Where do I start with this one. My reaction while playing it on my xbox 360 was very mixed, I enjoyed and lauded aspects of the game while loathing others. The Star Ocean was a series that mirrored the Tales series in its fast paced battles and anime designs. Let's dive into this one shall we?
Plot: The game starts with exposition explaining and showing the effect World War 3 had on Earth. The amazingly named Edge Maverick (...) is chosen along with his (sigh...) childhood friend Reimi Saionji to find an appropriate environment for humans to move to. They meet and join up with aliens from other planets as they make their from planet to planet with varying technological states.
Opinion: When I went into the previous installment of Star Ocean (3), I went into it with promise of being able to explore various different worlds with different states of technology and politics, instead I was horrified to find out 3/4 of the game was spent in the medieval world. This one actually delivers but falls into a very formulaic style plot with each world being like an episode of a series. It's not exactly a bad thing though, just not for everyone.
4/5 Soul
Setting and Graphics: Oh my god the graphics looks amazing even with 2016 standards. Tri-ace did an amazing job as always. The settings varies according to which world you're currently in and it really works for the game as each world feels really fleshed out and gives the feeling of being in a different time on Earth. 5/5 Soul
Character(s): Okay, here's where the game hits a wall for me. The character designs look very very very very weird! Look at them, they look like a horrible Frankenstein monster of western and anime influences. The little Loli, Lymle scared the hell out of me and they all have dead eyes.
The characters all unfortunately give nothing outside their anime/jrpg archetypes, like the brave but headstrong leader, the childhood friend, the deadpan loli. I was thoroughly unimpressed. Also I only played the Xbox 360 version of the game so I was not given the ability to change to the Japanese audio and let me just say, the English voice acting is atrocious.
2/5 Soul
Gameplay: The battles is where this game shines. It has a very fast-paced ala Tales series
battle. Introduced in this series is the Bonus Board and the ability to avoid an attack and move behind an enemy to blindside it. The battle is fluid and action packed, and does not get old even during character grinds.
The pacing of the gameplay is very odd, one minute you have a 3 hour dungeon only to finish it with a 45 minute cutscene. At least it's done beautifully as long as you glaze over Lymle's dead soulless eyes.
5/5 Soul
Overall: I liked Star Ocean 4: The last Hope despite it's very questionable character designs. I played it all the way to the end and enjoyed a lot of it. All in all a very solid Jrpg and I can't wait for Star Ocean 5! 4/5 Soul
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