Every so often I’ll crave the traditional JRPG’s turn-based battle system, the cheesy dialogue that represents the Japanese sense of drama, the almost-Caucasian-with-a-hint-of-Asian character lineup, and the bouncingly voluptuous women granted us by technology and a few male minds of the twentieth century. Something about JRPG's keeps me coming back for more. Yet, in the past few years, every time I do come back, every time I sit down with hope of satisfying my craving for adventure, that hope is usually destroyed by a never-before-used battle system, which usually ends up sucking a—my left toe, terrible handling and bad camera angles, voice acting that causes me to look around in fear of someone else watching my screen and hearing the same thing I’m hearing, or some combination of the three. Star Ocean: The Last Hope, although by far the least terrible JRPG I’ve played, has its weaknesses. And I’d like to exploit them.
Star Ocean: The Last Hope has a great story line. The destruction of World War III has left Earths surface uninhabitable. Weapons of mass destruction have polluted the air and the soil, so all of Earth’s population is forced underground. A group of military soldiers are sent into space to search for new, habitable worlds. Edge Maverick (you) becomes the captain of one of these ships and journey’s from world to world, getting caught up in the affairs of that world, and meeting new friends along the way. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? The problem is, I just told you the story of the game in less than a minute and in a more engaging way than the game ever does. Storytelling is not this games forte. I watched cut scene after cut scene and never stopped thinking, “This is mildly interesting, but could be so much more.” They appear to be trying, too. I can’t even blame it on poor creativity or a lack of imagination. It’s just a great story badly told.
Or is it badly written? Without a doubt, it is both. It was rare when a character said something I considered to be relevant to the situation. And when they did say something relevant, it usually took at least five minutes to say. I felt like fifty percent of the dialogue was either thrown in as an excuse to make the game longer, or because the writers didn’t know what they were trying to say and then suddenly had an epiphany. They were obviously trying to build toward something, but it never worked.
There were also moments (many of them) when I would think, “No… really?” One specific moment I will share with you arrived at a point in the game when Edge had to hunt down a man-servant who had a black eagle tattooed on his back. When Edge asked the question, “What does this man look like?” The king’s response was, “His name is Black Eagle. He has the tattoo of a black eagle on his back. I think that is where he gets his name.” No… really? And that is a small example of the poor dialogue that plagues this game.
Finally: the voice acting. The first fifteen hours of the game were tolerable—not amazing, but good enough to keep me playing without making my ears bleed. There have certainly been games with worse voice acting. Then, entered the notoriously annoying, loud-mouthed child character that all JRPG’s love to include. And her voice acting was horrific. In fact, it was at that point in the game that almost all voice acting became a suck-fest. The best voice acting was found in side characters that you associated with for no more than ten minutes. Why the game makers couldn’t use those people for the main character voices, I don’t know. It’s like they insisted on hiring bad people so they could pay them less. They got their money’s worth.
In conclusion, I have focused so much on the bad aspects of this game that I may have been a little unfair. Star Ocean: The Last Hope does have several redeeming qualities that keep the game entertaining. The combat system was the first to make battles something I looked forward to, and is definitely the games best quality. The crafting structure is worth spending a few hours on. And the game is quite visually beautiful in many ways (the character eyes are some of the best I've seen). So if you decide to play the game for the combat system, the crafting, or the graphics, you won’t be disappointed. But if you’re looking for a game with great dialogue, a well told story, and great voice acting, I think you’ll probably be let down. Then again, not everyone is as picky as me.
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