Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Staggering beauty and a battle-system that’ll knock you for six. The latest role-player from Square Enix takes on Xbox 360 in style.

Japanese-style RPGs are an acquired taste. But for those of you who grew up with the likes of Final Fantasy on PlayStation, Star Ocean offers a real banquet on Xbox 360. It has taken until now for Square Enix to really prove its worth on Microsoft’s console. Last year’s Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant both underachieved despite boasting excellent concepts. Star Ocean: The Last Hope, however, deserves the full attention of anyone who lives for lush visuals and quirky sci-fi drama.

Essentially Star Ocean: The Last Hope is Star Trek interpreted as a JRPG. We dare say the target audiences for both have common interests, so Square Enix ought to be onto a winner here. The only caveat is that Last Hope is a battle-oriented voyage as opposed to a personality-driven odyssey. Although the preamble between new characters and scenarios is generally entertaining, once you have your party together the goal is mainly to augment weaponry and armour to suit combat strategy.

The real-time battles have been the heartland of Star Ocean since the series began on Japanese Super Nintendo in 1996. Hence we find creative team tri-Ace pushing this to the nth degree on the powerful Xbox 360 hardware with heroic proficiency.

While exploring new planets you are constantly pressured into fights versus multiple enemies in which stabbing your basic action button can become boring and anyway ineffectual as time goes on. You’ll need to embrace Blindside attacks and have a good understanding of the strategies behind the new BEAT system to have anything like a good time in Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It really is a thrill, however, keeping all party-members involved, combining their super-powered Rush Attacks and adding chips to the Bonus Board to enhance EXP rewards. Your ability to dodge, guard and counter incoming attacks while dashing to and fro means this is far from turn based. However if you’re used to Mass Effect or Fable 2 it will still seem bizarre at first.

Similarly the freedom of exploration in Mass Effect, Fallout 3 and their ilk is light years beyond The Last Hope, which uses new locations for scene-setting rather than a free-form part of the puzzle. That said, certain characters can mine and harvest raw materials from richly-detailed, diverse and vast planets. Resources are then tinkered with aboard the crew’s mother-ship to produce exotic new equipment. Also, you know you’re getting around 50 hours of progress instead of lots of cheap backtracking.

With its high production values and soulful storytelling, endearing characters and matchless combat, Star Ocean: The Last Hope ranks among the best in its field. Series fans will be over the moon and new recruits suitably dazzled.

4 out of 5