Seripha has 10 chronicles

1. Star Ocean: The Last Hope
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Jun 01 2009

   Having nothing better to do this weekend, I decided to put an inordinate amount of time into Star Ocean: The Last Hope. By inordinate, I mean roughly 20 hours over the course of 2 days. But let’s get serious… I would have done it even if I did have something better to do . Regardless, this flurry of hours culminated in me finishing the game sometime late last night. I don’t think any one word, or even sentence for that matter, could truly sum up my experience with this game. I can almost always muster a few words about any game that would give anyone the gist, but in this case I am not going to even try. Therefore, this review is bound to be very long. I don’t want to leave any detail out for anyone who is curious about any aspect. So, feel free to skim as desired. Now for my in depth analysis…
   
   Story
   Every great RPG must be driven by a great story. In order to have a great story, as per my opinion, every movie, book, TV series, or game must have at least two of the following three items: a great plot, a great twist, or great characters. Star Ocean: TLH manages to deliver semi-well on all three. Now, I don’t think that TLH’s story is epic by any means, but I do believe that all three aspects are opaque enough to make for a solid experience. A quick synopsis would be that World War III has left the earth crippled and nearly uninhabitable for human life. Hence, the USTA formed the SRF (Space Reconnaissance Force) to search for new planets on which to live. This story follows the first few groups to wander into the vast star ocean in search of new planets to preserve human life.
   
   That being said, the dialogue is the biggest factor in dragging down the overall story. There were times when it was absolutely amazing, and there were times when I laughed at how ridiculous it was becoming. I am going to cut these downfalls some slack, though. I can’t imagine that it is easy for American companies to translate and re-voice these JRPGs. As such, there are times when direct translations don’t make any sense, and extra silly dialogue is thrown in to fill the gaps.
   
   I am sure the number one complaint with most reviewers will be that TLH dispenses the same banal plot that every other RPG since the beginning of time has used. I don’t find this to be terribly irritating or even the complete truth. Granted, you have the same struggle between good and evil and love conquers all plot, but isn’t that what we as humans crave? Movies, books, and games all resonate that same fact for the most part, because that is what the general public wants to see. We find it gratifying when the hero slays the dragon, saves the princess, and lives happily ever after. Along with that, I don’t think Star Ocean’s plot is as cookie cutter as everyone sees it on the surface. The Star Ocean series is one of the few video game series to successfully create an interesting space adventure. TLH is no exception to this.
   
   However, as I said before, it is far from perfect. Concordantly, another gripe I have with the story is the overly long cut scenes. One of the cut scenes was so long, in fact, that my wireless controller shut itself off twice in the duration of the scene. Not once, but twice! It was like watching a movie at some points. Now, this isn’t necessarily bad if the story is being fully developed and the characters continue to have something important to say, but this was not usually the case. The characters seemed to rant on and on adding little or no depth to the story.
   
   I found that my favorite part of the story was Star Ocean’s infamous private actions. These PAs are optional scenes that the main character executes with single or multiple members of his party. Generally this occurs when the party is at rest on a spaceship or in town. These PAs serve only to enhance each characters personal story and, ultimately, to unlock the special ending for that character, given that their affinity for you is high enough. This leads me to my last gripe about the story, the ending. There are eight different endings you can unlock; one for each of the characters (minus the main character). I went out of my way to ensure that I would unlock every single ending, so that I could see what became of each character. And, after all of the lengthy story related cut scenes, I figured, and was hoping, I would enjoy descriptive scenes entailing each character’s life post-adventure. This, however, was not the case. After all the work I did to ensure that I got each scene, I was graced with 30 seconds to a minute for each of the characters. This was most disappointing regarding two characters in particular. I don’t want to give away any of the story, but let’s just say these two characters are involved in the game’s big twist, and their endings are very difficult to unlock. However, their special endings explained absolutely NOTHING and left me with little closure about what happened. Unfortunate.
   
   Characters
   So much can be said of the characters in this game. Most of them are absolutely par for the course (thanks a lot, RyuBlitz) for a JRPG with many anime-like elements, from the headstrong hero who is constantly getting words put in his mouth to the sexy older lady who semi-seduces him and gets him in trouble with his actual love. Nonetheless, I really didn’t have any problem with that. The private actions are where the characters really flourish so to speak. If you are diligent enough to actually activate a great majority of the PAs, the characters really come to life. Each character has a unique relationship with all the other characters that allow them to resolve their own personal conflicts throughout the adventure. Hilariously enough, these PAs, along with most of the story, come with more sexual innuendo that you could shake a stick at. And, a vast majority of the time it had me laughing hysterically. I think it was the amazing depth to the characters that left me so empty when I didn’t get the extensive resolution on their personal lives that I was looking for in the game’s conclusion.
   
