Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Xbox 360) Review

Posted by Joe Roche on 06.03.2009

Ten years after first arriving in North America, tri-Ace and Square Enix bring you back to the very beginning of the Star Ocean story arc with Star Ocean: The Last Hope a prequel to the story that RPG fans have fallen in love with over time, but does the game deliver?



Title: Star Ocean: The Last Hope
Publisher: Square Enix
Type: Role Playing Game
Players: 1
Rated: T for Teen

It was ten (10) years ago (almost to the day of this column) when Star Ocean: The Second Story arrived in North America on the Sony Playstation. The game was the first Star Ocean to officially see the light of day on this side of the pond (though there were some unofficial translations of the first Star Ocean on the SNES), and since then JRPG aficionado’s in North America have taken a shine to the Star Ocean franchise. Renowned for it’s real time battles, and beautiful graphics the Star Ocean franchise takes players out of the traditional JRPG setting of an ancient type world set in the future, to a futuristic space exploration based story.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the next installment of the Star Ocean series, although for those of you concerned with timelines it is a prequel to the original Star Ocean, and thus would be the first game in the lineal timeline of the franchise. The game follows the events of World War III and the destruction of Earth, as those who remain on the planet band together to send members of the SRF throughout the universe to find a habitable planet to replace Earth as the home for all Earthlings.

Gameplay

I’m going to come right out and express my biggest problem with Star Ocean: The Last Hope and then hopefully build the game up from there. Have you ever had a friend who had one or two habits that just drove you nuts? Like maybe they love The Police and smoke menthol cigarettes and for whatever reason that just makes your skin crawl. He has a bunch of good things going for him/her, this person is liked by people with less sensitivy to Sting and the taste of mint smoke but for you, it is so bad that you have a tough time hanging out with this person? Because that person is this game – a game that has a lot of positive (or at least not negative) points, but some glaring weaknesses that make it difficult to focus on the good.

The first and most obvious problem with this game is two words that should never be in the vocabulary of RPG creators any more – save points. That’s right folks, Star Ocean: The Last Hope requires you to find a physical point on the map to save your progress. Now you might not find that too absurd but trust me when I tell you that these save points are not close together. There was a point early on in the game when I had to play the game for an additional hour after already putting in about an hour and a half just to find a point where I could save my progress. After playing The Last Remnant I am speechless that anyone would produce a game with actual save points. I had hoped that was one remnant from the old JRPG playbook that had gone the way of the dodo bird, but Star Ocean embraced them, and made them so spread apart that it’ll drive you insane. Here’s a good example of how skewed the save point fiasco is, on the Calnus (your main ship) there is a save point before you reach the bridge, and a save point in your bed room. That’s two save points within roughly a 10 foot radius. However, on Roak you will enter the Purgatorium where there will be TWO save points across about a five hour dungeon crawl, and one of those save points is at the entrance, and the other is before the boss battle. I wish I could explain to you why this disparity exists but I can’t, and it was one of the most difficult aspects of this game to get over while trying to play through the lengthy story arc.



My other major problem with this game is the battle system. I’ve heard other reviews rave about the real time battle system, a staple of the Star Ocean franchise for years, the ability to switch between party members with a tap of the shoulder button or the ability to switch in and out characters almost seamlessly in the heat of battle. All of those things are present but the problem is that your computer assisted allies are all stupid and useless. Oh sure there are ways to customize how they perform through the BEAT system, or the tactics menu where you can set such impressive commands as “Fight Freestyle” or “Stay out of trouble” commands for the people you will not be controlling in battle. The problem is that for the most part your computer allies will not actually accomplish anything, which results in you constantly switching between characters to use their skills wisely, or just letting everyone die as you as Edge just slices and dices your way through the baddies. This strategy works for awhile but as people start to gang up on you and ambush you, you’ll find yourself in a world of hurt rather quickly. Which raises another problem, why do I have to manually alternate out partners who have had their HP reduced to zero? When the enemies all die an AMBUSH sign can just come up and they jump into the fray, but I have to pause everything hit the menu button, scroll through some options, and switch out my dead partners? I thought the fighting system, which at first I loved, would have been more immersive had the computer handled the switch-a-roo for you to allow you to remain in the moment of the battle.

