Star Ocean:(4) The Last Hope

[Forsaken Lover]

"Help me Generic Sword-Wielding Anime Protagonist, you're my only hope."

Sorry, what was that? I was too busy staring at your.....kneecaps.

So about a year ago I played Till the End of Time. If there had been no disk 1, I might have liked it more. Sadly there is a disk 1. I did not play a sci-fi JRPG to be stuck on a crappy fantasy planet. Apparently this is a common trait for all of the first three games, even 2 which seems to be the general fan favorite.

But hey, in SO4, you can actually travel to different worlds! Meet different races and cultures! It's crazy, I know, but this RPG about traveling through space mostly takes place in space.


I'm getting ahead of myself though. I started The Last Hope because I recently got a PS3 and a lot of people I talked to online said this game was crap. Now I guess you can say I have a bit of a White Knight problem - if something gets hated on enough I just get sick of all the hating. Even if it deserves it, I get tired of it eventually. Even still, I wanted to determine for myself if this game deserve the hatedom.

I had a similar situation with Final Fantasy XIII. After i got a 360 I bought FFXIII to play. It too received a lot of harsh criticism as I'm sure everyone here is well-aware. I went into FF13 expecting to love it; to get online and say how werong everyone was.

That...did not happen. I never intend to play that game again. It wasn't so much outright bad as it was just nto very fun and everything good about teh game fell apart about halfway through. By Orphan's Cradle I just didn't want toe ver touch the game again. I approached SO4 with a similarly sunny disposition. And this time I was rewarded.

I loved Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It's not my favorite JRPG ever or anything but I had a ton of fun from start to finish. I would say it's pretty much better than FFXIII in almost every way except for two areas which i'll get to later.

For one thing, the plot is very fluid. You will never feel like you're just spinning y our wheels. The only time you might feel like that, it's intentional because our main hero is in a bit of a mental and mortal crisis.
There is mystery upon mystery, all starting with the meteor that caused our heroes to crash just as they're finally venturing out into space. The subsequent run-ins with a brutal alien race leads to more revelations about the meteor as well as even more mysteries. After a short narrative detour to expand on our lead's personal growth,some things are answered while new questions arise.


All-in-all the game never leaves you wanting for "what's next?" I greatly appreciate that after the entire godforsaken first disk of SO3 was irrelevant and stupid.

(SPOILER)Leaving the exact nature of the Missing Procedure and the Grigori unexplained was an interesting move. I mentioned in my MGS2 Appreciateion thread a long time ago that fiction that leaves you with a lot to talk about with others is the best kind of fiction. SO4 certainly isn't on Sons o Liberty's level in that department but I still like that some thigns are left to our interpretation.



The cast of this game can be called a Cliché Storm but not in an unpleasant way - at least not in my view. The people on SomethingAwful once dubbed FFXIII "The Biggest Anime" (using "anime" in a pejorative and stereotypical sense) but it has nothing on this game. Even still...I liked about half of the cast and the rest I was indifferent to. I ended up really liking our hero EDGE MAVERICK (how's that for a name) after a certain point in the game. He's a leader who takes the burden of leadership very seriously as he knows so many lives are resting on his shoulders.. He's young, somewhat insecure and usually gives dire situations the respct they deserve. I just can really relate to him.

I wasn't so sold on Reimi but she still had a sweet little romance with Edge. Some of the optional scenes - "Private Actions" - you can get with her are genuinely touching. (SPOILER)The best one was Edge's birthday.

Faize...I didn't care much about Faize. I didn't hate him but he never did anything for me. (SPOILER)I did not predict him being the Final Boss but him ended up on teh bad guy's side was pretty obvious. I thought it was a cool turn of events though. I certainly was more interested in him when he started to get unhinged.

Lymle...My fondness for Lil' Lym is probably due to me liking lolis. I won't deny it. Nevertheless I thought she was probably the third or fourth strongest character in teh game from a storytelling POV. (SPOILER)I certainly did not expect the inhabitants of her hometown to all die. I know the "Doomed hometown" is a cliche too but that's for the main character! I didn't count on poor Lym only joining us for good because her friends and family are all dead.

(SPOILER)I'm not sure how I feel about her and Faize's relationship.... I definitely did not predict they were gonna go for a sort of love story between the two of them. I mostly think the relationship did more for Lymle's character than Faize's though.

Bacchus...Bacchus is the man. There's no other way to put it. He's voiced by Travis Willingham(Roy Mustang), he has probably the coolest design of any of the party members and he has quite an interesting past for how little we hear of it.

I'm gonna skip right now to Myuria. Together with Edge, Lym and Bacchus, she was part of my final party and those four characters are my favorite members of the cast. Next to Bacchus she had the best voice of any of the main characters. Her sassy personality complimented a pretty sad backstory and motivation that I think everyone can empathize with. (SPOILER)Sure it was beyond obvious that Crowe didn't kill her husband but I still think her grieving was well-portrayed and written. Her snarky demeanor was just her way to try and distract herself from the pain.

And then there was the rest. Sarah was adorable, Arumat arrived way too damn late for me to possibly care about him and Meracle...well, Meracle had potential but I don't think they used her enough. She ends up feeling like the developers just had a check list of archetypes they had to shove in the game and Cat Girl was one of them.

