Star Ocean: The Last Hope

"A bit of a failure"

I have to say, this game is lackluster to say the least. It doesn't have the impact of the "till the end of time" and "second story" games. I won't list it in parts, but will just list what irritated me and made me want to hit mute or change the channel so many times.

First, lets start with the story. Its ok, if it was in text, but most of it was spoken dialogue, and that did not translate well to the spoken word. One thing I hate in games is a stupidly over optimistic to the point of stupidity type lead character, or any type if insane one sided view on situations. It is not realistic and makes me feel like the game was meant for a 10 year old. I feel like I am watching a Yugioh cartoon with another character giving a speech on believing in the heart of the cards. Not a good thing to dish out to a mature crowd. The only game that annoyed me more than this one in that category was Wild Arms 5, which I have to admit was 10 times worse than this game. I will say the one thing in the story which let me down more than anything else was this games lack of a surprise twist. Star Ocean 2 had a point where it seemed like the game was coming to a climax, and suddenly you realize you are only halfway through. The same with Star Ocean Till the End of Time. This game has no such point. This game ended before I thought it was supposed to. I thought I was nearing the end, not at the end, when I got the final credits. So I guess it did have its twist, just not the popular kind.

Now, lets go for my second peeve, the combat system. The combat system was horrendous compared to old star oceans. I want to chain combos, not wait long periods of time for my characters to finish one big spectacular special move before I can do another. Plus, the button sensitivity sucked. The only way I could reliably chain combos was to spam the special skills button I wanted to go next until it triggered, as it was just too frustrating to get the timing down to trigger the special move just when I want it. Reason for this, it seemed like the timing was constantly changing. Another annoying part of the combat, some of the characters normal attacks were so slow in landing when you go up to a monster, that a lot of the faster monsters could knock you out of your attack before you even started. This went for special skills to. So much time was spent making combat look pretty in this game, that they forgot it isn't supposed to be pretty, its supposed to be functional and reliable. I had many combos over 100 hits, and I had no clue how it happened. That made me sad.

I got so frustrated later on in the game with the fighting, because fights are so frequent that I got horribly annoyed playing a melee, that I switched to a magic caster and just let the melee run wild while I watched heals. That is a really sad thing to force a fella to do in a game of this type. They did away with the awesome combat systems of the other star oceans and went with looks over functionality. If you want another example of what I am talking about, play Kingdom Hearts 2, that game was a button mashing utopia where even a 5 year old could light the screen up with special effects just by mashing one button. Square Enix is not winning any votes with me with their current trend of going flash over substance.

Next up, the item making and also the quest systems. I was let down by both of these systems. I never really needed group sp that much, and almost all the quests were just a waste of time. I did not like the fact that by the time you could actually complete most of them, it was a point of just completing them, and not getting anything from them. The item making was a huge let down to. Unless you went to extreme pains, by the time you could make most of the gear and items available, you already had better, armor and weapon wise. So in effect, the armor and weapons were only there to be made for the quests, in my view. These area's needed a good deal more work before release, because what is the point of having 2 systems in game when one is near useless, and the other one can only really be truly useful if you need an accessory, or when you have access to a post game dungeon?

My last gripe.....the extreme lack of monster models. There was just so many monster models being used over and over and over again, it got frustrating fighting another lizard man, or another blob, 4/5 of the way into the game after fighting 4 other incarnations of them at different times in the game before. What exactly was so hard with different planets having different types of monsters? This game may be 3 discs big, but I can guarantee you, that is not due to the actual game. The actual game could of been on one disc, I am betting, if it wasn't for the in game movies.

Now, I guess I can list a few positives. The game itself really was not that bad, the problem came from it being labeled a Star Ocean game. When a game is part of a series, you expect it to come with certain requirements that define that series. This game failed on a lot of those so is labeled worse than it would of been if it had been a stand alone game.

Also, for me the highlight of this game was 2 characters, Meracle and Welch. Those two kept me entertained when they were involved in story line material, or in skits. That was another thing, this game did skits exceedingly well. It portrays skits as bonus material. There is little connection between most of the skits and the actual story line, so they are basically self contained little segments of talking, or I guess skits =P. Most of them were enjoyable, and you learn a lot about the characters, which makes them more appealing.

I also liked being able to decorate the ship. I liked how you could learn if people liked you or not, of the female persuasion anyway, if they would bunk with you. I also liked how the bonus board was done in this game, and that it was much harder to break than it was in "Till the End of Time". I never really learned how to get the sp bonus board tile, but I always went for exp save for the really long dungeon treks where I needed hp/mana healing after every battle.

Anyway, while the things I liked were nice, and well done, so much of this game was a let down to me, but only because this game is labeled a Star Ocean game. That is why I rate it a 4/10. I really hope Square Enix regains its ability to make stellar games someday soon, because the flashy story-line, lackluster game play has already gotten old.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/16/09

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