Suikoden III's intro is the best <3

Now time for another game no one likes!

18. Star Ocean: The Last Hope International (PlayStation 3)
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This game follows Edge and Reimi, two young space explorers as they go out and... explore space. But things go a teensy bit wrong and one of their space ship bros goes missing and they have to travel from planet to planet to find it, meeting aliens and exploring planets in the process.

This is an RPG in which you control one character in battle but you can decide which one that character is. I can't remember all of the specific controls, but it's easy once you get in to it and well explained. You attack, use skills, and if your timing is right you can blindside the enemy (my favourite thing to do) which will help land a critical hit. You also have a bonus board that fills up if you complete certain requirements in battle which will do things like double exp or money and other such things. Taking a critical hit can break some of the bonus board. The game also comes with selectable difficulty levels and an invention thing where your characters brainstorm ideas and then you can make the items from there. There are 9 total playable characters with 4 usable in battle at a time.


General impressions:
I loved this game both times I played it so I was pretty surprised to learn that most people hate it. Oh well! I got it as a present and I'd played Star Ocean 3 before but it never really stuck with me and I didn't finish it. Not that it was a bad game it just didn't do anything special for me. But I was pleased to find that I adored this one. It's another game that I could barely put down and I found myself staying up later than I should have because I wanted to keep playing. There is one horrible spot though that I hated and some of the bosses were much too hard for easy mode, but other than that I felt like it was a great game.

Story:
Wasn't the best RPG story out there, but I did enjoy it and I was always looking forward to what was going to happen next. Overall I think it was well told, I liked the pacing. There were a few really good moments and a few really cheesy moments so I guess it would even out to average.


Gameplay:
A lot of fun, I really liked it. Especially since I could use an archer character and I think in terms of pure gameplay, she would be my favourite archer to use out of any video game. I liked the bonus board (although it was bum that it would be gone if you turned off the game and started back up) I liked the abilities and the blindsides, and I thought that the battles were fast paced and exciting. My only other complaint was that bosses were much harder than they should have been for easy mode.


World:
I really like the world because it's actually many different worlds. There were some I hated and the Cardonian Mothership (I think it was called) was horrible, drawn out, unattractive, and just really bad. That part of the game almost made me quit. But I'm glad I stuck it out because there were some good places after that and some good places before. Overall I'm really impressed.


Characters:
So not the strongest cast but I did like a few of them. The biggest problem would be the atrocious voice acting which was hard to look past. There were some good characters and some characters I didn't really like. I wouldn't say the cast was anything special.

Favourite character: Reimi agVoQso.jpg
Honourable mention: Faize 9bT0Xb3.jpg

As I said I love Reimi in battle because she's an archer, but she's overall my favourite. She steps in when she needs to and she surprised me because she doesn't seem like the leadership type. She's also just sweet and adorable. I thought Faize was very well written and his development interested me the most. (SPOILER)Shame about him becoming the bad guy though.

Overall for all of it's glaring faults I had a wonderful time playing this game. I did like the story, I liked inventing, I liked seeing the characters interact, I loved exploring the worlds, the gameplay was fun, and it has my favourite archer to use ever. At the end of the day I had so much fun, and that's a large point of playing the game!