Star Ocean: The Last Hope

"Realistically, it's a good game that will bring hours of fun."

Intro: Star Ocean: The Last Hope, is the 4th star ocean released, but acts as a prequel to the other Star Ocean games. I wanted to write this review to try to give people who are interested in it an idea of why I feel this game is worth investing their time into.

Story: The story is pretty basic rpg fare. You are quickly briefed on the situation on Earth, which is grim. You start out with Edge, an aspiring captain of Earth's SRF, which is their space exploration division. For the first half or so of the game, you are following your mission, but events unfold that change your primary mission to a quest to save the world. Of course, along the way you meet new characters who join your party.

I'm trying to be fair in this review, so I'll start out by saying that this story is pretty solid, but is not without it's flaws. The story doesn't try to do anything too daring, most of the elements in the story have been done before, and probably better in other games. There are also some plot holes in the story that become more apparent with more playthroughs. It seems like there are more negatives than positives, but despite all that, I was satisfied with the story, because I feel the game was more focused on...

Gameplay: The battles were thoroughly enjoyable. Each character handles in different ways, making it varied and fun. The characters you don't manually control are controlled by a computer that you can set to different modes. There are several different things that affect the battle, the most noteworthy being the rush gauge. When the rush gauge is full, you can activate it to make your character do more critical hits, and not get knocked down. The rush gauge can also activate rush combos where your characters attack one enemy to do large amounts of damage.

I feel that the gameplay redeems the game enough to overlook its flaws. Some flaws with the battles are that they can become spam-fests. The game makes it very easy to spam moves which in this game is actually effective. The battles redeem themselves in the sheer enjoyment. It is very satisfying to kill the enemies in this game. The characters unlock moves as they level up, and using the characters moves effectively is fun. The game also provides two bonus dungeons for extra challenge.

Graphics/Sound: Being for the 360, you should expect the graphics to be good, and that is an understatement. The colors in the game are vibrant, the characters are a blend between anime and real, and the environments are varied and do look nice. Granted, I played this on an HDTV, so I can not guarantee that everything will be as good as I say on other types of televisions.

Playtime/Replayability: The game has replay value if you use different characters in different playthroughs, or if you find the story to be exceptionally provocative. Other than that, the game unlocks harder difficulties after you beat it on the default hard difficulty level.

Buy or Rent?: If you are unsure, or on the fence with this question, I suggest you give it a rent. Renting is almost inconsequential, and if you really enjoy it then you can buy it. It seems like it's either a love or hate relationship with this game. I got lucky and bought it, and I enjoy it, but I don't want people to buy it only to find out it's not for them.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/19/09

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