I know one has already been posted, so I hope its okay. We just happened to finish it around the same time. XD Yeah, and this very ranty, long, and mean. It's tough love.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope Review

Story and Characters

Story

The United States and what looks like China or North Korea (come on, its sooo North Korea. They just won’t show it!) blow the poopie out of each other over an accidental missile launch. Other countries soon join the dick fight, and yay nuclear warfare rapes Earth and all the Hetalia characters die horribly(sorry….I could not help it.) Years later, the small percent of the population without 2 heads and 15 fingers build a colony on the moon and prepare for space exploration to find another habitual planet to dickfight on. That’s where young, inexperienced, Edge Maverick and his love interests, Reimi and Crowe(haha, sorry), come in. Their job is to travel to the planet Aeos and determine if it’s a safe replacement for Earth. Of course, it’s perfectly perfect and they begin immigration immediately. I was just joking on that last part. Of course something goes wrong, but you’ll have suffer through it like I did to find out what.

Well, I’ll be frank here; Star Ocean: TLH has a weak plot, very weak. Here’s what they did. They blended Star Ocean: Till the End of Time with Star Ocean: First Departure and called it a brand new game. Yup, they basically took major plot elements from both of those games and reused them.

It’s cheap, but it wouldn’t have been so bad at all if SO1 and SO3 had amazing plots to borrow from, but they were average themselves. Oh, I forgot! SO4 is also 25% ripped from Star Trek. Ha, but what isn’t? That’s the good 25%, by the way. The plot flow is simple. You’ve got one major plot line that leads up to the final boss. Each new planet you travel to nets you basically a one-scene reminder, as if to say “durrr, something bigger is happening here. Really, we are going somewhere with this….eventually.”

The rest 80% of the time? You land on a planet. One or several minor problems present themselves to you before you can move on to something relevant, and finally at the end of this 5-whatever hour stretch of gameplay, something applicable happens. These minor events serve as nothing more than excuse to add game time and introduce more characters. To keep you from losing interest outright, crap tons of fanservice is mixed in, so even though “rescue the girl,” “find a cure to the mysterious village illness,” “run this errand for the king!” are not at all unique required RPG quests, you want to do them to see the name “Jerand” or “Farrence,” or see a cat in bondage gear or the planet Roak in 3D to show up and make you squeal, because omg there’s sorta-kinda cameos and Easter eggs. And that, my friends, is what they used instead of a new plot, despite the fact that futuristic JRPGs are a dime a dozen, giving this series lots of virgin ground to exploit and one up on everything else. There’s really no excuse other than “damn, we are lazy!” or “the real plot would never have fit onto three discs!”

I speak as a minority here, but the game actually starts out strong and interesting. WWIII. Not bad. Find a new planet to inhabit? Makes sense. Ohhh, Vulcans and humans getting along without wank. Fantastic! Only it goes downhill right after that, when you reach your second planet. Then it goes on with the trend I mentioned above until the last disc of the game, where they finally decide to stop dicking around and tie the game up with about an hour worth of cut-scenes. Gee, could have spread that out a little, IMO. Anyway, the villain is stereotypical, or at least the concept is. They do add one little twist for the end of the game, but if you don’t see it coming from the limited number of party slots, then, well, you are slow or not paying attention. The twist itself is nice, but unfortunately its enjoyment rides completely on your feelings for one character in the game. If don’t care for him/her then, well, you are not going to enjoy even that.

Plot holes have free run in this game. In fact, that’s what the handy dandy Dictionary is for. So when you are going “how in the hell did that happen?” you can look at the database and find some experimental scientific theory, probably copied from a textbook, to say that It could happen..somehow. Thanks, Star Ocean! Tthat makes me feel so much better. Not. There are also several loose ends. There’s even a big old sub-plot half way through the game just to create a reason for Edge to “grow as a person” and by grow as a person, I mean wank his way through a huge chunk of the game. There’s hardly any consistency to hold events together.

