Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Star Ocean is a long-lived and enduring franchise which first appeared all those years ago on the Super Famicom. A sequel followed,Star Ocean: The Second Story, on the 3D Playstation in the late nineties. Over the years, numerous more Star Ocean games have been released, all of which expand on and refine the original action-oriented role-playing game formula. Square Enix have now developed a next gen entry into the pantheon; Star Ocean: The Last Hope, which they promise will take the much loved franchise on a new and fresh direction.

Combat is dealt with in real time, with your enemies actually visible upon the field on vision, with the player able to dip in and control the various characters at their disposal. The Last Hope expands upon the usual formula by allowing use of up to four characters at a time instead of three. Switching between characters is done with the left and right bumpers.

Another new aspect to the game is BEAT, a function utilized to affect the general posture of your character. This can be manipulated to give your character a more passive or agressive stance for example. A completely new feature to the series is this: when an enemy locks onto you and charges you, holding down the B button allows you to use the analog to slip around behind him as he reaches your position, allowing you a chance for a critical strike.

Visually this game is beautiful, as you would expect from a Square Enix title.The special cutscenes have been handled by Visual Works, the studio that helped the create the notoriously detailed and gorgeous cutscenes from the Final Fantasy series. In The Last Hope, vibrant worlds and gorgeous characters form to create a typically engrossing RPG. Gameplay is polished and works well, keeping the flow just right whilst retaining many of the traditional RPG elements you wouldn't want to lose.

Perhaps the best thing about Star Ocean; The Last Hope is that it is intended as a prequel, and so is the perfect place for newcomers to the series to enter into the world of Star Ocean. For veterans of the franchise, there will no doubt be the noltalgia of the earlier games flowing through this title. Star Ocean; The Last Hope could well be the best RPG released thus far for the Xbox 360.

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