Star Ocean: The Last Hope by Square Enix finally gets dated. Will the UK go as nuts for this as fans in Japan did last year? Don’t rule it out.

A role-playing game from Square Enix isn’t just ‘any old’ RPG. People tend to lose their minds over such things, and especially for the Big Three that include Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Star Ocean. The latter is the one we’re talking about here today, a sci-fi quest with production values to die for. Or, at the very least, queue all night and then pass out for a la World of Warcraft.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope has just been given a 5 June release date for Xbox 360. It isn’t coming to PlayStation 3, and it certainly isn’t coming to Nintendo Wii – or let’s just say we’d like to see Square Enix try. The Last Hope is a colossal adventure with stupendous visuals and a multitude of cool characters. It helped Microsoft enjoy a sales spike for Xbox 360 in Japan, and that’s honestly quite something!

Versions of Star Ocean are currently available on these shores for PSP, but for those of you still left in the dark, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is in fact a prequel. Not only is it okay to play this and not have played the other games in the series, you’ll actually be better off having done so and consider yourself quite the Star Ocean guru.

Events take place in the year SD10, which we presume to be the future. World War III has already happened, and so humanity is fleeing this pan-fried planet of ours in search of fresh fruit and vegetables beyond the stars. Your team of cosmonauts will comprise four battle-ready heroes, not all human. Really this pans out a lot like Star Trek and, honestly, is every bit as intriguing if you deeply enjoy videogames. Star Ocean is famous among gamers for its team-oriented real-time battle system that makes a refreshing change from traditional turn-based combat.

You can read an in-depth preview of Star Ocean: The Last Hope here on Yahoo! UK Games after the May Bank Holiday weekend.