   Moving forward, the voice acting was where things got sketchy. Sometimes it was right on the money, and sometimes I wanted to put in ear plugs. The voice actors that played the male and female lead roles, Edge and Reimi, did the best job of anyone. This is good considering they did a lot of talking. Then there were the voice actors that did a decent job. This comprised a majority of the cast. Lastly, there was Lymle. Oh, Lymle. Anyone who has already played this game cringes at the mere utterance of her name. The whole character design and voice acting for this character was ridiculous. To sum up her background, she was a symbologist who made a mistake while summoning something from Hell and was bombarded by massive amounts of hate and evil. In response to this she shut down her emotions to avoid death, and become a doll-like child that never ages and shows very little emotion. Her voice acting sounds terrible, and she follows up literally 99% of what she says with, “ ’kay ”. After the first scene with her, I found myself wanting to stick toothpicks in my ears in hopes they would fill with blood and I would not longer have to hear this little girl speak… You may find my words extreme, but don’t judge until you have heard.
   
   One other thing I would like to say in regard to specific characters would be how Reimi was portrayed throughout the story. I don’t want to give away too much, but as a “Seed of Hope” she was given a special ability as a child to adapt. For anyone who has seen the TV show Heroes, Reimi’s ability resembles that of Claire. Mostly in the fact she can never die from disease. Her body adapts and heals itself. Yet both Claire and Reimi treat this like it is the worst thing in the world. They both struggle with it and feel like nobody could ever love them. Why? Because you can’t die? How is that bad!? The whole attitude behind hating having this ability just escapes me. All in all, every voice actor had his/her ups and downs. I really enjoyed the final scene as the emotion in Reimi’s voice was very powerful and convincing, but I don’t want to give anything more away .
   
   Battle System
   I tried to think of an effective opening sentence to describe the battle system, but I could think of no such sentence to truly convey how utterly phenomenal it is. And, frankly, I was expecting no less of tri-Ace (Star Ocean series developer). The battle system in Star Ocean: The Second Story (PlayStation) had me beyond addicted, and this one took it one hundred steps farther. To start with, the battle system is real time. You can move freely around the battle area and attack, use skills, cast spells, or kite (any MMO fans out there?) at will. Also, you can control any of the four characters you have in battle by cycling to the next one with a simple hit of a button. The characters you aren’t controlling automatically fight according to the tactics you give them. The tactics, by the way, can be changed during the battle as can the skills that are hot keyed to the buttons! This is something I have never seen before, and it works beautifully. As I previously mentioned, the melee based characters have skills they can execute. These skills can be put into chain combos with other skills effectively increasing the duration and damage.
   
   As if this fast paced twitch based battle system wasn’t already fun enough, the game implemented a never before seen concept known as “blindsides”. When an enemy targets you, a reticule appears around your body. When they close in, just before they attack, the reticule begins to flash. If you hold the B button and tap left or right on your thumb stick right as this happens, your character will ever so slickly maneuver themselves around to the back of the enemy allowing you to attack from behind. This causes every attack to be a critical hit. Be careful, though. Some monsters have a counter ability, and, if you attempt to blindside too soon, they will spin around and smack you in the face for a critical hit.
   
   But, wait! There’s more! Each character has what is known as a rush gauge. As they deliver and take damage this gauge increases. Once it reaches 100, you can press the X button to enter rush mode. In this mode you are unable to be knocked back or down by attacks and your chance for critical hits is drastically increased. Furthermore, if other characters have rush mode activated when you activate, you have the option to enter rush mode as essentially an uber team combo mode. In this mode you repeatedly press or tap buttons that the game directs you to press as all of your rush activated characters deal excessive amounts of damage to the targeted foe.
   
   But, wait! There’s even more! The battle system also incorporates a bonus board. This bonus board has 13 slots, remains from battle to battle, and fills itself based on how you defeat enemies. For instance, if you defeat an enemy with the final blow being a critical hit, an aqua colored piece is put on the board. Each piece of this color gives you an additional 10% experience at the end of battle. Likewise, if you defeat and enemy using only skill based attacks you get purple piece. Each piece you have of this color on your board rejuvenates 1% off all your characters’ health and magic points at the end of every battle. Also, if you defeat two enemies simultaneously, you get a yellow piece which gives you 10% extra fol (money) per piece after battle. Lastly, if you get ambushed you get a green piece which gives you 1 skill point per piece after battle. “How long does this board stay?” you ask. The answer, until you are the victim of a critical hit. At that point, every piece not connected to another piece of the same color gets knocked off the board. Similarly, all pieces that are connected to a same colored piece get cut by half (rounding up). This, in my opinion, is a silly way to break the board. With as often as I was getting crit, I was constantly losing my board that would take me forever for me to build up again and again. I am not against it being broken, but I just think it should be more difficult, such as the death of a character or something to that effect.
   