The battle system isn’t all bad though. As you link together attacks or chain combos with your special attacks you will build up different shades of color on a combo board which will give you special treats at the end of the fight. For instance when you hold down the right trigger, dodge an attack and surprise the bad guy from behind and subsequently kill him with your special attack you’ll get blue cell shading. That shading will give you +10% XP at the end of the battle for each cell you have colored in blue. This is a nice little feature that allows you to customize your battle plan a bit in order to maximize the reward at the end of the battle.

There are some other interesting aspects of Star Ocean: TLH that it would be unfair for me to no mention. You will learn special abilities throughout the game that you can allocate points to (to essentially level up) as you progress. Some of these skills will help you build weapons, create recipes, mine for ore or minerals (at specially marked locations throughout the world maps), and other fun little side missions/distractions. I liked all of these tidbits because the storyline has you traveling through time and space to find a new home for the human race, it makes sense that you’d be doing scientific experiments on these new worlds that you find.

I’ll speak quickly to the story because I hate getting too indepth on details because I feel it cheapens it for those who are thinking about playing the game but have yet to dive in. It takes a long ass time to get going. That’s not to say that you’re doing some interesting stuff from the beginning, as you explore some new worlds (which is essentially just dungeon crawling with a star system interlude), meet new people, and even travel through time and space to an alternate Earth (my favorite part of the game). However, all of those things a game create does not – or something to that effect. It won’t be until you’re about 25 hours into the game that you’ll start to feel like you see some semblance of a final battle coming. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but again after playing The Last Remnant which spent the entire span of the game building towards one final epic battle it was a bit disconcerting to not know who I was chasing until I was nearly halfway through the game.

Here is one other thing that I wanted to mention real quickly about this game -- there are a lot of sexual undertones throughout the story. I know that there have been plenty said about the creators of this game and the desire to create a sexual game, but the problem I have is that the stars of this game are young, to the point where some of them come across as somewhere between the ages of 4 and 8. I'm not kidding when I say there is at least a block of time on the Calnus where you get a sexual innuendo about that particular character with another possibly 15 year old character and it takes you completely out of the game. I get that all JRPG art is going to look like kids, but if you're going with the youthful look how about we scale back the sexual tension?

The one thing that I absolutely MUST mention again is that the English voice acting is HORRENDOUS. This doesn’t belong in the game play section of this review but I’m going to put it everywhere and anywhere that I can fit it in because it is that bad. I’m not kidding about playing with the sound off. The voice of Lymle, Meracle, and Welch take so much away from this game that you continue to wish they had never been created in the first place because the game would be so much more enjoyable without them.

Graphics

Graphically you know what to expect. It’s a tri-Ace/Square Enix RPG. You’re going to have very bright colors – no seriously they’re VERY bright, prepubescent tweens running around with big swords, and lots of bondage like clothing. There is nothing especially wrong about the art direction of Star Ocean: TLH but again it’s all very familiar (which some people like) and after playing a more western directed game it’s something of a let down. Everything in this game seems like it went through a doctor’s office filter, it’s all so clean that it ruins some of the effects. I mean even the water is so clear, so bright, and so blue that you never get the feeling that it’s actually water. The enemy characters are also a bit boring, and even though there is a wide variety of enemies to fight none of them feel especially well detailed as if they were all thrown together quickly without much care.


- Alternate Earth.

I know that many people won’t understand this explanation but anyone who has played Star Ocean: TLH can probably get my point when I say that the best way to describe how this game looks is just to say that it’s very clean and bright. If you’re a classic RPG fan then you will probably love the look, but if you’re a Western RPG fan you will once again feel a bit thrown off by the whole thing.

Sound

When you play a JRPG you come to expect certain things, not the least of which is horrendously voiced characters who will grate on your every nerve with each word spoken. tri-Ace and Square Enix deliver in spades in this department with a voice track that spans between below average to difficult to listen to. As a matter of fact, after a few hours of playing with the sound up I just turned it to about three (3) on my television and listened to the Adam Carolla Podcast as I went through the game with the text turned on. While most JRPG’s can boast one difficult to stomach character, Star Ocean: TLH comes across with three different characters who can be characterized as nails on a chalkboard type annoying, as both Meracle, Welch and Lymle will give the most obnoxious JRPG character a run for their money with the latter being my least favorite character in role playing game history.


