Star Ocean: The Last Hope

"It's time to return to the great star ocean."

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the latest entry in the Star Ocean series. It is most similar to the last game, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. You visit a handful of planets, help people out of sticky situations, and end up in quite a big mess yourself.

The short and sweet version:

Plot: 7/10. The weak point. It doesn't really go anywhere until the final disc of the game.
Graphics - 9/10. Beautiful, although there are some noticeable flaws. A huge step up from SO3.
Gameplay - 10/10. Great battle system, and easy to understand controls and mechanics.
Sound - 10/10. The voice acting fits the characters great and the music provides a feeling of adventure.
Overall - 9/10. Plenty to do, plenty to see. This game is by far one of the best JRPGS on the Xbox 360. Do yourself a favor and pick this game up.

The long version:

Plot. 7/10
This section features small spoilers for the first 2 hours of the game. The plot starts out with you playing as Edge Maverick, a 20 year old member of the Space Reconnaissance Force. You are on your way to the planet Aeos alongside your team and childhood friend Reimi aboard the Calnus, your squads ship. It crash lands, and after a scuffle with some hostile creatures, you are sent out along with Reimi to investigate. It turns out the ship was taken over by the monsters. A giant, nasty one attacks and you are assisted by Faize, a young man from the planet Eldar. You defeat it, and report back to your captain. He, along with the captain of the Eldarian force called to help your squad, suggest you take Faize and Reimi and investigate other inhabitable planets. You visit many planets on your journey, and the plot finally picks up on the 3rd disc, near the very end of the game.

Gameplay. 10/10
The best part of the game. The controls aren't hard to figure out at all. A attacks, you move with the analog stick, L and R do special attacks. More advanced things can be done by pressing the Y button, which brings up a menu of Spells, Items, the ability to swap party members mid-battle ( ! ) and so on. The battles are very fun, although somewhat easy on the 2 difficulties available from the start. Overall, there are 4 difficulty settings. Earth, Galaxy, Universe, and Chaos, which are Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard, respectively. After you beat the game, however, some bonus dungeons are able to be done, which are much harder and geared towards more experienced Star Ocean players. Overall, gameplay is simple, yet very fun.

Graphics. 9/10
The graphics in Star Ocean TLH are, in a word, beautiful. The environments are incredibly varied and large. It's mesmerizing looking around at the landscape of the different planets and ships in the game, and all the detail and work that must have gone into making these fantastic locales. The areas you visit range from a lush forest on the coast of an ocean, to a planet split down the middle in terms of terrain, with one side being a grassy plain with some forests and one side being a huge frozen lake and some snowy mountains. The character designs are, for the most part, great. Edge's armor in particular is very detailed. The spells and killer moves the characters pull off in battle are stunning. For one of my favorites, a killer move belonging to Arumat, he punches the ground and calls up a fiery pillar of destruction. All in all, the graphics are almost perfect.

Sound - 10/10
The voice acting is very good. Matt Mercer and Laura Bailey in particular do very good jobs as Edge, Reimi, and Welch. The characters faces may not express much, but their voices sure do, especially towards the end of the game. The music fits each area great, and the battle theme changes as you progress through the game. Some sound effects are kind of annoying, like the one you hear if you are using the Auto-Healing skill, but that definitely doesn't take away from the overall quality of the sound. In the end, the soundtrack of Star Ocean TLH is one to remember.

Overall - 9/10
There's plenty to do and plenty to see in SO:TLH. The average gamer will clock in at the end of the game around 50 hours for a barebones run through. With dozens of sidequests, an arena, 2 bonus dungeons, and 900 battle trophies to collect(That's 3 times as much as Star Ocean 3!) it's very likely you'll at least triple that time trying to do everything. Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a definite buy for any JRPG fan, and by far one of the best on the Xbox 360.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/03/09

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