Jamie Cannon

Yesterday I felt a compulsion to shop, so I went into the local Gamestop and wandered until I found something that looks good. I actually haven’t been able to spend a lot on games recently, so I have been keeping deliberately uninformed as to what is coming out (silly I know). I was really amazed to see so many new interesting titles, though I was only craving RPG at the time, most of THOSE are on the DS or the Wii, and I was specifically looking to avoid the “You are a young boy who…” beginning. Eventually, I ended up picking up Star Ocean: The Last Hope despite its brand-new-just-came-out-today price tag. The staff at the store was supremely useless in telling me about it, so I went in with the safely pessimistic assumption of: “It’s similar to Star Ocean: Til The End Of Time, which I played for a while but found slow and difficult, eventually getting stuck on a boss fight with no health items and no ability to return to town, though this was years ago anyway. It could end up like that, although the better graphics and everything will hopefully add to the experience.”

I think I owe this game a pretty huge review, but right now I’m about seven hours in, so I can at least verify a few things.

• The first hour is extremely uninteresting. Like TtEoT, it’s entirely a tutorial where you learn the battle system.
• Said battle system is, in fact, at times annoying and confusing. It takes getting used to. For that matter, the whole “blindside” system is hard to pull off without a lot of practice, especially considering each character’s different fighting style makes the usability of this different for all of them.
• When the battle system isn’t annoying or confusing (most of the time), it’s pretty fun. Definitely picks up a lot when you get >2 party members.
• There is no prolonged agony of “I’m the only person in my party” where everything is really difficult.
• The first few hours make you play without an item store and without healing magic, but if you are careful (and okay with running around in the yellow a lot) that doesn’t really matter.
• First boss fight was somewhat confusing and I got KO’d because of said lack-of-item-shop, but the second time I kicked its ass, so it wasn’t by any means unbalanced.
• Probably the most annoying part about playing is the whole hour-between-most-save-points. I have somewhere to be tonight, but I stopped playing a lot earlier than I wanted to because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to save before leaving otherwise. Also, this is a big annoyance if you do get a game over…
• The storyline kicks serious ass. There are a nice balance (so far) of cutscenes vs. action sequences. The characters seem likable (except for the occasionally over-the-top staged dialogue that plagues most translated-to-English RPGs, i.e. “I was just getting warmed up! Bring it on!” and the use-your-whole-arm-to-point thing that girls apparently must do), though they definitely fit a fantasy-RPG stereotype of roles, and the sci-fi aspect of the game is mostly in the story and not so much in the actual gameplay, at least not yet.
• Lots of really long sessions where you can’t go back to the local city/spaceship and sell or create items, so far anyway.

Anyway, it’s really fun if you have enough time on your hands to play a somewhat lengthy session each time. I am a really big fan of the skill system, of this and all Star Oceans, except it is somewhat nonintuitive until you get the hang of it. Item creation I haven’t gotten to play with a lot, as I’ve only now maxed out some of the skills which improve item drop rates.

That’s all I’ve been up to on the gaming front. I was originally going to sit down and try to finish Final Fantasy XII, but my game disc is somewhere not inside its box. :[

Here’s the opening cutscene to the game (this movie plays before you press Start on the main menu).