Star Ocean: The Last Hope

"The last hope, a game about bunnies, cat people, and blind sides"

Ok Lets get down to it, Star Ocean The Last Hope is the latest game in the arsenal from Tri-Ace, I have put roughly 40 hours into it and am delighted about the game so far. This game is the prequel to all the other games... meaning that it came before the others time wise. You do not need to play the other games in order to understand this one.

This game has a revamped super user friendly battle system, basically it teaches you everything you need to know... even before you get into the game, on the main menu there is a battle simulator, it teaches you everything about the fighting. The great bunny is back from so2. So are a lot of other things. Ok time to break this down for you guys, and gals.


Battle: 9.0... I give it that because there are a lot of cool things you can do in battle. Blindside for one, it is a great way to get behind the enemy and pull off some major damage. There is a rush gauge, when full lets you pull off some awsome rush combos, if your partners have a full gauge they can too join in on your combo. Last but not least, it has a smooth 60 frames per second, which means just that, uber smooth battles, and hardly any slowing down.



Graphics:8.5... This game again runs at 60 frames per second, and I believe its native resolution is 720p, turn it down to that and you won't have any problems with freezing or anything. The environments are beautifully rendered, the movement of people on these backgrounds is phenominal, the detail on the characters are as well.


Music: 7.0...Motoi Sakuraba did a great job on the music, its just that it gets so redundent. Not much to say about this one.


Characters: 8.0... They did a great job on the characters. The main character only goes all super whiny for a short time in this game, but all the characters have background stories, some are real intriguing, others are kind of... well out of this world...


Overall: 8.5... While there are a lot of good things about this game there are some faults as well. I will list the pros and cons of this game next, well what I personally think they are.


Pros: 60 frames per second, means the battles are smooth and no slowing when lots of things happen at once. There is a lot of funny dialog and cutscences that ensue in this game. The new battle techniques are real fun also.



Cons: There are three disks(not normally bad) but they need to be swapped out when you want to return to previous places you visited. The last gripe I have about this game is the camera, it is annoying sometimes, as in it gets stuck in certain small places, and angles.





Thank you for reading my first ever review.If for any reason you need to get in contact with me for help or otherwise about this game feel free to message me on Aim. My aim name is ramuh101



That is all.
~~Red~~

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/02/09

Game Release: Star Ocean: The Last Hope (US, 02/23/09)