I think I'll bring up one area I prefer 13 now. It's the voice-acting. If I had to rank the two English dubs, I'd give SO4 a C+ and XIII an A-. One of the many areas The Last Hope gets hated on for is its dub which isn't anywhere near as bad as some make it out to be. I mentioned Bacchus and Myuria as notably good but I felt the entire main cast performed at least adequately. I can see why some people can't possibly tolerate Lymle's or Sarah's voices though. If it was just those eight then I'd probably give the game a B or B-. Sadly there are some pretty important side-characters who just fail miserably and ruin scenes. Kyle Hebert's Crowe (I think he also does Arumat) was very disappointing, especially since I know he's a good VA. (SPOILER)The worst performance is definitely by Milla Bachtein. That lady just couldn't act worth crap in the scene and she took what was supposed to be a dire and somewhat tragic scene and robbed it of all emotion. Shimada's VA was the second worst but he at least wasn't heard much and he was never in really important scenes.

I wonder what the dubbing budget was like. Laura Bailey had a couple big roles as did Hebert and I'm pretty sure I heard Michael McConnohie around 3 or 4 times in the game. (then again he's often cast for two roles in the same series...dunno why)

While we're on an audio topic, let's talk music. That is the second area I prefer XIII. Oh, don't get me wrong, SO4's OST is quite good. It just doesn't have quite the number of sandout tracks like XIII does.

If I had to list my favorite pieces of music from teh game...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhWpcCXbFj8 It's fortunate that this track is so awesome because you'll be hearing it for a long time. I know I heard it for a good 20-30 minutes at least when fighting a couple bosses. And i was playing on the Earth (Easy) difficulty. I actually did a lot better at this game than i did with SO3 so I might try a Galaxy (Normal) run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZFKsybhalE Quite a unique choice for final dungeon music. The Palace of Creation was amazingly short too which is also surprising. Anyway, this tune isn't very ominous or creepy but it fits the rather bright and vibrant POC. Overall the dungeon and dungeon music were both very different but very good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnD-o5FI4zo This is apparently a remix of an earlier SO game song. It is by far the best battle theme in the game and it makes even the 1,000th normal battle seem awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpOqfjDcatU While this game is no Baten Kaitos, Sakuraba proves that he is by far the king of RPG battle themes. The guy can crank out so many gems per game.
(if you really want to see the master at work, GO PLAY BATEN KAITOS ETERNAL WINGS AND THE LOST OCEAN)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikhOpIbRyDM This game's OST is pretty different from Baten Kaitos' in a few ways and one way is the large number of "dark" tracks in this game. This is a really beautiful but somber exploration theme and it made it a lot easier to spend hours grinding for items let me tell you.

But I'm getting tired so let me wrap this up.

I think it's healthy to approach different things with different standards or expectations. Now if I went into this game expecting Xenogears, I probably wouldn't have much cared for it. HOWEVER, I knew what this game was and I accepted it. I don't view that as lowering my standards or anything but if you do, that's fine. This game is far from perfect - there is some pretty clunky dialogue here and there, and it's especially bad in the ending when they constantly use "evolution" in both a real and metaphorical sense. They also just use the word too damn much in the climax.

But in spite of its failings, I thought Star Ocean: The Last Hope was a neat little game with some nice ideas and characters. I'd highly recommend it over FFXIII at any rate. That might be small praise but there you have it. Perhaps later I'll talk about some of my favorite scenes. I might start a Galaxy playthrugh later today as well.

For right now however, what did you all think of the game?

How about SO4 vs. FFXIII?

[Ultima Shadow]

I'm one of the "haters", so to speak. The only thing I really enjoyed about this game was the battle-system, which I also thought was a big downgrade from SO3's.

Unlike the Tales of series, I think SO4 handled the cliches terribly and I really didn't care much for any of the characters at all. I also thought some of the cutscenes were so cheesy that they became painful to watch. I also personally really liked SO3, and had somewhat high hopes for SO4, which were all crushed soon after I started playing it.


I will admit it has been a long time since I played SO4 (since I played it when it came out and I haven't touched it since then), so my memory of the game is a little bit so-so, save the fact that I clearly remember how dissappointed I was with the game and how much I hated the cast.

To quickly summerize how I remember the characters:

I thought Lymle and her "kay's" were more annoying than a freaking ferbie.

Arumat was an unintentional parody, trying so hard to be a badass that he just ended up looking sad and stupid.

The only thing attractive about Myuria was her boobs, and her backstory didn't make me care at all.

Sarah was the airhead of all airheads and I just couldn't stand her ridiculous airheadedness.

It seemed like Edge couldn't open his mouth without mentioning "friends" or "friendship".

I can't even remember much about Reimi. Probably because she was just that boring/unappealing to me.

Meracle: Hi, I'm a catgirl, derp.

Bacchus and Faize were basically the only ones I didn't think were totally retarded. Yet, I didn't find them particulary interesting either.



