Star Ocean: The Last Hope

"I gave this a 9 at first...."

Star Ocean 4, a game many fans probably hoped would rectify the atrocity that was SO3. I am a life time rpg-er and a dedicated Star ocean fan, having played all of them when they came out (a patched star ocean 1), and I can say, this is taking the game in the wrong direction.

Star ocean 4 is a 'perfect modern blend of graphics' so many people seem to desire with a tantalizing story , but still has some game play in it. Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Not all is perfect in paradise, this game has some of the most painful characters I have ever had the misfortune of enduring during my quest. Hours of running around in a battle system that isn't as good, and a story that could have been in Bad Dudes.

In other games, especially the older star oceans, if you hated a character, you either didn't get them, or you just sidelined them, and they generally stayed quiet while you took care of business and saved the world. The characters are the largest complaint I have with this game, I'll cover that in detail, but for the most part they are an aggravating source that helps to contribute in the marring of what might of been a pretty good game.

Story: 4 (this is the largest change in my review)

Let me state this right off, the reason this does not get a higher score is the story is non-existent for the first ten hours, and is only visible it shorts spurts for the next ten hours! However, I have grown somewhat cynical in my gaming life, and its not often I am touched by stories anymore, but later when a side story gets kicking, I couldn't help but think “man, that was really good. I haven't seen something like this in a game in a LONG time.”

Initially, the opening movie sets the game in a pretty good tone, and you are really feeling your new purchase, humans nuked the planet, but learned their lesson and are reaching for the stars! But then…well you are bashing on spiders for the next ten hours because there isn't a story anymore. There are a lot of side characters introduced early, but then you leave them behind, literally and they aren't that important for the rest of the game.

At first when that extremely cool side story came to fruition, I was thinking 'oh yeah, this game is really going to pick up', but it never does. The story literally just does not go anywhere. There is an ultimate evil, but despite how much everyone tells you how bad it is, I was more just disgusted with typical and uninspired the villains were. I mean we are talking like NES depth of complexity of plot.

One other thing I had an issue with was a lot of things they over-looked in the story. I mean things like how would aliens know what a handshake is? Why are there humans all over the galaxy and no one even wonders ‘why are there humans/near-human-hybrids other places then earth?' Why don't they try guns in new areas just because they didn't work on spiders I've been bashing on for hours?

These are a few points that take away from the realism of the game, and hurt a little. I cringe every time Edge goes and shakes an alien's hand and everyone seems like this is completely normal.

But, after these little aggravating peeves, and about 15-20 hours, the story is really good, but then I realized this cool part was just a small side story and its over.

I'll cover more in the characters section, but Edge adds a lot to the story. It has been a long time that a fairly realistic character is the lead without being overly ‘perfect hero' or ‘perfect anti-hero' types. Particularly, when he was bemoaning about a bad outcome, it was the most realistic section of story I had seen in about as long as I can remember.

All your crew, who most of them are annoying at this point, are like “aww edge, its ok!” and he just totally ignores them (not often seen in jrpgs) and is just talking to himself, screaming about his decision, full of realistic obscenities. Edge doesn't swear much, so the few times he does is added without a feeling of “lets swear a lot to be cool”

Characters: 8 and 1…

I am going to state this right up front, as a guy, I HATE the main girl, and then the baby you get next. That means for the first 18 hours of the game, the females of your crew are totally annoying, and aggravating. So bad they drag the score of this game down.

Part of the problem is character design. The guys look good enough, but the two first girls you get (the others are better) are just too “doll-like”. I can't explain is more succinctly then that. In battle, Reimi is cute enough, but her face is no different then a china doll you could find in a store. Her eyes are lifeless, unfocused, and just kind of there, staring off in the distance. She is like the type of people who you are talking to, but you don't know if they are looking at you, or are looking at something in another dimension. I have never been annoyed by someone's eyes before, but Reimi does it.

She doesn't really do anything else other then annoy you. She is your typical ‘hero's girlfriend who doesn't want to admit she is' character. That means we get all sorts of ‘endearing' moments like “I can't believe you are looking at my butt!” and “OMG I just woke up in an alien base, and you saved me, but I'm naked so I'm going to slap you for looking at me!”

She has about as much depth as any typical piece of cardboard, and her cute butt can only get her so far when he face is so annoying and lifeless which mirrors her personality.

The next female you get is Lymle, a six year old who you carry around the galaxy. The manual states she is 15. Young kids can work, if they do it right, and they aren't annoying. Usually if they just shut up and do what they are told.

Instead you are given this girl who has the most irritating sentence habit I have ever seen in a game, and that is adding “ ‘kay” to every sentence. That means you hear sentences like “Let's do it! ‘kay?” “Don't cry, just because everyone is dead, ‘kay?”

This brings us to a part that weakens the story further. Ok, so we pick up Faize, and he is a smart, competent alien. It makes sense to carry him around the universe, because he is smarter then any of the crew you have so far. But then we get this little girl, and you are literally holding her hand through many sections of the story. When the universe is blowing up and people are dying, do you really have to worry about a little girl tripping over stuff to advance the plot? Well, maybe it is good, because if you didn't have her, the story would never advance in that regard…

One more character ruins this, her name is Welch. If you are an old Star Ocean player, I hope you concur with my experience that the first time you saw her in SO3, you are thinking “oh my god…why is this stupid girl in my game?” Well, then I hope you were even more shocked when you realized the put her in a SO2 remake. What were they thinking? Well, she is back.