Oh, and how could I forget the romance? UGHHH. Expect horrid from Edge and Reimi. Much horror. On the other hand, we’ve got one romance that just breaks all the rules and turns out so fucked up-ly cute that by the time the game was over, I loved it despite one character being 6 and the other 18. Not kidding. You don’t see that every day. And the lighting in the scene that concludes this relationship can be seen as extremely disturbing. This might gross you out but at least it will entertain you. Hey, it helps the little brat is uber powerful and the other character is sort of fail. Yeah, point is: it one relationship in the game that isn’t total cliché.

The only other thing, and I mean the only other thing, I can say good about its overall plot is the ending of the game. It’s fairly long, emotional, and ties directly in Star Ocean: The First Departure quite nicely. It’s all the filling in-between the beginning and the ending that brings it down. To sum up, a twelve year old kid could have come up with a plot more creative then what we have here. Fortunately, the characters manage to hold it together just enough where you will probably at least enjoy parts of it.

Story: 5/10

Characters

The characters are the plots saving grace, which is strange, because they all have 2 major flaws. One, they are all terribly stereotypical and two: they have the development depth of Lymle’s cup size(she’s flat-chested). Heh, well 1 is 90% of all RPGs so we can pretty much ignore that by now, huh? 2, isn’t as easily forgiven. In the game, each character has one personal problem they must overcome and overcoming that is their “development.” This can be done right to a degree if their struggles are interesting and they have a decently sized side quest each to flesh them out, but SO4 has neither. Their problems include, “I keep my emotions behind a mask because people keep dying,” “I have mental disorders,” “I hate my body!” “UGHH!! Why is he better the MEEEEE,” “I have this irrational belief that I am cursed,” “I’m mentally retarded and it’s a struggle.., “Hmm, which is more important, my job or my family?!” “REVENGE. I MUST HAVE IT,”and my personal favorite “ I’M HUNGRY BITCHES.” I wish I was exaggerating here, but I’m not.

As for the whole stereotypical note, that really does apply for all but possibly three characters. Edge really is just a carbon copy hero, with his goody-goody-ideals and self-blame. Oh, and let’s not forget that big heart of gold full endless understanding. The self-hating part aside, Edge does have a sweet side and extremely human reactions during Private Actions. During Private Actions, Edge is mostly a normal 20 year old boy, playing innocent and getting caught up in all kinds of messes. The good part of his personality really shines and he manages to be a caring friend without it feeling forced and all the interactions he has with the party are natural and funny. In-game cut-scenes, Edge is a preachy, whiney annoying little poopie though. Congrats, Star Ocean, you did it again!

Reimi, the game’s heroine is also just another carbon copy. She’s loyal and in love with Edge to a fault and for a time quite spunky. She is, however, a strong-willed female character otherwise. There’s a few times in the game where’ll she surprised me by making actual sensible decisions despite Edge problems, but it’s followed by vomit worthy drama-lama dialogue that it evens out the good and the bad.

The rest of the cast have their ups and downs. You’ve got all the anime essentials : a little loli girl character, a cat girl, a winged, angel-like girl, a big boobie girl, Mr. logical, and an Albel clone. You don’t really get to know much about them during the required game scenes, but if you do most of the Private Actions, you get to see the fun, quirky side of them all, and occasionally you’ll get a serious PA every now and then too. Mostly private actions foster relationships between party members instead of developing the cast individually. They alone are indeed brilliant and make the game worth playing for. The private actions are also highly important for the game’s ending. Doing them is supposed to make you care about certain characters, however stereotypical they may be, and I think they do succeed where it counts, and it counts because how you feel about a certain character will either make or break the game’s plot for you. Fortunately, this particular character has the most interesting background and development, so it works in the game’s favor.

Ah, what else…yes their dialogue. Main game, its one typical puke-worthy “we must save the world and do good deeds!” sugar coated sermon after sugar coated sermon. Many of the characters also have stupid speech trends like saying “kay?” after every sentence, question or not. OCD habit? We’ll never know. Another is “meow” after every other sentence, which is weird and distracting more than anything else. And then there’s “boy” “Mr. Edge” “Oh my goodness!” Need I go on? In PAs, the dialogue is clever and quirky, making me think that someone else wrote them. There’s also a gag character named Welch who controls item creation and references anime cliché all the time and constantly makes fun of each character. On one hand, it’s funny. One the other hand, in order to make fun of them so flawlessly, it means that they know how damn flawed they are. Kinda, depressing, if you ask me, but Welch’s trolling is win, so it’s a plus overall.

