, 2009 by
admin
Product DescriptionStar 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.
Story
A.D 2064…Planet Earth was on the brink of destruction as clashes between the World Republic Federation and the various nations that opposed it sparked the outbreak of World War III. Weapons of mass destruction, deployed with complete impunity razed the land in the blink of an eye. The dire situation forced the two 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 deteriorating environment, Earth’s population was drastically reduced and those who survived lived a confined existence trapped in underground cities. Eventually countries joined together to form the Greater United Nations and turned their eyes skyward, to space. With the establishment of the USTA, the Universal Science and Technology Administration, man began to seek new worlds beyond the stars.
AD 2087…The first year of the spacedate (SD) calendar. Thanks to the success of Professor Trillas Bachstein’s warp drive experiments, mankind’s dream of a spacebourne existence has inched closer to reality and the USTA secretly began to 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:
 |
Edge Maverick
Although generally possessing good judgment, this young Earthling commander of the maiden deep space voyage of the SRF ship the Calnus, can be reckless. His signature weapon is the sword. |
 |
Faize Sheifa Beleth
A young Eldarian committed to etiquette and logic, and capable of astounding feats of engineering, Faize is always honorable of those possessing abilities he lacks. His signature weapon is the rapier. |
 |
Reimi Saionji
The kind and levelheaded navigator of the Calnus, Reimi was born in an aristocratic Saionji family and has a shared history with Edge back on Earth. Her signature weapon is the bow. |
 |
Lymle Lemuri Phi
Orphaned on her home planet of Lemrick long ago, Lymle is mischievous, but friendly and inexplicably retains the appearance of a young girl. Her signature weapon is the wand. |
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 different characters and utilize the signature attacks assigned to each. The game features a real-time combat system which allows for up to four party members to remain active in battle at a time. Improvements to the game’s combat system include ‘Rush Mode,’ where players can switch out active members of their combat groups for reserve members in real-time; ‘Sight In/Sight Out’ which allows for timed evasive and counter moves against enemies; and the BEAT (Battle Enhancement Attribute Type) system, through which players can change a character’s fighting style at will. Other actions players will master through gameplay include piloting of the spaceship Calnus, a first in the Star Ocean series; item creation in the form of weapons, healing items and accessories; and Private Actions (PAs), a cause and effect relationship between character in-game actions and the acquisition of new abilities and scenarios. Through the increased flexibility mastery of all these skills provides, players should be able to more easily increase their team and individual team member’s combat experience and status, and so unlock more advanced combat styles and 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.
Related topics
Bloom
One thing or another…
It’s been a long time since I wrote a review, but after 300 hours of gameplay, I thought I would make a few points. Star Ocean is a game that, with slightly better writing and development could have been one of the best games of the decade. But it consistenly falls short.
Let’s take a bit of a look.
The game is graphically beautiful. Full appreciation is due to the artists and animators. Not just for wandering around the vast multiworld universe that is the setting for the game, but fight animation is also lovingly detailed. Everything is great except for facial expressions. The characters are usually deadpan, and Reimi has a distant stare that is positively chilling.
The story is intricate. Edge and Reimi start out on Earth’s attempt to find a colonizable world in order to save the human race from the ruin of a war torn planet. They meet a number of different alien races enlist characters (you wind up playing 4 out of a set of eight characters). Eventually they meet more villanous aliens, uncover a plot to end the universe and have to defeat an evil mastermind. Initially the game is linear, but gradually non-linear elements (such as quests) are introduced and you will do a lot of planet hopping. To some degree there’s too much story. The worst example is the infinitely long closing sequence, which is unavoidabe and unstoppable.
Interplayer relationships are interesting as the characters are all quite different. Acting, however, is spotty. The worst example here is the crisis Edge goes through when his actions result in the destruction of a planet. Not his fault, but he spends endless hours whining and beating on himself (massively overacted) before he gets back on track
Gameplay itself is the real problem. The characters are irritatingly difficult to steer, and the precise position needed to accomplish something can be quite elusive. This can get on your nerves. For all the complicated battle options most battles are repetitious and frankly, the bosses are too easy. Or so they are until suddenly they get way to0 hard.
Battle trophy hunting is an important part of character building since you need enough trophies to remove the experience cap and get more than a small handful of things to say while killing mushrooms. Some of these are a matter of pure luck(kill an opponent with exactly the right anount of damage)or really aren’t much of a challenge (run away 20 times). None of the other collectables are that hard to get, but they are easy to miss if you don’t know that some place is about to be destroyed forever. Which means you will have to play the game at least twice to get the accomplishments. And while I don’t mind playing the hack and slash endgame for hours on end, the last thing I want to do is live through Edge’s tantrums again.
I have a number of other grumbles, but no doubt you have already figured out that this is a very playable game that simply doesn’t live up to its potential. It is a pleasant pass time though so I would recommend it anyway as a good value for the money.
A game worthy of a second, third or even 4th round
So after finishing the game (Galaxy difficulty) here are my reactions of the game. I have to say, I haven’t played a game non-stop whenever I have free time ever since Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria. As expected of Tri-Ace, they’ve kept the usual active battle system that made it shine as a JRPG and then some.
- Graphics are superb, they’ve put a lot of detail on everything that you’ll never notice them unless you really move the camera up close. Pretty good use of the Unreal engine.
- Music is pretty much the same as every SO scores before it, I’m just glad that the battle music changes on location/event/bosses since it gets tiresome to hear the same one over and over again. You can always turn the music off and listen to your own if you want especially if you’re doing a 2nd run of the game.