She is the comic relief character that isn't funny. She is the cute girl, who isn't cute. She is the annoying girl you have to deal with when you want to make items. I seriously don't think anyone could like someone like this in real life. I am playing a game, people should be even cooler in games then real life, not lamer.

You know there is a problem if the cat girl is the best female character you have. You get the cat girl, and she is comic relief, but at least has a story and can be serious from time to time.

To add something positive to justify the 8 I gave the character section, most of the other crew is ok, you have a cyborg, a hot elf girl and an albel-clone from S03

Edge is a realistic character that I enjoy. He has some problems, a touch too trusting to be realistic, but the regret he shows, as well as the enthusiasm he shows paint a realistic character. In fact, after something serious happens and the annoying girls are like “its ok!” it is nice to have a character be say “actually its not. People just died here.” Faize and Morpheous (the cyborg) are two alien characters who are both fine, their witty wordplay is a nice change of pace in typical rpgs.

Excluding the bad ones I illustrated, the others are pretty fun to watch, and are fairly realistic.

Graphics: 10

I am always a little hesitant about new generation rpgs, they just tend to lack that certain level of originality or refinement that older games had, and instead hide behind graphics. Unfortunately, so many gamers these days for some reason think that good graphics are a good game.

All too often, a rpg gamer is presented with two distinct types of rpgs, the flashy graphical kind that basically lack any real depth yet look really good; or some sprite game that has a story, because it has too. This is stereotypical, but it has a large basis in truth.

Regardless, my hesitance about new rpgs that look visual appealing is unwarranted with star ocean 4, initially. Yet sadly, I cannot deny that this was yet another game that went the wayside of graphics over game play and story.

The background graphics are amazing. The water, the mountains, the ceilings all of them are very well down. They look as good as real life in a lot of cases.

My only complaint is that the camera is very hard to actually get to look around. It does a fine job when you are running around. But if you want to look at a character (who even the townspeople make you want to look at them) you have to get tricky. Often there are a lot of good detail in the background that you simply don't see unless you stop moving, and roll the camera around and purposely try to ‘trick' it into scrolling upwards or downwards.

Gameplay: 6

It is your typical Star ocean fare, but somehow worse. It is an action-rpg. This makes it the best kind of battle system for rpgs that I love to play. However, that being said, I can't go without saying the battle system feels a little dry compared to the other star oceans. Looking at the raw data is seems impossible. After all, you have more special moves you can use, but it is certainly there.

In SO1, and SO2, your killer moves went crazy. They were super powered, and everything fell to your unstoppable might, or your explosion pills. In SO3, the battle system felt really tuned, linking your combos, everything felt really smooth and you felt in control. Your moves weren't as ‘imba' so to say, but the battle system still felt really fluid. Honestly, it was the battle system that kept me playing that awful game for 80 hours. However, this one just doesn't have either the classic-ness of the first two, or the addiction of the third.

There is just something missing in this. I think the battle arena is bigger or something, and your guys are a lot slower. A lot of you moves miss. You hit your button to start your combo of death, and you start diving towards an enemy that had moved, your character continues your move slashing and exploding at empty air. In the earlier SO's if by chance you missed, you literally only had to turn around because you were right there, but now you run the enemy down for about 5 seconds. It doens't sound that bad, but considering you do this often during battle, it breaks the pace. It just doesn't feel as smooth or refined as the past incarnations.

The moves don't really ‘feel' like they are anything special. Just something that does a bit more damage. I mean in older SO games, you were throwing grenades, bashing up rows of rocks, flying through the air, unloading flaming comets of death etc. You felt the power. There was no question this move was either really cool, or really good.

In this, you just kind of slash your sword and sometimes you run, or sometimes you hit a little faster, or sometimes you send out an energy wave. Yay, I did about 20% more damage. I should just hit the regular attack button because there is less chance I will miss.

Also the battle has a bonus system that either gives you more money, more experience etc. The only important one is skill points, but they are super hard to get, you have to ‘rig' the battle so you get ambushed in the field. It is aggravating.

For the record, item creation has been immensely simplified without getting dumbed down. There is no chance that you are going to crank out ‘junk'. You have to have the right combo to come up with the idea, but once you have that recipe, you pick it. If you want a certain mineral, or certain armor, you make it. You don't hope that you get lucky in the other games. This is a big plus.

However, with that being said...unless you beat the game you can't really make ANYTHING. You can cook some food, woo... I seriously don't know anyone that bothered making food when you could just use berries instead. But in this game I seriously think you could make 2 maybe 3 armors total without either farming really rare stuff for hours, or beating the game to get access to better materials.

Item creation was a huge part of SO! Now I can't make tons of swords, tons of armor and accessories!? They simplified the system, but forgot to add anything to it. I mean we have alchemy, and there are easily over 20+ things to synthesize, but in reality any single one is super hard to actually get the materials for, and it doesn't matter anyway, because to make any item you need this super hard to get alchemy gem, and then an item from late in the game anyway.

In closing, there are a few major problems that ruin this game. The first major girls you get, Reimi, Lymle, and Welch are all extremely shallow, flat or annoying that you cringe at their scenes, hoping no one comes into the room while you are suffering through pointless dialogue. The next is that you have to be patient before you actually start getting a story, then you realize that its over and you are back running around for hours with a battle system that just isn't as good as prior SO games.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/09, Updated 04/15/09

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