The Earth has been ravaged by world war 3. Humanity is forced to live underground, due to the high contamination levels found on the surface of the planet. Tenacious creatures that we are, mankind looks to the stars in search of a new home. It’s a somber, heavy concept, and one that’s delivered in a frank and straight forward way by the introduction cinematic found in Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It’s also a story that greatly appealed to the sci-fi nerd in me. As that cinematic drew to a close, I prepared myself  for a tale of humanity’s triumph over adversity.

Unfortunately, instead of a tale of the human spirit overcoming incredible odds, what I was presented with was the tale of several generic anime / JRPG characters, and their journeys through space. As the game starts, you are introduced to the main character, Edge Maverick (AWESOME name!!), an SRF officer with a strong sense of justice, and integrity. He serves aboard the star ship Calnus with his long time  girl-pal Reimi. After an error occurs during warp travel, the Calnus crashes, and a string of events is set in motion that quickly ends with Edge captaining the Calnus, and continuing the mission of searching for planets suitable for colonization, as well as searching for his missing friend Crowe, who captained another ship that experienced warp problems, and went missing. As Edge and his friends travel the universe, a bigger plot (that I won’t go into here) unfolds. Despite the generic characters, and the story not being what I had hoped it would be, Star Ocean: The Last Hope still managed to keep my attention, partly because the bigger story is somewhat interesting despite being a bit generic, and partly because of the innovative battle system.

The battle system found in this game is a lot of fun. During combat, you control one member of the party, while the rest of the group acts according to the tactics you have assigned to them. You have the option of attacking your enemies with standard attacks, special moves, or symbology (aka magic), and it all happens in real time. If you see an attack coming, you can get out of the way, or choose to block. You can also perform a blindside attack, where you jump out of the way of an enemy attack, and hit them with a critical strike. You also have the opportunity to earn bonuses by performing various actions in any given battle. Each time you perform one of these tasks, it fills a block on your bonus board. The blocks remain in place (even across multiple battles) until an enemy performs one of a number of actions that breaks the combo board. For example, performing a blindside attack that proves fatal to your enemy will earn your party a 10% boost in experience at the end of each battle fought there after. The bonus board is actually a really interesting addition to the battle system, and it can help make leveling up a manageable task.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope provides a very pleasant visual experience. The environments are vibrant and diverse, and they compliment the mood of the story nicely. While the environments look good, the characters, unfortunately, don’t stray from the Squenix formula for character design. Each and every character looks extremely generic, and I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen some of them in other games.

While most of my complaints against this game are for minor flaws, the one glaring flaw that’s present in this game (as well as many other JRPG’s) is the terrible level design.  Many areas found in this game are laid out in a confusing manner, and one section of a level tends to look exactly the same as any other section of said level. It doesn’t help matters any that you often have to backtrack through a level several times.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a pretty average JRPG. Aside from the unique battle system, you won’t find anything new here. Personally, I’ve been playing Japanese RPG’s since I was a child, and I feel like the genre has become completely stagnant. This game is just another example of that stagnation. It doesn’t have any blazing faults, but it doesn’t really stand out from the crowd either. It’s a bunch of generic anime / JRPG characters with brightly colored hair being emo in space. In fact, each time you travel from one planet to another, you’re forced to wander around your ship the whole time exploring the feelings of your crew. If you really love JRPG’s and you need something to fill the void until Final Fantasy XIII comes out, Star Ocean: The Last Hope will do the trick. If you haven’t played a JRPG in the past ten years or so, this game would be a good way to reacquaint yourself with the genre. If, however, you’ve kept up on the genre, and you aren’t a Square Enix fanboy, you can probably take a pass on this game. If you haven’t already done so, go play Lost Odyssey instead. Star Ocean: The Last Hope doesn’t do anything terribly wrong…. it just doesn’t do anything terribly right either.

-Mike Kurz

Tags: emo in space, JRPG, review, RPG, Square-Enix, Star Ocean 4, Xbox 360

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