- Storyline is epic where the main character and his friends are given/pushed the task of saving the Universe, not giving any spoilers LOL. So what if the story progressed slow or did it? I didn’t really noticed it that much. In my point of view, this is done just so the player gets him/herself acquianted with the characters as well as what they can do in battle. I’m saying this now because once you start Universe or even Chaos you’ll be paying more attention to them more than ever.
- Mechanics is a bit “iffy” < - LOL, you can play the game on 1080p but expect a lot of slowdowns and certain point freezes that you as a player don't want to experience especially if you're 3/4 of the way (i.e. Miga Insect Warren area) and it just stops (happened 3 times)... all those hard earned points and treasures lost... So I kept it to 720p and everything went fine after that. This takes me to save points... they're hard to come by especially if you're the "I just want to keep going and not stop to get provisions or make them before setting off" person... you'll hate this (ROFL) but this shouldn't cause you not to play this game, it just teaches you to be more prudent and make good use of the bonus board <- very important in later difficulties. I also wasn't impressed with the disc swapping taking place when visiting previous planets... they should make a patch where if you installed all three discs in your HDD you should only need DISC 1 or 3 but that is not the case..... This is the only one that really annoyed me since I had to do a lot of back tracking to gather materials for special items. I have no problems standing up and swapping discs since I'm proud to say I'm an above average fit person but when it comes to gaming, simple disturbances such as this affect the playing experience. And oh for those people complaining why their team AI is lackluster is because they dont configure their characters enough assigning them what skills they can and cannot use... so whenever the AI is assessing the situation it chooses the best options but if you gave him/her too much to choose from their reaction becomes slow... I love my healer(s) since I can just go into the fray and not worry (even the final boss)... too much.
I’m currently trying out Universe difficulty so I can unlock the Chaos challenge since this is the meat of the package and I love battles that most people call ridiculuous… Unfortunately, I heard that The Last Hope is being ported to the PS3 since this game is actually a timed exclusive… I would like to get the PS3 version if it does come out just so I can avoid the disc swapping and hopefully they include the original Japanese voice and then some. So for now I might have to take a break from Universe and see if the news are real…..
But if you’re the type who just wants to play the game just for fun then think no further and get this game for the 360 you will not be disappointed. But in the future you decide that you’d want more, then I suggest verify, if its real then wait and purchase the PS3 version just for convenience purposes LOL happy gaming!!!
skip the cutscenes and it’s good
I picked this up because I usually love Square Enix games. I quickly realized that the cutscenes and the voice acting are absolute balls. I mean it’s so bad that you can’t really watch it without wanting to gouge your eyes out and fill your ears with cement. The good thing is that these scenes can easily be skipped by pressing start, and you are given a written synopsis of what you just skipped. This is great, IMHO, and more games should implement something like it.
Other than that, the game is awesome in every way.
Oh except the camera kinda sucks. And there should be something in between walking at a snails pace and running. How about jogging? Would it be too much to have my character jog? I don’t think so.
this concludes my review.
JUST AWESOME!
I didn t enjoy Star Ocean on PS2 but this one is JUST AWESOME! I m close to end it for second time to get what i left the first time i ended and I think will start with the last difficulty level “Chaos”. I don t see it that hard but the gameplay characters and more are very cool. There is a little bug with Edge and Lymle silence spell so try to disable it if you get freeze after beating a batle otherwise lower the resolution of the game (the first one fix the freeze for me). I TRULY recommend you to buy this game is a very challenging game to get the achivement but totally worth it for the fun factor.
For hardcore Star Ocean Fans only…
I would consider my self an rpg/jrpg fan and I was still very disappointed with this game. First off, the story…oh, dear god the story…it’s VERY slow moving and moves nowhere. In the beginning of the main story, you are supposed to be looking for a lost crew which for most of the game this just takes you jumping from planet to planet mindlessly, where each planet contains a new sub-plot (sometimes even another dull sub-plot within the sub-plot) that is almost never concluded or even introduced in an interesting manner. There’s even a point in the game where you manage to travel back in time for a bit only to nonchalantly destroy an Earth from another dimension, wtf. Be prepared for Xenosaga-like cutscenes, YES 20-45min cutscenes, with HORRIBLE scripting and voice acting (thank GOD for the synopsis data feature in the menu, I found myself skipping alot of the cutscenes). You might even find yourself getting angry at of all the monotonous story that gets shoved in your face because it just ends up turning into interruption in gameplay instead of being a part of the actual game itself.
Next the battling system. Overall it was pretty creative and fun, at first. Yeah the new blindside feature is great but it ends up being useless once you master combos, chain combos, and symbology, but one of the bad things and probably the worst thing about the battling system is your party AI. Theyre clueless. If you set them with tactics that use MP they will just nuke the heck outta everything without even trying to combo and they will quickly deplete their MP. If you set them to tactics that dont use MP they will literally just stand there half the battle and do nothing. Because of this you will find yourself having to switch between characters very often during battles and keeping a very close eye on EVERY move each character makes because you will catch them doing very stupid things very often. Another frustrating part of the battle system is the bonus board. Basically you fill the bonus board up as you battle to get extra exp, money, HP/MP recovery, and skill points. You’ll find out the only useful part of this is getting extra skill points because filling up the board is the only way to actually get skill points in battles. To fill up the board to get skill points you have to be ambushed in battle, meaning you have to encounter an enemy while other enemies are in the immediate area, which can take HOURS to do properly because many of the enemies are complete idiots when it comes to spotting you and chasing after you making it difficult to group enemies together for an encounter.
If you’re looking for a jrpg plz go buy Tales of Vesperia. If you are not a hardcore Star Ocean fan then there is a good chance this game is just going to irritate you.