Review: Star Ocean: The Last Hope

[The Steel Ninja]

What Sylocat said kind of echos my own thoughts. For example, in the RPG genre, realtime combat, as is featured in SO4, took a while to catch on, and for a while, only tri-Ace and the Tales of developers were really doing that. It's bit more common these days, but it used to be turn-based or pseudo-realtime (the ATB from the SNES generation of Final Fantasy) for the longest time. Look how long it took for Resident Evil to overhaul its game engine -- it took Capcom a long time to apparently realize how archaic and awkward the old movement system was (though it never bothered me that much, but...).

Speaking of Capcom, Devil May Cry, another of their games, could more or less be said to be the progenitor of the newer generation of 3D platforming games. It was fresh when it came out, but now God of War, Ninja Gaiden, and a dozen other games have used similar formulas and nothing's really broken the mold of DMC in a shocking way.

But whatever, I usually enjoy stuff from tri-Ace because for the most part, they don't seem to have been tainted by Squeenix's overall massive drop in quality (at least, IMO).

 

[The Steel Ninja]

lol star oceans last boss is impossible,and wth happend to the guys hair?!

SO bosses are known for being hard; plus, the bonus dungeon baddies are utterly MURDEROUS in tri-Ace games.

 

[CriMs0nC0bra]

Thank you, Harhol.
I'm not going to say anything else, since you completely summed up my feelings. I just wish they had less biased reviewers here.
I still enjoy the game, and It's not going to change my opinion, but this just isn't the way a review should be done.

 

[shadow skill]

I haven't played the game but I stopped worrying about anything Square had thier hands on whether as publisher or developer a long time ago. If I want to play a Jrpg not likely to be made of fail I look at smaller devs/publishers. I do the same for Wrpgs. I find TES games to be crap and the latest Fallout is only OK, where as The Witcher is great in my opinion.

 

[jzupko]

Unfortunately, I didn't have any saves right before a Welch cutscene, because those are the really unbearable ones.

I am incredibly late to this party, but I didn't see any comments pointing this out.

Potentially interesting fact: the voice actress for Reimi and Welch in SO4 is the same person (Laura Bailey) who also did the voice of Rise in Persona 4.

I think the cringe worthy scenes in SO4 were a factor of horrible writing and (probably) bad directing of the English voice actors more than bad voice actors. I thought they did a fine job with the dribble they had to work with.

 

[The Steel Ninja]

jzupko, and everyone else angry about the writing: do you expect anything more? As gamers, I think we should realize by now that RPGs have some of the most childish and laughably written stories out there, so bad that even a halfwit hack author could pull something better out of a baboon's ass. Most of the stories are pretty cliche and mediocre, but that's OK. As a side note, playing this game inspired me to get First Departure today and hopefully Second Evolution tomorrow.

call me crazy, but tri-Ace is one of the few aspects of Squeenix I can still tolerate.

 

[Aanorith]

I havent completed the game yet, I just got to disc 3. Personally, I like SO4.
Maybe I have gotten too used to the cliches. Yeah, most of what I've seen so far has bin predictable. Lymle's constant use of 'kay, bugs me. JRPGs refusal to leave the teenage heroes thing behind and work towards more grown up protagonists. The "sexy" camera-angle, womens slutty clothing. The list goes on.

It's bin done to death. Yet I like it. Maybe you could compare it to watching a Van Damme movie, you know what's gonna happen. You just like watching the badguys being punched in the face.

*EDIT*

Tho I really, REALLY wish they could stop with the slutty clothing.
Thier supposed to be soliders for christ sake, give em some real armor!

 

[GestaltEsper]

Is it just me or are all these arguments just making excuses for other genres?

 

[emeraldrafael]

He doesnt sound all that into. Almost like his mind was just sorta... wandering. and it seemed kinda monotone.

OT: (well, kinda), I never got why voice acting was such a big deal in games. It might just be me, but I never really paid attention to the people talking in cut scenes and focused more on what they were saying rather the how they were saying it. BUt that just might be me.

Though i've played the game, and it was rather solid in that mediocre way that JRPGs are.