To sum up, if most characters didn’t blatantly suck so much, Private Actions would have been boring and worthless. Yay, for that irony.

Characters: 7/10

Story and Characters Score: 6/10



Battle System and Gameplay

Battle system

Oh, how I hate explaining a battle system before I can start a rant. *sigh* Star Ocean: TLH has an addictive real-time battle system. Like all real-time systems you have normal attacks and special attacks and spells. You also can dash(or jump as one character) and blindside enemies. Blind-siding is the major change in the Star Ocean battle system. Basically, when an enemy targets you, you can hold down a button and let go at the right time to sneak behind to do some major damage. It adds a bit of strategy to some bosses with weak points, but mostly it is used to buff up your bonus gauge. Yes, it’s back but slightly different. As you do things like kill multiple enemies in one hit, you get a tile on your bonus gauge with can increase EXP or refill MP and HP after battle, among other things. It’s useful for leveling up and getting skill points faster. The last major addition to the system are chain combos using the rush gauge. When you get ass-kicked enough, you can go into rush mode where you and another character can join end and spam special attacks.

The battle system is pretty simple to get the hang of and flows very nicely. One of the things I enjoyed the most was that many of the characters have unique fighting styles, with the exception of the three mages. By that, I mean some are much faster, have different attack combos, have a greater attack reach, different short-raged and long raged attacks, etc. For instance Reimi is a long-ranged attacker with no mary-sue spells (yes, she never uses magic. AMAZING. boinking Edge gets a healing spell but not her. Lol forever), and Faize is combination of short raged attacker and a mage. Most real time RPGs don’t really put much effort into making different characters unique to control. SO:TLH improves this by making the transition from attacking and spell targeting easier to control. Controlling a mage was a not very nice woman in SO3, but I could easily make the transition there. That leads up to the battle systems one major flaw..it’s a bit easy. Most of the time you can button mash your way through everything. The only time strategy even matters are with bosses with weak points. However, the game does offer different difficulty levels so the point is really mute.

Another downside, is that characters you don’t use in battle do not gain levels or skill points, which means you either stick with the same party or spend extra time keeping everyone up to date. On the plus side, leveling doesn’t take very long and these characters still obtain enough experience form opening treasure, harvesting, and ring usage to keep them from completely rotting away. There are also party skill points you can use on their skills separate from individual skill points.

Battle system score: 8/10 (-2 for repetition)

Gameplay

Oh boy, its rant time! Let’s start with battle trophies shall we? Gone are the days of SO3’s gaming skill challenge trophies and fun rewards. In their place are the “how many hundreds of hours are you willing to waste spamming deep freeze?” trophies and the boring reward of getting more battle quotes. Most, I’d say around 70% of SO:TLH’s battle trophies have nothing to do with your skill level. They have everything to do with the game clock. You see, it doesn’t take skill to kill 999 insect enemies or get a certain amount a specific type of enemy item drops or using the same character for 3000 battles. No, that’s just pushing LT or RT button until everything dies for hours. This wouldn’t be near as bad if it wasn’t for the fact that in order to get each character’s trophies you must be in control of that character when you accomplish your goal. Yes, that means if Faize kills 999 insect enemies, but you did not control him while he did it, you do not get that trophy until you control him and kill 999 more. Awesome, huh? If each character earned them regardless if you were in control then that would be different. It’s also just stupid that each character has his/her own set of trophies to begin with. It takes all the strategy out of it. In SO3, you had to figure out yourself which character was best suited to obtain certain trophies and it made you make use of everyone. Now it does that by wasting 400+ hours of your time, and for what? Well, you get more battle quotes, CP and unlock of the respective character’s level cap. Of all those rewards, only the level caps are remotely useful, but it takes 50 percent of the trophies to get those and that still means a lot of hours invested. Battle quotes are cool in their own right, but let’s face it, they are not worth it unless you are a fan of the character. Costumes were a much better reward by far, and they were a fun extra, not SOMETHING REQUIRED completing the optional dungeons. Yes, I suppose it is possible to beat the mega bosses with the level cap in place, but I bet you don’t want to.

