![]() It's a nearly perfect balance of everything. The battle system in Star Ocean 4 is to RPGs what red velvet cake is to dessert: the kind of experience that borders on the divine. Mostly, that job is escorting you from one fight to the next. ![]() In spite of its problems, it does its job pretty well. Still, I wouldn't go so far as to call the story bad. There's something to be said for subtlety and this game just doesn't have it. The end result is a handful of moderately interesting characters who can't quite carry the weight of the more annoying cast members on their shoulders. Apparently, anything with wings is chicken. Put them together and Meracle suddenly feels the urge to spout jokes about how Sarah reminds her of delicious chicken, complete with forks and knives and drooling. Both characters come from non-human species that have roots in previous Star Ocean games. Take Meracle, the obligatory obnoxious catgirl, and put her near Sarah, your white mage with wings. For every time Edge does something interesting or Bacchus is charmingly over-analytical, someone else drags the rusty nails of their personality across the chalkboard of your mind. Such a dynamic is a beautiful thing when said characters are good, which makes it unfortunate that the cast in this game is extremely polarized. Instead, you're often watching how the characters react. The majority of the game's cutscene time isn't actually spent on what's happening. Best hero ever? No, but his dilemmas are believable and when he faces a major crisis, you can relate with the way he responds.Įdge is just one of many characters that help to make Star Ocean 4 such a character-driven experience. He's brash but he admits it, even going so far as to crack a few jokes at his own expense. ![]() Edge pretty much spouts cliches from every pore in his body, and yet in spite of the negative first impressions, he's a fairly compelling hero. ![]() He wields a sword in a future where everyone else has plasma rifles and his name is a solid nine on the standard ten-point scale of cringe worthiness. The protagonist in Star Ocean 4 is Edge Maverick, a generically young starry-eyed hero type who dreams of adventure and hopes to one day be the captain of his own space ship. Perhaps most importantly, there aren't any mini-games involving mine-cart turtles. There's no more dying because you ran out of MP, the AI's been improved and the plot-while not necessarily amazing-is better. Let's get one thing out of the way right now, then: this newest installment does a good job of putting most things back on track. Caution was therefore warranted when approaching the sequel. Without making enough blunders to prove a thoroughly horrible experience, the PlayStation 2 outing still left many gamers scratching their heads and wondering what went wrong. It wasn't a bad enough burn to prevent a person from using the stove in the future, but it was enough to give one pause. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, the previous entry in the series, was a little bit like burning your fingers on a hot stove. Going into Star Ocean: The Last Hope, the fourth proper installment in a long-running franchise, there was plenty of reason to be wary. The number of RPGs that have that kind of instant gratification is extremely limited, a true testament to the kind of fun you can have only with the likes of Star Ocean: The Last Hope." " Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the type of game that can have you reaching to play it again even though you just beat it a half-hour before, just for the opportunity to rough up some more monsters. Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Xbox 360) review
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