   If you thought I was done talking about the battle system, you’d be wrong! Lastly is the BEAT system which stands for Battle Exalted Action Type. Each character can select one of three BEAT types that level up separately from them. Each type gains attribute bonuses as it levels up based around the certain strategy it is best used for. You can change these at will based on how a specific character fights in battle. Have I worn you out yet with all the amazing aspects of TLH’s battle system? Even with all these explanations, one cannot truly enjoy the battle system without being immersed in it.
   
   Item Creation and Collections
   The game also features an extensive item creation system. It does this in a unique way. Each character has different attributes they excel at, i.e. smithing, crafting, compounding, cooking, etc. At the item invention interface screen, you put three characters together, and they use their knowledge of different areas to invent new items. Once they are invented, you must find the materials needed to create them. This can be done through mining, harvesting, or killing enemies. Mining and harvesting are done on the field map at specific marked locations. What I did not like about this system, however, is that farming specific materials to create specific items can be more than cumbersome. Certain floral ingredients you need only spawn at certain few spots, and that is only if you are lucky enough to get them when you actually harvest that particular spot. Otherwise, you have to run all the way back to your ship to get that single spot to respawn. This becomes extremely frustrating when you need to farm a large amount of the same item.
   
   The collection system is another new aspect of TLH that I love. As you progress throughout the game you unlock and store data for weapons, monsters, and ships. These collections carry throughout all your save files, so you can use multiple playthroughs to attempt to collect all of the data. When you gain 100% knowledge of a monster you can transfer that knowledge to a gem that can be equipped to a character giving them stat boosts based on that monster’s data. The most intriguing collection, though, is the battle trophies. Each character has 100 different battle trophies to unlock. They get these by doing different things in, you guessed it, battle. For example, dealing a certain amount of damage, killing a certain number of monsters, winning a certain number of consecutive battles without healing, etc. There are 900 total across all 9 characters. Trying to achieve them all is strangely addicting especially when there are many Xbox360 achievements involved.
   
   Graphics
   The graphics are nothing short of exceptional. The characters and landscapes are beautifully rendered. I was able to take in the full glory of this on the 40 some inch LCD TV that I am babysitting for the summer (kudos to Alklun!). I can only think of one time when the graphics got messed up, and that was more of a glitch rather than poor looking graphics. All in all, I don’t think I could have asked for more in terms of visuals. The game was already spread across 3 DVDs. I don’t know how much more it could handle, heh.
   
   Music
   The music is, likewise, wonderfully scored. There is not much I can say about this except that is does a fantastic job of drawing you into the story capturing the emotions of a given scene or battle. One thing I will point out in particular is the music for the final dungeon on Nox Obscurus. The music relies heavily upon higher octaves on the piano and manages to capture a soothing and whimsical yet eerie and looming sound at the same time. I haven’t heard a video game music piece so well put together in a long time.
   
   Lasting Appeal
   The lasting appeal for this game is relatively high when taken in comparison to other RPGs. The main story itself should take no longer than 30 hours to complete on a straight run through on the easy setting. However, the game has four difficulty modes: Earth, Galaxy, Universe, and Chaos. To begin with, you only have access to Earth and Galaxy, but upon beating Galaxy you unlock Universe mode. Likewise, upon beating Universe you unlock Chaos mode. This exponentially increases the difficulty of the game and adds to the lasting appeal. Also, considering all of your collection data carries over to new games, there is an even greater reason to play through multiple times.
   
   As with most tri-Ace games, there is always at least one secret post-game dungeon. In TLH there are two. The main bosses in these dungeons are, of course, Gabriel Celeste and the Ethereal Queen. These dungeons are the epitome of difficulty in ways of length, monsters, and puzzles. The Wandering Dungeon, home of the Ethereal Queen, is randomly generated, and the floors continue on infinitely with no save points! How deep can you get? I have a feeling that 99% of the people reading this just thought to themselves, “That’s what she said!” I digress… much lasting appeal.
   
   All in all, this game is exceptional. I have completed one play through, and I am not nearly done with it. I am looking forward to getting all of the collections, getting to the top in all the ranks in the colosseum, and fully exploring the extra dungeons. I must, however, give this game a 9/10. It did so many things amazingly, but also made enough mistakes to get docked by at least a point. At the very least, this game begs a weekend rental for anyone who is even the slightest RPG fan. So, give it a shot, ‘kay!
   
   Cheers,
   Seripha

   
   

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Seripha has 1 comment on this chronicle.

1. Hobben
   Posted On Jul 22 2009

   Ohhh star ocean a great game and a bad game all in one. Moments of happiness, moments of dispair, and moments of shear hate.
   
   Got to give it to tri-ace they played with how you felt, but personally it will be the last JRPG i play.
   'Kay!