One of the most important things to learn about in the tutorial mode is the Battle Board, which is the game’s way of telling you how well you have done during battles. For finishing off an enemy with a critical hit, you receive a colored jewel; you also receive one for defeating an enemy entirely with skills rather than basic attacks, being ambushed by the enemy, and various other activities. These colored jewels join on the Bonus Board, and after every battle, depending on which color jewels you have, you receive boosts in your experience, money, and skill points, as well as having a percentage of your HP and MP replenished. Watch out though; the Bonus Board never resets on its own, but if you take a critical strike from an enemy with the character you are controlling, it will break, leaving you with much less of a boost than you had.
The battles are fun, which is important because you will fight often. You are rewarded in a few ways for this though-obviously, there’s the experience and leveling to deal with, but you also receive items that are oftentimes specific to the planet you are on. You can trade in these items to local shopkeepers if they are looking for them and earn experience and Skill Points from doing so; oftentimes, the experience you receive from these orders is more than what you would get from many battles, so it’s definitely worth it to take the time to fight, collect and trade. In addition to that, there are various quests you can accept from NPC’s around the universe, whether it’s delivering a letter, finding a stray cat or fixing a music box. The experience you receive from these is also always worth it. You also receive experience for opening treasure chests or using certain items effectively; you have elemental rings that are used to melt ice, clear rock, blow away vines, etc., and when you perform this task, you are rewarded with experience and Skill Points; again, often in amounts that are equivalent to a battle in the area.
All of the above is also key to a successful play through of Star Ocean, because if you do not use the characters in reserve, they will not gain experience or Skill Points, but they share in the experience from these orders, quests, treasure chests and environmental puzzles. You will need the Skill Points too, as they are your key to leveling up the abilities that you learn or the ones that you purchase; leveling them up allows you to heal more hit points, cause more damage, or in the case of something like the Battle Skills Auto Heal or HP Boost, allow for faster healing or additional jumps in your hit point totals. This is no small thing either; there’s nothing quite like a maxed out Auto Heal on a character who also has 9000 bonus hit points from their HP Boost skill.
The Last Hope has four difficulty levels; while there is an easier mode and a regular difficulty level, there are also two that are far more difficult and not available until you have completed the game once. Given the complexity and sheer fun of the battle system, this is the kind of game you will want to play through more than once, and as it clocks in at around 30-40 hours depending on how many sidequests you undertake, you can do so easily.
For those of you who love Achievements, The Last Hope is going to be an epic quest for you, as they are based on things you do in battle (Battle Trophies, for mundane tasks like landing a few hits in succession to more extreme ones like defeating 1,000 enemies with one character, or successfully casting 100 symbols in a row uninterrupted), treasures you find, monster (like a bestiary you get Achievements for) and ship data that you collect, items you create in the upgraded and vast item creation system, as well as the regular story based ones. This is definitely a game you will need to play more than once in order to acquire all of the Achievements, but as stated, thanks to the wonderful battle system, cutscenes you can skip and a length that comes in much shorter than many of last generation’s epic RPG affairs, this is not a problem.
While not the elite level Japanese RPG we all keep hoping comes out, Star Ocean: The Last Hope shows us that Square Enix and tri-Ace can release fine work on this generation’s powerful hardware, mixing in gameplay that matches the visuals while also giving us an intriguing story to follow. It’s a wonderful end to a quality series, and one that should remain in your collection thanks to its replay value for quite some time.
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