The next most annoying gameplay aspect is the monster database. The goal is to fill each monsters data to 100% so you can use monster gems to transform them into an accessory and if you can manage to do them all, you get an achievement. Here’s the issue: You need to beat a lot of these monsters a 100 times to get 100%. Yep. Best of all, there’s poopie tons of them. Only bosses and most arena monsters have a higher percentage gain per defeat. I haven’t asked how many hours it takes to complete but I bet it’s another few hundred. Have fun. As for the accessories themselves? Useless, expect for bosses and other special cases, so aside from the achievement, it’s stupid.

Ah, let’s pick on the quests. Quests in this game are divided into two types: unique ones you get from townspeople with issues and shop order quests. The NPC quests are quite nice and occasionally add to the game, but the shop orders are just there to drive you nuts and clock more hours in. They can range from item creation to getting certain item drops. The experience and SP awards are worth it most of the time IMO, unless the materials given away are more useful then the reward, but damn there is a lot of them and all of them are almost the same. They are just too time-consuming and repetitive. Guess what, doing them all is another achievement. Surprise, surprise.

Now for item creation. For once I’m not going to hate on it because it isn’t nearly as complicated as it was in SO3. For the most part, if you do a decent amount of the quests and defeat most of your monster encounters, you’ll end up with most of materials you need for the bad assed stuff. If you want to create everything for another achievement, that’s up to you, but if you don’t, item creation is not annoying and it is very useful. The only bad thing about this is harvesting and mining points. These are in areas scattered around and you get a lot of your base materials from them. Sadly, in order to reset them you need to make your way back to your ship. That’s a lot of traveling to do. Near the end of the game you catch a break with transfer symbols that require less running around but then you have to switch discs constantly, so nothing changes.



Alright, I think that’s all the not very nice woman-worthy things. The good points are that SO:TLH has more planets to explore. No, it’s not as many as they hyped it out to be. There are 5. Two are under-developed. One is a jungle basically and one is actually futuristic. The last is a spoiler but it doesn’t really fit into any of those categories. Ok, so nothing much has changed. You are still stuck on underdeveloped shitholes for most of the game, but at least it’s not just one underdeveloped shithole the entire game and you have your ship to go back to. One last thing, chests and other points of interest are marked on the in game map. This is wonderful. Oh, Lymle, for that you are awesome.

Speaking of the Calnus, your ship, you can customize it a small degree with vending machines and such, but the real action happens in the bedroom. You, as the captain have the awesome authority to assign rooming arrangements and shove love potions in them to have your party members date rape each other(well, that’s not shown but come on, what else would you call it.) It’s really just a clever way to foster affection points if you screw up PAs or one of your party members is an asshat. Still, it’s amusing getting to sleep with everyone on board. And, yes the game makes fun of this in PAs.

The final major good thing is the new affection point system. By new, I mean you don’t have to choose between characters and play the game five times to see all the different combinations and endings. The characters you get this time around are set, which is nice because at least this way you don’t have 2-4 characters getting all the spot-light all the time and the rest being just add-ons. PA triggering is quite different this time and far less annoying. Most of the PAs take place on the Calnus on route to a new planet. This leaves less room for error in building up your relationships but it also saves you the trouble of going back and forth to towns to trigger PAs after every event like you had to in the first three SO games. Besides, it makes sense they would take place in your base of operations. I the only thing I miss about the old affection system are the couple endings. If get close enough to each character you will get their ending, which shows what becomes of them, but you Edge doesn’t get to canonly be with anyone like in SO2 and SO3.

One minor cool perk in the ability to skip cutscenes. Not only can you skip them, but when you do a summary of the events pop up. I’ve read most of them and they do a good job. It’s very useful if you die in a boss battle or are simply replaying the game.

