My one complaint with the look of the game is that the characters themselves look like they are ripped out of other game worlds. Much of Star Ocean: The Last Hope looks like it would fit neatly into the Phantasy Star universe, while some of the characters you meet may remind you of others you have seen in RPGs from the past few years. This isn’t a huge problem, and this also isn’t the case with all of the characters, but there are plenty of unoriginal designs mixed in with the few brilliant ones. It’s mostly disappointing because other parts of the game work so effectively; think of it as a victim of its own success in this regard.
Motoi Sakuraba was the composer for The Last Hope as he has been for other Star Ocean titles, but this soundtrack does not seem as varied or exciting as some of his other recent work. If you have spent any time recently with the last few Tales games (Vesperia, Abyss, Dawn of the New World) or played Baten Kaitos Origins, you will recognize a lot of the style and sounds in this game, and be able to figure out where the song is going before it gets there. It’s still solid work, it’s just that, outside of some of the battle themes and the song you hear while inside a dangerous area, there isn’t much for great music in this game.
Other than that though, sound is a positive, with even the voice acting coming out strong for the most part. There’s the occasional overdramatic delivery that doesn’t fit in with the animation on screen-one wonders how much more affective these moments were in Japanese, which sadly is not an option for the voiceovers in the North American version-but other than that the voice actors do a good job of delivering their lines without sounding like they are reading a cue card.
While the soundtrack, story and character design all range from average to somewhat above, the gameplay in Star Ocean: The Last Hope shines, and it’s the reason you will come back to this game again after you complete it. The battle system is easy to pick up on-press the A button to perform an attack, and time it properly to unleash a three-hit combo. Special skills are performed with the left and right triggers, and can be strung together after presses of the A button or even after another skill move is performed. Once you have delivered and received enough damage, your “Rush” gauge fills to 100, and you can go into “Rush” mode, where you cannot be knocked down and are able to perform at a faster speed. You can also unleash devastating Rush combos in this mode, simply by pressing the X button at the right time while entering into Rush mode. If a teammate is also focused on the same enemy as you, they will join you with their own special attacks, allowing you to do some serious damage.
This sounds simple, and you can get through a lot of the game just using these basic tactics, but on the harder difficulty levels and later on in the story, you will need to utilize more advanced styles of fighting. You can acquire or purchase skills that allow you to add additional skill moves to the left and right triggers, which allows you to extend combos further and rack up even more damage to your enemies. You can also extend the length of your Rush gauge, allowing for more attacks or more time to run from enemies, depending on the situation. The best thing may be the “Blindside” attack mode though. When you Blindside an enemy, you run around out of their field of vision(or disappear and reappear behind them, depending on your character of choice) and attack them while they are looking for you, and always for a critical hit. You can’t always blindside every enemy, as they need to be targeting you and a certain distance away, but it becomes an important part of battles, especially against tougher enemies with high defense.
You are not limited to one character per fight. You set the leader, who is essentially the character you start each fight with, but you can swap between them with a press of the left and right bumpers. You can also your main party with your reserve party while in battle, one character at a time, which allows you to adjust to the situation or replace fallen comrades without the use of a reviving spell or item. If all four of your characters in battle fall, the game will prompt you to replace one of the incapacitated party members with one of your reserves. This makes dying in random battles more difficult, but there are also some fights with bosses where this feature is essential for survival.
If this all sounds complicated, don’t worry, as it’s easier to deal with after you have had some practice. The good news is that The Last Hope comes with a Battle Simulator that you practice in before ever stepping foot on a planet, one you can revisit or access from the start menu of the game without even playing the main quest. The tutorials here break everything down piece by piece and allow you to put everything together at your own pace, so even if you have never played a Star Ocean game before, you can feel experienced by the time you dig in to this entry.
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