Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Outward, To The Great Star Ocean…

Tri-Ace has become a staple in the RPG genre with their space operatic series Star Ocean, and their Norse-inspired Valkyrie Profile. Along with Square Enix, Level-5 and Atlus, they are a force to be reckoned. That is why when the hotly-anticipated Star Ocean: The Last Hope was released, it was held on a pedestal of grand achievement. Where they went wrong, however, I’ll likely never know. The game pits you in the role of young space cadet Edge Maverick, a fitting name for this at-first rambunctious member of the Space Reconnaissance Force (SRF) who quickly becomes captain of his own spaceship - the Calnus - after the crew lands on an alien planet after the first-ever space warp. The story begins to unfold from hereon out, as you are soon greeted by a member of an allied-alien race, the Eldarians. Something is amiss in the galaxy, and strange artifacts known as the “Grigori” are popping up throughout various solar systems, drastically altering the evolution rate of species and ultimately turning them into power-hungry sentient catastrophes.

As you travel the galaxy to explore new planets, in keeping with your task within the SRF, you’ll encounter various new - and very eccentric - comrades to aid in your journey; among them a cybernetic-android of the Morphus race, a youthful anthropomorphic feline, and what could quite simply be described as an angel. To say the cast is diverse would be an understatement. Each character has his or her own reason for accompanying Edge and company on their journey, from the loss of those he or she loved, to revenge and animosity. It’s a fairly typical story, but in some parts is well-executed - albeit predictable in the long run.

Blindsides and Bonus Boards and Battle Skills, Oh My…

The game utilizes a very unique and somewhat-strategic combat system, which is perhaps one of the title’s most redeeming qualities. You trigger combat by coming into contact with an enemy on the open field; depending on where you encounter the enemy will initiate a surprise attack or a preemptive strike - it’s standard fare, you know the drill. You can have up to four party members on the field at a time, and you personally control one of them. However, the game offers you the luxury of being able to instantly switch control between party members at the press of a bumper. This freedom of control is essential, because often a character you control may become immobile or otherwise inactive, and being able to quickly switch to another character, use an item/cast a spell, and switch back, makes combat very smooth and fluid - for the most part, at least. Characters attack with the A button, and have three basic combos to use. What might disturb the flow of combat is a simple mechanic that could’ve easily been alleviated. If you were to strike an enemy twice and kill them on that second blow, the character would cease all action for a second leaving him or her vulnerable from any nearby attacks. In a system of real-time combat, fluidity in strikes is key. Perhaps tri-Ace should have taken notice to Namco Bandai’s earlier Tales of Vesperia to see how a real-time combat system should be applied.

All is not in vain, however; each character is able to slot special battle skills that he or she learns via leveling up to the Right and Left Triggers. By learning a self-taught skill called “Chain Combo,” you can effectively link three different skills - provided your character has remaining Combo Points to spare - to each trigger. You are then able to seamlessly string together basic A-button strikes with skills for powerful combos and deadly blows. The most unique and rewarding feature about Star Ocean’s battles is with the imp limitation of Blindsides and Bonus Boards. Blindsides are the attack of charging up (via holding the B button for a second) when an enemy has you targeted, and then flicking the left-analog stick either right or left to perform a quick dash around the enemy and strike from behind with critical hits. This is key for some major boss battles near the mid-and-late game, but can also be used to dispatch enemies in rapid succession. The only issue I have is in the form of actual targeting: there is no way to manually select which target you want to attack; rather, the game automatically has you focus in on - generally - the nearest target, or whichever you are looking directly at. This can be overcome after a few hours of playtime, but it is still a nuisance every once in a while.

Bonus Boards are the method of distributing special - you guessed it - bonuses to the player based on specific actions either performed in battle, or triggered by it. There are four types of bonuses: +10% EXP, +10% Fol (currency), 1% HP/MP restore after battle, and 1 SP (Skill Points, used to learn abilities). Each bonus is gained in fairly different ways, and the bonus board - place conveniently off to the right side of the screen during combat - can hold up to 15. Killing an enemy with a critical hit nets you the EXP bonus; felling two or more enemies at the same time will earn you the increased Fol reward; defeating an enemy entirely using skills (right-and-left trigger abilities) will score the HP/MP restoration, and triggering an Ambush battle offers the SP. Ambushes are activated when you enter a battle with two or more on-screen enemies grouped very close together. The ambush begins immediately after the first battle, and often - especially during a handful of boss battles and scripted sequences - you will be forced to endure several ambush fights at a time.

Space Never Looked More Beautiful…

The game is visually stunning. There is little in the way of negative comments that can be said about its beauty. Most of the time in game will be spent on various planets, observing the vast contrasts between the wilderness of one planet and the advanced technology of another. When out in the open fields, the draw distance is incredible, displaying mountain ranges and trees as far as visually possible. The game also manages to maintain a steady frame rate throughout, with the occasional dip during combat under extremely-cinematic sequences when many spells are going off at once. Despite this, the game’s environmental beauty is opposed by the aesthetic lifelessness of many characters. Facial expressions are poorly rendered and often completely deadpan, characters often make awkward bodily gestures, and the lip synching is blatantly off. For this stage of console gaming, you would expect a better presentation of the characters you will be forced to endure for 40-some-odd-hours.