The arena and bunny races are back. The arena is pretty challenging and quite fun, but you can easily ignore it if you want too. Two new dungeons are become available after beating the game with harder bosses. Sadly, they are not cameo bosses. There is also no new game +, which basically SUCKS. This is a 100 hour game if you plan on doing a lot, and a 500+ hour game if you plan on doing EVERYTHING. Yeah, carrying over you items, skills, etc. would have been very useful. For people wanting just a ending they missed, I guess it wouldn’t be that bad, but for a perfect saver? It’s a nightmare.

Let’s see…shops are typical and so is wandering around areas. You do get certain rings that interact with treasure and parts of the environment. You can pickpocket again, but it pisses everyone else off and thus you can’t have much fun with it. Oh, Edge can dash, which is A LIFE SAVER. Uhh, Dungeons and areas are generally well designed and not too annoying to navigate. Don’t expect many great puzzles though. You get this ugly bunny to ride one which you’ll probably hardly use.

Yeah, over all it’s a very mixed bag.

Gameplay: 6/10

Battle System and Gameplay: 7/10

Graphics

I can’t be the best judge here because I did not play this in high definition and believe me it showed a little. Considering Star Ocean goes for an anime style rather than a realistic style, it’s not fair to judge based on that because style is subjective. Honestly, I like anime style characters in my RPG. If they start looking too realistic, where every little freckle on their skin is visible they become, well, ugly. At any rate, all the characters are designed well enough. The environments differ quite a bit and fit the culture they are set in. I never once was able to walk into a wall or see hair magically stick into clothing. Spells and attacks are all unique and pretty. I was very satisfied visually.

There are however a few things that could have been touched up, like the plants. Yeah, they are stiff and fake looking. The backgrounds on rocks and grass are reused. Monster designs are reused with only color changes. Futuristic environments were far too damn SHINY. Omg, my eyes sometimes! So, the environments could have used some more work, but the MC and NPCs all look pretty damn good.

Graphics: 8/10

Sound

Music

Average, bland, boring, etc, etc. At least they didn’t add horrible rap music for some boss battles this time. I do miss having a vocal ending theme. Star Ocean usually has great themes, but this time it didn’t have one. At no time did I hear something that caught my attention. At no time was I annoyed by it either.

Music: 5/10

Voice Acting

Well, some of it is good and some of it is horrible. Sarah, Lymle and Welch’s pitches are almost boinking ear drum shattering. Welch’s VA at least acts out emotion well, but it is so loud and high-pitched. Jesus boinking Christ. Sarah is a female “I AM SAM.” Anyone see that movie. Well, if you did, there you go. Edge just sound plain boinking obnoxious most of the time. Come to think of it, I only considered Meracle, Faize, Eleyna, and Arumat “good.” The others were tolerable. No one was “great.” This is why the battle trophy awards are so boinking idiotic.

Voice acting: 5/10

Sound: 5/10

Final thoughts: If you enjoy a nice battle system and a light hearted, simple story, this game is worth playing. If you are a fan of the Star Ocean series in general, this game is worth playing. Hell, if you love anime to death, you’ll probably get a kick out of this game. But, if you are a seasoned RPG gamer looking for something ground breaking or a sci-fi fan wanting a serious space drama, you’ll detest it.

OVERAL RATING: 6.5/10

Nice review. It was a long read, but judging from what I've seen of the game I agree with most points. It was really disappointing to see them use such a promising premise while the rest is basically botched (story wise). Anyway, it's still a fun game for Star Ocean fans, but by no means a must-buy. I'm not finished with the game yet, though. Since it's the game that "broke" my Xbox 360 I'm reluctant to finish it XD

Thanks. lol If I were you I'd just wait for the PS3 port then since its going to have more content anyway. Maybe they'll fix some things. Don't remember if you have a PS3 but it does not have an overheating problem or a ring of death so all is good. My xbox360 overheated around five times playing SO4. But it did that with Lost Odyssey as well so ehh

I do have a PS3. The thing is I was already near the end when I stopped playing so I dunno if I should wait for the PS3 version now :p Maybe if I can find it cheap.