Then there's the optional dungeon - the most stupid optional dungeon ever. SO3 had two awesome optional dungeons that were enjoyable to make your way through. SO4's was just a time-consuming chore, forcing you to sit 4+ hours straight instead of actually offering any real challenge.



/my personal opinion of this game.

[NeoCracker]

I think it gets more hate then it should, but I certainly can't argue it's a very good game.

[Dr. rydrum2112]

There are 2 optional dungeons in SO4, the first I thought was interesting. The second was the time waster. I enjoyed the game, it was more fun than 13 and sometimes having fun is what you want. I like 4 member battle teams and Arumat was possible the coolest character to actually fight with in RPGs this generation (kick the enemy when they are down? sure).

[Ultima Shadow]

I think most of my hate for this game comes from being too hyped for it before I actually played it.

SO3 was one of my favourite games of all time when I started playing SO4. And so, SO4 turned out to be one of the biggest gaming disappointments I've ever had.

[Flaming Ice]

Edge" WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"



>>> ?when will the cutscene end?<<<<<

[Mirage]

Let's see.

Characters: A lot worse than in SO3.
Story: A lot worse than in SO3.
Music: Not as good as in SO3.
Combat system: Decent, but a lot more shallow than SO3's.

[Forsaken Lover]

I liked SO3's story once the story actually started. Shame that was on Disk 2. Being stuck in Stock Fantasy Land isn't any fun when Stock Fantasy Land is pretty much irrelevant. I chose to describe SO4's story as "fluid" for a reason - it flows. SO3's main plot kinda just died and then went nowhere for an ungodly amount of time.

I will give SO3's final boss the nod over SO4's. He was a lot better and had cooler music to boot. (SPOILER) Faize turning into Satanail really just hammers home how much"fighting an angel-like villain" has become a cliche of JRPGs It's just that all the interesting stuff on Disk 2 doesn't make up for how tedious Disk 1 was to me.

Also I have no idea why Edge's one big emotional breakdown is so hated upon. It was justified and it was for a relatively small part of the game. Every other point he's pretty casual and not whiny at all.
Even when he was going through his metal phase, he spent most of the time brooding and being silent and moody. He didn't actually vocalize his whininess much.

I remember Fayt had some whiny moments anyway.(SPOILER)In fact, Edge accepts his destiny and the reasons for his birth a lot better than Fayt does from what I can recall.

[Dr. rydrum2112]

Let's see.

Characters: A lot worse than in SO3.
Story: A lot worse than in SO3.
Music: Not as good as in SO3.
Combat system: Decent, but a lot more shallow than SO3's.

I personally agree with you, but I think the point of his thread was that SO4 was better for him than the populous' groaning. And secondly he compared SO4 to FF13, and it comes out favorably there too.

[Forsaken Lover]

Yeah I know SO4 and FF13 are very different games but I can't help but compare them as they are both the newest JRPGs I've completed, they are both the first JRPGs I played with my respective next-gen (well, last gen now I guess) console and they're both from different parts of Squeenix.

As I already covered the Eng dub for 13 is better and so is the overall soundtrack. The problem arises in the fact SO4 beats it in every other way. Despite the fact you travel to several different worlds, each of those worlds feels more vibrant and alive than anything in 13. SO seems to excel at world-building and SO4 is no exception to that.

Someone elsewhere said the writing was better in XIII but I dunno. Some dialogue was pretty bad in SO4 but XIII gives us Lightning and Hope discussing the symbolism of their names and that is an almost uniquely grievous example of bad writing.

Overall I just found myself liking the cast more in SO4. The Private Action stuff really draws you more into teh group dynamic than anything in XIII.
And the plot...pft, what plot is there in XIII. It doesn't make sense and it's poorly implemented. SO4 kept me interested from start to finish, never relenting on providing new questions to be answered.

[CimminyCricket]

I liked the gameplay from SO4, but the story and the voice acting was HORRIBLE. It ended up being a game I played at night when my fiancé was sleeping. I couldn't deal with the embarrassment of playing with her, or anyone else for that matter, listening in.

[Forsaken Lover]

So people like to talk a lot of crap about the dub and it made me curious. I wanted to see what other stuff the main VAs have done.

The first one I checked up on was Myuria because she had my favorite voice next to Bacchus.

Do you know who else that lady has voiced?

SASHA.

And if you don't know who Sasha is...

S
a
s
h
a

Sasha is love.

Man if only I could have thrown Trish off a building at the start of the game...

Anyway, point is that Jessica Strauss has such a sexy voice.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

I just picked up. Wasn't intending to buy a game and the guy sorta convinced me. Not far into it but there are some flaws that I am really taking issue with, like the camera (it is horrible, absolutely horrible) and the running animation is so glitched. You literally will get caught on a corner though you did obviously clear it, or you magically overshoot it. As for the rest of it, I am only mildly amused. Coming from Ni no Kuni, it is a step down. Also, it hurts my eyes. Too much glinty and bright things. :/

[Forsaken Lover]

Well I'm sorry if you don't end up liking the game. It's definitely not for everyone.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

It is too early for me to judge, just was a few things that bugged me early on. It felt like it lacked a certain polish. That is not to say I won't play more or won't end up liking it. Just initial thoughts.