One Small Step For Man, One Giant Leap for Star Ocean…

For the first time in the series, you are actually given control of your characters aboard the spaceship Calnus. There is little to actually be done aboard the ship, aside from conversing with your party members - which builds relationships and ultimately has an effect on various cut scenes at the end of the game - and later placing mini-shops and restoration boards in the main hall. The ships primary focus outside of transportation, however, is synthesis. The Star Ocean series is universally known for item crafting and weapon synthesis, and this one is no different. However, it incorporates a very simplistic blueprint concept and group recipe invention to make it quite possibly the best method of synthesis in a Star Ocean game.

Items are made by first inventing the recipe for it, and this is achieved by grouping up to 3 party members together. Each character maintains a very specific synthesizing ability, that can be leveled (on a scale of 1 to 10). Edge, for instance, possesses the ability of “Blacksmithing,” which is the process of forming most melee weapons in the game. At level 10 Blacksmithing, the amount of recipes that can be learned increases. There is no success or fail rate - if a recipe can be made, it WILL be made. Aside from these primary synthesis options, each character also inherently possesses base stats for the others; to continue with Edge, he may have a base skill of 5 for Alchemy (and I am doing this completely off the top of my head, not exact numbers); if I were to combine him with the primary character who specialized in Alchemy, with his skill leveled to 10, the resulting skill would have a level of 15, meaning all recipes within the level 15 rank that can be made from these two characters will be made.

Synthesis runs on a rotating-clock mechanic, with each rotation consuming 1 Party SP (SP is divided into two categories: Personal SP, which is what every character gains upon leveling up; and Party SP, which is what the Ambush bonus adds to, as well as the rewards from completing side-quests and various other activities.) Both SP pools can be used to contribute to the growth of character skills, but only Party SP is considered when synthesizing. As mentioned, you may undertake many - and I mean many - quests throughout your journey in the game. These quests are primarily gathered from shop keepers and the like, which consist of finding an item or series of items, generally found on another planet. Completion of these quests often rewards EXP, Fol, and Party SP - and depending on the difficulty of the quest, the rewards can be lofty. The only major complaint with quests, aside from the fact that there are far too many to reasonably complete before the game’s ending, is that certain quests eventually become unattainable or otherwise unable to be finished because of storyline progression. There are a handful of quests to be gathered from the first planet; however later in the game, when you are to return to the planet through storyline, you can no longer turn in these quests because the people are no longer there. The game anticipates, and quite literally forces you to have to drop what you’re doing when you finish a quest and immediately turn in it to reap the rewards. What makes this more bitter is that these quests are not labeled as time-expendable, so there is no prior expectation to quickly get them finished.

I Might As Well Be Tone Deaf, ‘Kay?…

The music in Star Ocean is all-around average at best. There are some fairly average orchestral themes, but in the end none of it is truly memorable. What is memorable, however - and hardly in the positive way - is the voice acting. With the exception of two or three characters, the voices that bellow forth from these characters are worse than nails-on-the-chalkboard while listening to William Hung sing and a bad bluegrass band strum their banjo. It’s irritating, it’s grating, it’s simply annoying. The biggest offenders of this crime Lymle - the game’s token child-wizard, and Sarah, the aforementioned angel. Lymle’s voice is beyond belief; the monotony and sheer lack of emotion boggles the mind at how the voice actor could have gotten away with such a travesty. And Sarah, well, she’s the nails-meets-chalkboard. Her eccentric, should-be peppy voice is just facetious and completely unfitting of the character. The most obvious remedy to this would have been to include dual-audio languages, but this blatant oversight of terrible voice actors should not have even occurred. How tri-Ace allowed this game to continue through the conveyor belt with this audio is beyond me.

And The Verdict Is…

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is ultimately a game that could’ve soared to new galaxies, but took a wrong turn and landed on the sun. The combat and synthesis are the only reason to play this game - and even the former has its glaring faults. A tired formula run through the gamut for the umpteenth time, there is little in Star Ocean: The Last Hope that will have you hoping for more.

Pros: Intuitive yet simple synthesis; gorgeous landscapes and environments; highly entertaining battle system; lots of quests to complete post-game.

Cons: Some of the worst voice acting in recent memory; battle mechanics could have been much more fluid; cliché storyline has been beaten to death; boring and uninspiring characters.

The Final Verdict: 7.5/10
If you are itching for a visually-beautiful space opera, pick up Star Ocean: The Last Hope. You’re likely to enjoy the combat if nothing else. But if you want a quality Japanese Role-Playing experience on the Xbox 360, stick with Tales of Vesperia.