Star Ocean: The Last Hope Hands-on Preview

Square-Enix fanatasy is a space RPG for the masses

Most video games—especially those that are touted as having dozens of hours of gameplay—attempt to hook audiences early with startling opening cutscenes destined to set up the storyline. Marvel Ultimate Alliance comes to mind: An action/RPG kicked off by more than two minutes of some of the finest video-game CGI that you’ll ever see. It’s hard not to buy into what Ultimate Alliance is plying after gazing at such splendor.

Japanese RPG developers are experts of the early cutscene hook, with Square Enix being the grandmasters of these particular arts. Visual Works’ sub-contracted work for Enix’s Final Fantasy series is legendary in the world of gaming; so much so, in fact, that flattering tributes to FF’s epic cuts can be witnessed throughout modern gaming software, across many different genres.

Having Visual Works in its back-pocket for Star Ocean: The Last Hope—which is due out at the end of February—should give those familiar with the studio’s work a good understanding of how early and how briskly Square Enix’s latest RPG is going to slap Xbox 360 users in the face. Star Ocean: The Last Hope promptly got the attention of gamers at Japan’s Yodobashi Camera Shop, and it has gotten ours, too, in the form of a debug preview build provided by Square Enix USA.

Before the lengthy opening cutscenes of Star Ocean: The Last Hope even begin, a credits sequence will draw you into developer tri-Ace’s sci-fi world. tri-Ace has dropped three episodes of Star Ocean on U.S. soil, but don’t worry if you haven’t found the time to play them. Star Ocean: The Last Hope stands alone, with stories and plotlines that are developed—early and often—with cutscenes. The first of Star Ocean: The Last Hope’s three debug discs has over 5GB worth of code on it, which should give you an indication of how many minutes of full-screen cuts there will be in the final build that will help weave the tale of this space opera.

Without heading into spoiler territory, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is about the need—not the want—to conquer space. A nuclear-heavy World War III has left much of the Earth’s land mass uninhabitable, thus pushing the search for a safe haven beyond the Milky Way into hyper-drive. You’ll be piloting one of those ships armed with nothing more than the responsibility of reaching Star Ocean—the vast, and hopefully inhabitable, galaxy that’s beyond where any human has traversed before. It’s an interesting story concept really (even if it seems reminiscent of Star Trek ), and, as importantly, one that offers up numerous opportunities for varied, party-based RPG combat.

The heroes of Star Ocean: The Last Hope’s saga are reminiscent of any number of Final Fantasy cast members, although they appear to be working with a different wardrobe manager. Medieval lore still looms large, but the overall aesthetics have been period-matched to Star Ocean: The Last Hope’s 2087 timeframe.

Even though Star Ocean: The Last Hope’s characters appear somewhat like 1500s throwbacks, and also possess some of the androgynous characteristics of the FF universe, the sci-fi environments mean futuristic business. Spacecraft interiors/exteriors, galaxy-scapes and planetary terrain could easily be mistaken for any of those seen in the more reputable sci-fi films of the past 20 years. This is a very good thing, as it automatically helps Star Ocean: The Last Hope appeal to a wide range of science-fiction buffs—to the edge of the Final Frontier and beyond.

Once the cutscenes cease…well, they’ll continue again for awhile even though you’ll think they’re finished. Seriously, there are a lot of cutscenes in Star Ocean: The Last Hope. While this might be okay for pure moviegoers, gamers need something a little more interactive, even in an epic RPG experience. Star Ocean: The Last Hope has the action that you crave, but you’ll have to be patient while it unfolds.



For those of you who think Star Ocean: The Last Hope is your typical Japanese RPG, you may want to stick around for this next part. While Star Ocean: The Last Hope feels very much like your standard JRPG in overall pacing, exploration and plot development, things drastically change when its time to flex those battlefield muscles.

Many link JRPGs with turn-based combat, and while this is often the case, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is not of this ilk. In fact, Star Ocean: The Last Hope has perhaps the most thorough and complex real-time battle system of any RPG before it, from Japanese soil or otherwise.

Falling somewhere between a traditional turn-based system and the combat found in Jade Empire is Star Ocean: The Last Hope’s beautiful battle dynamic. You’ll have complete character and camera control over the range of the battlefield, which means user skill comes into play when dodging attacks. When an attack can’t be avoided, the guard system can be utilized, which is essentially a hybrid user skill/die roll dynamic. Guards are automatically queued up when another command isn’t being entered, and they also simultaneously take into account the enemy’s range and the PC’s guard stats. The user skill enters the picture, too, though, as it’s possible to anticipate a foe’s attack, lay off the offense for a bit and then let the auto-guard function do its job. You can’t block and attack at the same time—it’s a simple battlefield rule, but one that really helps strategy and patience shine in Star Ocean.

Offensive attacks work similarly to the guarding system in that the user’s timing can pay big dividends. A single press of the attack button will queue up a move that focuses on a single baddie, no matter where he/she/it may be on the field. Attacks will have varying effects, depending on if they are queued from short or long distance, and depending on if they took place in an ambush (from behind) style situation. But some of the real strategy and entertainment in Star Ocean: The Last Hope’s fighting comes when acquired combat arts can be mixed in with the basic attacks in order to create long combo strings. Individual special attacks can be married with other specials to create Chain Combos—all of which get mapped to the trigger buttons. Star Ocean: The Last Hope’s battle system really doesn’t care when or how the user combines these aggregate specials either, a rule which often results in very unique and very long, spectacular maneuvers.

If the part user-skill, part RPG luck battle system wasn’t enough, tri-Ace has also added a system known as Blindside into the mix for even more robustness. With impeccable timing, a hero can dodge an upcoming attack and follow it up with a critical-hit maneuver. The interesting part of this system is that it confuses the enemy for a split second, which means that he is unable to target your character for a moment. This has huge strategic implications, since adept users will be able to draw fire away from an ailing party member with these Blindside maneuvers, giving the character a chance to recover.

Ailing party members will also have a chance to even the score with the Rush Gauge, which works somewhat like Street Fighter IV’s Revenge Gauge. As a party member takes on damage, the Rush Gauge will fill, which allows a finite amount of super HP and ability. Rush Attacks can also be combined with the aforementioned Chain Combos to create wicked, multi-party barrages. These “Rush Combos” also fold in button timing minigames for additional reliance on user skill.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope also has many of the more common battle bells and whistles, too, such as adjustable party attack configurations, assignable/adjustable AI tendencies for your group and the ability to build weapons from found objects. These additional items aren’t a big surprise, but they do show to what great lengths tri-Ace has gone to give Star Ocean: The Last Hope a chance to appeal to as wide of a gaming demographic as possible. Star Ocean: The Last Hope is even Teen-rated; yet another indication that tri-Ace’s latest may be that rare JRPG for the masses…and perhaps even a JRPG for the ages.

Before any battling can commence, hero Edge and the rest of his party will need to explore a sizable amount of terrain in order to fill in some of the blanks in the plot, and in order to develop numerous NPC personalities. The exploring act is a little tedious in this build of Star Ocean: The Last Hope really, as the hot-spot detection is a bit off and the camera is somewhat of a pain (right means left to the right-stick camera, by the way, and cannot be changed except for in battle situations) when vertical walls automatically zoom the lens in too far. It’s hard to tell if these small frustrations during the exploratory portions of Star Ocean: The Last Hope are there to stay or if they’ll be tweaked in the final; look in the final review for how that will all play out. It’s not uncommon for the exploring and fetching in an open-world RPG to be a bit painful, but hopefully these items will be ironed out in play testing.