- See this cute little girl? Her voice will ruin this game for you.

It’s not all bad as the music that accompanies the battles isn’t terrible. This is something that I’ve come to expect from Square Enix games and they don’t disappoint in that regard. When you’ve turned the volume off for the voice acting don’t feel like you’re missing out on anything if you just skip the music during battles too.

There is obviously other work done with the sound that will pop up from time to time. The sound of rushing water is pretty good. I thought Gears of War 2 had better sound when you were in a cave then Star Ocean does in the Purgatorium on Roak but there is enough echoes and voices from behind walls to give you that sense of anticipation every time you turn a corner. Overall the sound work isn’t much of anything – in the sense that if you turn the sound off completely you won’t miss out on much. The voice acting was horrendous but that is to be expected with an English translation, and the rest of the music was just average.

Fun Factor

This is where I run in to a very difficult choice. On the one hand I can understand why RPG fans will enjoy the hell out of this game. On the other hand I am an RPG fan and I absolutely loathed playing through this particular title. It’s strange that this game has been so well received compared to The Last Remnant which was a game from Square that I absolutely loved, and the only thing I can think of to blame this difference of opinion on is the fact that Star Ocean requires save points. There is something to be said about knowing that you can just pick up the controller, level up for a half hour and then turn off the console that makes a game appealing. In Star Ocean: TLH every time you load a saved game you know that you’re invested for however long it takes you to find a new save point.

On the flip side the game is incredibly immerse with a variety of statistics that can be used to upgrade, weapons to be created, recipes to be manufactured, and interactions to be had. The game provides A LOT of depth, and there are times when you will find yourself enjoying the game – unfortunately for me there were more times when I had to be chased to put it back into the console because I just wanted to play anything else.

Lasting Appeal

Like any RPG this game provides a TON of things to do. There are side quests galore, delivery missions, item creation, weapon creation, worlds to explore, back tracking to be done and people to fight. You will not run out of things to do in Star Ocean: The Last Hope. As a matter of fact many of the achievements (which for some reason did not register for me at some points) will keep you coming back because you will get points for fighting 30% of the enemies, finding X% of treasure and so on and so forth, so there is incentive for you to continue slogging through the battlefields and the towns in order to get those achievement points.

Again like most RPG’s this game is lengthy. I’m not sure who the people who go back and play through RPG’s a second time in a short span are but they’re not me. When I reach the end of an RPG I rarely go back unless I was blown away by the game itself (Mass Effect) and this game did not affect me on that level. However, there are people who are going to love searching out all the hidden gems across the universe and for them I say this might be the game for you.

The 411

This was a tough game for me to judge because as I’ve said I’m usually a huge RPG guy but this particular game just grated on me. I am not willing to chalk it up to the game completely, and think that it might have come along at a point where I was just not willing to spend enough time with something to truly appreciate it. That being said the voice acting is so bad that most of the charm wears off pretty quickly (about the time you meet Welch), and the story takes so long to warm up that there is plenty to not love about Star Ocean: TLH.

For me personally the save point issue and the voice track were such big issues that it was tough to focus on the more polished and refined aspects of this game that were worth playing. For die hard RPG fans who love the Star Ocean series you’re going to be in love with this game, for the rest of you I’d suggest holding off until this one finds its way to the bargain bin because you may find after a few hours that you’re just not that interested in the survival of this particular human race.

Graphics	8.0	Nothing spectacular, but very clean and bright.
Gameplay	7.0	Solid RPG fundamentals, but no save anywhere feature really hurts this score.
Sound	6.0	The English voice track is difficult to listen to even by JRPG standards.
Lasting Appeal	8.0	Lots of stuff to do, plenty of reason to play this game for a good long time.
Fun Factor	7.0	Voice track and save point issue really hurts this score.
Overall	7.5   [ Good ]