Cheapest Star Ocean: The Last Hope International

So, this game will seem very familiar for those of you who played Star Ocean: Til the End of Time. This is hopefully informative for those of you on the fence, and will help give a normal review without comments raving about minor details.

What's fun?

- Lengthy RPG, plenty of time to spend on this title, which is both on a positive and negative.
- Ability to switch Battle voices on/off, AND switch to Japanese.
- Load times are SHORT. I do like this in a game. The game doesn't load too often, and if when it does it is a very short wait time.
- Different character endings, like the previous Star Ocean titles.
- Fun free-roaming combat system, new blindside system and rush system add more to combat.
- Decent enough story when compared to other RPG's available.
- The ability to switch who you play as! On the fly as well, you can swap the leader mid-battle and control someone else for a change in gameplay. Don't like to slash up in someone's face? Then pick another character and go have some fun.

What's boring?

- This title is obviously dated, and with it already a port from the XBOX360, don't expect the graphics to wow you at all. The open areas have pretty boring textures, and modeling/cutscenes are reminiscent of a PS2 game.
- As mentioned above, be prepared to invest some serious time into this game. If you're a trophy type of player, expect an absurd amount of hours to actually get the platinum.
- The music in this game is lacking when it comes to battles. I love hearing the same song for every battle that I encounter. (Which is quite frequent in this title)
- The A.I. is not very unique, or smart. Think of Boomer from Socom, now give him a couple characters to control in an RPG and you have your A.I. Often times it almost looks as if they get bored and want you to do something, so they stop moving.
- Save points are far and few between, unless you do the spastic sprint by all the enemies. But in doing so, you make the bosses very hard.
- Boss difficulty does NOT scale well with the enemies you face leading up to the boss. They're challenging like in the past, but due to the combat system seem to be more challenging than they should be.


If you're in the market for a RPG, and weren't satisfied with FFXIII, then pick this title up. The story is decent, nothing that will be praised for years to come, but interesting enough. The biggest hurdle that I encountered with this game was the first few hours. It starts off very slow, a couple cutscenes, quick battle simulator, then talking, walking around lost, then magically you battle things. The combat system is enough to keep you playing, between a bonus board to stack battle bonuses, and new combat toys to play with and create more challenge, it's a refreshing game to play through. Throw in hours of bonus content for beating the game, and FOUR difficulty settings, you will have plenty of gameplay, and a RPG that is actually challenging..Get more detail about Star Ocean: The Last Hope International.