There’s so much going on with the combat system, that you might be overwhelmed. From taking advantage of aggro (aggravating your enemies to a battle) against your enemies with blindsides to using Rush Mode where you can deal out more damage with chaining attacks and activating bonuses, The Last Hope is a deep title that will take a few hours to fully understand what the best methods of attack are. If you do well in combat, you’ll be able to add a tile to a bonus board to carry up to 14 bonuses into battle. This is an essential piece of strategy to involve in your tactics before a battle to get the best from your characters. Be careful though, if you are too reckless you will lose bonus tiles and have to gain them back with good judgment in battle.
Graphically speaking, this is one of the prettiest RPGs and most colorful games around. The environments are beautiful with a lot of attention spent on detail, the characters are eerily done well to the point that they look like lifeless dolls, and the battle animations are top notch too. The cutscenes show off the sci-fi imagination of Square-Enix and it bodes well to have it a sci-fi setting rather than the usual fantasy setting as The Last Hope has no rivals when it comes to the visual department outside of possibly Microsoft’s Lost Odyssey. There are a few drawbacks with the visuals such as hard-to-read text and overused enemy designs, but for the most part, you are looking at one of the best Xbox 360 RPGs on the market; you’ll just have to overlook the creepy looking characters.
So what’s the final word on Star Ocean: The Last Hope? Well above all else, this is a game aimed specifically at Japanese-RPG fans. It has an exceptionally well done combat system, gorgeous environments to explore, and countless hours of exploration to offer. If you aren’t a JRPG fan, then you should at least give it a rental to see the power of the Xbox 360 that is being used by Square-Enix. While it won’t blow your mind away, it’ll at least make you appreciate your Xbox 360 a little more than you did the day before.