You know what I would really like? A Star Ocean game that just goes all out with the part of the game I really like: a sloppy tongue kiss from tri-Ace to Star Trek. You'd have a bunch of uncharted planets, a spaceship, and a crew. Since most of the Star Ocean games is just you wandering around to different places investigating stuff, you're not even really breaking from the formula. In this game, the Federation has found a huge ring floating in space you could fly a ship through. But it's missing some parts. Researchers determine there's a star chart on it that they use to pinpoint several uncharted planets you need to explore.

Except, instead of fencing you off by forcing your planet choice, some would be more dangerous than others, so you'd go to the one skull danger planet instead of the pile of skulls danger planet at the beginning. BUT later on when you inevitably figure out how to break the game early on, you can do one skull planet later and start out your journey by crafting a bunch of awesome gear and landing in Skull City, Skullsachussets.

So you have your crew. Since you're gonna be Earth Federation, your captain and XO are human, but you can throw in a Tetragene gunner, who'd be your weapons specialist. Your pilot? He's from Roak. And because robots are awesome, you have a robot to do science things and also punch in walls and stuff. So you have a core cast there. On the various planets you can recruit the optional characters, or not if you don't like them. There'd probably need to be a hot green lady, and some kind of ruthless bounty hunter who never shows his face, for sure. Either way you're landing on alien planets and beating the hell out of various alien jerks and teaching their women about earth man love.

And then at the end when you've explored all the planets, resolved all their plots, and found all the McGuffins you can unlock a star gate that's exactly like that movie I didn't see so you can't sue me for using it. And then on the other side you and your posse of randomly assembled homies rolls through it and what is on the other side but a Universal Constructor. Yup, Von Neumann machines, which if used could devour entire biospheres. Your job becomes to find who made the UC and kill the HELL out of them, while smashing as much of their stuff as you can. And at the end you could fight the nanite colony, which would adapt to all your tactics and weapons, forcing you to adapt all the time to make the fight more interesting. And this could be the last boss, because Von Neumann machines are the absolute scariest thing in the entire universe.

Blam. 10/10 game right there.

Distorted_Reality, can i ask you a question.
Why did you have to kill my reason for wanting to play this? >_> <_<

nooooooo, j/k. I wonder though, if SE botched it so bad on 360 what will the PS3: International Release be like?

back to a few serious questions though. serious issues ahead !!!!!1!!!1

1) do you think Tri-Ace screwed up or SE screwed (them) up?
2) Do you recognize any of the voice actors? Amateurs or just not study for their parts?
3) Are the bedroom antics to appeal to the 'Xbox360 fanbase'? (ya know, MMORPGers with little chance of ummm, getting laid)
4) How many hours to beat if all the sidequests aren't taken up? A rough estimate is OK.

Perhaps this is why End of Eternity is being released by Sega. Because SE is upset with triACE over recent sales figures?

i once thought Tri-Ace could do no wrong. perhaps i'm wrong
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=939441&topic=53035461

Hey, there is nothing wrong with playing it for fanservice(or battle system)! XD I did.

1. Eh, probably Tri-Ace. I usually have love hate relationship with Tri-Ace games. The Star Ocean games have always been more about the battle systems and PAs IMO. Even back when it was Enix(Star Ocean 2) the games weren't any better then Star Ocean 4. Overall, I think the games got better after SE, but then again, I don't how too much about gaming companies and how they operate. But, no, I doubt it was SE's fault. SO:I just means that it is being released EU, NA, and JP around the same time and I think it is just going to be a plain old port, maybe without any extras/fix-ups at all.

2. No. I didn't bother to look any of the them up. But, nah, there was none of that "hey, I know that voice!" while playing the game.

3. Nah. The bedroom thing is just a way for characters to gain points for each other so you can get all the endings. There's never any scenes when you change rooms, but the PAs do have some low-key sexual stuff in the bedrooms, but that's directed toward an anime audience completely and it is just for the lolz. Its joked about all the time in fandom that Edge and whatever female he's sharing the room with are doing it because its very hard to get Edge to room with certain girls and some of their comments when you finally get them to room with you are a little suggestive.

4. I'd say around 40-50 hours. That's without the coliseum or the extra dungeon at the end of the game. If you do most of the shop orders you'll probably end up in the 60 hour range.