A great prequel for the series that has some of the best RPG combat I've ever played.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the fourth game in the Tri-Ace Sci-Fi RPG series that's been running since the SNES days, and it's the first entry for the series on current gen hardware. For the most part, I've really enjoyed the game, and I think it's the strongest title that Tri-Ace has released since Valkyrie Profile 2, and for RPG fans there's definitely a lot to love when it comes to the combat and crafting systems the game offers.

For the fans of the series, this is a prequel that's supposed to set-up the Star Ocean universe as we know it. Having not finished Star Ocean 3, but knowing what the twist entails, I'm not entirely sure how well this ties into it, but it's easy to see the early trails being built from Star Ocean: The Last Hope to Star Ocean 1 and 2, including the descendant of Kenny, the beginning of Earth's space exploration project, and a couple other surprises along the way that will stand out to the long time fans of the series (or even those who just got into it with the PSP versions that came out recently).

Still, as much as I appreciate the story ties to the previous games, I do think the overall story of Star Ocean: The Last Hope falls a little flat. It's not a game that I would suggest for players that are overly concerned about story in their RPG's, and for the most part I found a lot of the game's cutscenes to be pretty boring, and far too frequent (and somewhat long) for my tastes. Combine that with one of the worst child characters I've run across in an RPG for a long, long time, (if I hear the word 'kay one more time...) and you're left with a less than interesting string of non-interactive moments that can start to grate on your nerves by the time you leave the first disc behind.

That's not to say there's no cool moments that occur in the plot, because there is, but they're just few and far between. Thankfully, Star Ocean employs a pretty cool feature that actually gives you a synopsis of a cutscene if you choose to skip it (you can only pause it by going into the XMB menu), and the synopsis is usually pretty short, giving you the basic information you need to know so you're not lost in the future.

Now with that negative out of the way, I'll get into what I actually enjoyed about the game. First and foremost is the combat system, which once again bears a striking resemblance to other Tri-Ace games, but this time it makes use of a pretty cool defensive feature that allows you to quickly surprise and strike against your enemies backside, along with a board that allows you to stack up special bonuses after each fight, provided you don't have a critical hit land against you.

You'll get into combat by running into actual enemies on the map, and if you come up behind them you'll get a preemptive strike, meaning that the enemies will either be slow to respond at first or have their backs facing you, allowing you the opportunity for a good first strike. Likewise, enemies can surprise you in the same fashion, and the results are more or less the same (the enemy will surround you instead of facing off against you from one side). Anyways, once combat begins, your side will start on the right hand side, and you'll take control of one character while your AI will control the others, with up to three additional teammates. You can switch control between any characters at any time by pressing the LB or RB buttons, and while it's not always necessary to do during the regular fights, you'll probably find it useful during boss fights when you're trying to hit weak spots or what not.

The coolest part about combat, at least for me, was the Blindside ability. When you're in battle, you'll notice that when an enemy targets you, you'll have a small yellow circle surround your character. This lets you know that an enemy is coming in to attack you, and when the circle flashes red, then they're getting ready to actually strike. If you hold down B while that circle is around you, and if you're close enough to the enemy at the time you release it, you'll perform a Blindside attack, which slows down time and automatically makes your character move behind the enemy, where you can dish out a few hits with a high chance of making critical attacks. It's a really useful move that you'll absolutely want to master when playing, as it becomes more and more useful when you've come across the harder basic enemies in the game. However, some enemies can counter your attack, and of course, you can counter attack their counter, which keeps the tactic from becoming stale over time. Along with that, certain enemies will have weak points, like most of the bosses, so you won't be able to just spam the attack button constantly, and of course you have special attacks that can be mapped to the left and right triggers on the controller. I will say that some of the special attacks you gain later, especially with the character Bacchus, are a little bit broken, but that's a pretty minor complaint, and something you might not pay a lot of attention to unless you're doing a second run thru on the game.

Graphically, it's a pretty striking game when you're exploring the different planets, and I didn't notice much in the way of texture pop-in, and nothing in the way of the graphical issues that the Square Enix title The Last Remnant had on the 360. The game is 3 discs, and it'll definitely take quite a bit of time to see everything the game has to offer, especially if you're a person that needs to have 100 percent of everything. Just gathering up all the recipes and parts needed to make those recipes will take a huge chunk of time, so for the hardcore RPG fans there's a lot here that'll make the game worth the $60 price tag.

The music is nice, but I can honestly say I wasn't really blown away by the score. A lot of the cutscene music felt generic to me, and the only real standouts were the basic loops when you're exploring the planets. Even the battle music felt pretty forgettable, which is surprising since I fought so many enemies over the course of the game. Still, it's not bad, just nothing really stood out for me. The voice acting, on the other hand, is pretty bad. Really, the three main characters all come across as decent, but Lymle has to be the worst voice over I've heard for an RPG character since that abysmal title on the PSP (the name of which escapes me right now) a couple years back. She talks really slow, which granted is intentional since she seems to be a bit backwards socially, but she also ends every other sentence with the word 'kay, and it's pretty much the most annoying thing I've come across in a game for a while now. Seriously, if you've ever hated a kid character in an RPG, you will absolutely detest Lymle as the game progresses.

Still, outside of my few gripes, I really did enjoy playing Star Ocean: The Last Hope. I've never been a diehard fan of the series, and while I did get most of the story revelations shown here, nothing really stood out to me as amazing. The reason I really enjoyed this title was simply because the combat was actually fun to play, and I thought the crafting system was easy to understand but still provided quite a bit of depth. There's a ton of stuff you can make within the game, and a lot of special items and weapons to uncover if you want to put the time into it. Also, the game seems to be tailor-made for multiple plays, so it's definitely something I can see myself going back to for another high-level run or two. Definitely worth checking out, and Tri-Ace's best effort on current gen systems so far.