- Title: Star Ocean: The Last Hope
- Publisher: Square Enix
- Developer: Tri-Ace
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: RPG
- Pros: Fun combat system; bonus board; nice graphics
- Cons: Clichéd story; semi-awful dialogue; level designs
Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the fourth Star Ocean game but is actually a prequel to the others, so no prior knowledge of the series is required to enjoy the game. The story itself tells of a future Earth where nuclear war has rendered the surface uninhabitable so mankind looks to outer space to find a new home. You play as Edge Maverick, a member of the Space Reconnaissance Force, and member of one of five ships sent on a mission to explore a distant planet. The mission doesn’t quite go as planned, as one of the ships goes missing and the destination planet is infested with monsters. After taking care of a few space bugs, Edge is promoted to captain of the spaceship Calnus, with the mission of trekking back out into space, traveling to new planets, and finding the missing SRF ship. Along the way you meet new party members and discover a terrible force that threatens the entire universe.
The story starts off with a great sci-fi premise – finding a new home for mankind – but quickly falls into the same predictable patterns and plotlines as just about every other JRPG. The characters, likewise, all represent familiar archetypes that we have seen a thousand times before. With just a tiny bit of originality, Star Ocean: TLH would have been a lot better off.
Gameplay
The combat is complex and satisfying, but it is made even better if you actively try to take advantage of the bonus board. During battle, accomplishing specific goals such as killing enemies with only special attacks or getting lots of critical hits will give you special tiles that fill one of 14 slots on the bonus board. After each battle, these bonuses will do things like recharge your HP/MP, give you more skill points (which you can use in the surprisingly deep item creation or to upgrade your skills), or greatly increase your cash or experience earnings. Since you can customize your bonus board by only doing the specific things in battle required for a given tile, it can really change your experience with the game.
Graphics
Graphically, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a pretty nice looking game. The large outdoor environments are almost always very impressive, and seeing new planets never gets old. The characters 3D and realistic but with Anime-inspired faces that are too smooth looking and don’t show emotion particularly well. Personally, I don’t mind them, and at any rate you get used to it pretty quickly.
Sound
The sound is an area of both strength and weakness. The music is generally pretty great, and the sound effects have an oldschool tone to them that I noticed right away and found kind of comforting. You’ll know it when you hear it. The voice acting, on the other hand, ranges only from acceptable to downright awful. The writing deserves a big part of the blame here as there is a lot of redundancy and some scenes just go on for way too long with just plain unnecessary stuff being said. There are quite a few emotional scenes that just fall completely flat because of silly and pointless dialogue as well.
Bottom Line
