Star Ocean: The Last Hope for X-Box 360

As much as I wanted to say this game is fantastic and it is everything that I ever hoped Star Ocean: The Last Hope could be I can not. The rollercoaster of emotions that this “game” drug me through has got to be a first for me. The game started off slow, but quickly became a lot of fun, until the system-crashes began and then it was a whole different story.

Square-Enix has not had a very good track record with their JRPG releases for the Xbox 360, but this one was on the right track. The story alone was very intriguing, a celestial journey in search of habitable planets for a struggling human race, although, that story-line does not last very long and you are all of a sudden thrown into tangent after tangent which eventually becomes a save the universe tale.

I did however have a problem with the presentation of the story. The character's animations were far from polished and at times reminded me of the marionettes that children used to watch at parties. They were robotic and jerky in nature and the similarities to puppets do not end there. The expressionless faces, blank stares lacking emotion just waiting for their batteries to run out. Then there was the terrible voice-acting and writing that left much to be desired.

Not all of the voice acting is horrible, on the contraire, Arumat and Myurial’s voice-overs are quite well, it is all the other voicing that is devoid of character. On top of all this there is the undesirable writing that plagues my ears with the overuse of words like okay and more importantly "‘kay" (which is not even a word). Also, the long-winded cut-scenes that can last upwards of 45 minutes can be tiresome; luckily skipping past them is as fast as the press of the start button which brings you to a synopsis of the scene you skipped. Still, if you skip the cut-scenes you will miss some of the idiosyncrasies the scenes have to offer.

But, aside from the hit or miss voicing and writing follies, the battle-system is a real treat. Not your typical turn-based RPG, this game sets you in a small area in which to do real-time battle. All the characters have their own special abilities and attacks which can lead to beautiful chaos on the screen. And changing characters while in battle-mode can be done on the fly. (NOTE: Other sites explain that you can get through this game simply by pressing the “A” button, but trust me that is not the case. The game becomes quite a bit more challenging the further you get and there is a difficulty setting at the start of the game.) Boss battles tend to be quite hectic (some last over forty-five minutes) and switching out dead teammates for live ones will be a necessity.

In addition to the battle-system the adventuring can be enjoyable. Whether you are on the ground hunting for harvest and mining points or visiting different planets the questing is entertaining. I spent a lot of time grinding by simply running through areas killing monsters and harvesting materials (which can be used to make items)…but, there is something more discerning that must be addressed.

I wish I could have slapped an 8 on this review (because I thought it was that good) but I can’t. There is a fatal flaw in the “game” and that is the system crashes (Note: not all people are having this problem). How would you feel if your gaming time depended on how long it would take for your session to freeze? Playing from save point to save point, hoping, no… praying that the game will not freeze when you are two hours in and still have not found a place to save. Or, battling a boss that has taken 45 minutes and you think he is almost dead, only to have the game suddenly halt. Welcome to my world! I tried everything to stop the freezing, from downloading the game to the HDD to clearing the cache to switching Xboxes altogether but to no avail.

Plus, I thought that I could look past the freezing issues, maybe I can only run the game for less than four hours at a time. WRONG! I am about 30 hours into the game (on the second disc) and I am fighting some big bad bug. Yet, 35-45 minutes into the battle... tires screech to a grinding stop, my brain swells, eyes turn red, smoke spews from my ears as the death-grip on my controller begins to show stress fractures from sheer pressure. I played the same match six times with the same outcome, which means I can not progress the game any further. BROKEN!

So, understandably there are many people out there thoroughly enjoying this title and I am not one of them. Regrettably, I do not even want to score this “game” but I must. Because this game is broken with a bug that will not let me progress I have to give this game a 4 out of 10 and I think that is being lenient.