![]() ![]() You land your ship in what appears to be the Southwest U.S., and explore this poor excuse for a town. ![]() It isn’t the earth of the present, the year is 1947 (if I remember correctly). On the other side of this black hole is an alternate-reality Earth. We are dealing with a work of fiction here, after all. Let’s suspend belief for now and imagine that that is even possible. About 20 hours into the game (give or take), you’ll run into a horrible sci-fi cliché, your ship, the Calnus, and its entire crew, will be tossed through a black hole and spewed out on the other side. Let’s look at an example, and I’ll give a spoiler warning here, as I will mention a few story points, but because they hardly relate to the game’s main plot at all, probably won’t matter. There are side plots in this story that, even to this day, I wonder what reason they have to be in the game at all. The movie is entertaining, but that’s about all it is. It’s kind of like when you go to see a movie, and you could care less about the plot because it’s bad, or the characters, because they’re written pretty horribly, but there are lots of explosions and cool visual effects. All this combines to make an entertaining romp across the galaxy, if not unique or fulfilling. The characters are interesting, at least for a little while, even though they are typically huddled into JRPG stereotypes. It’s hard to understand at times, but that is the way of the JRPG. The story is pretty cliché, in a way, but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. Naturally, that mission goes horribly wrong at the outset, and Edge and Reimi get embroiled in events that could determine the very fate of the entire universe. ![]() On that ship we find our two main characters – Edge and Reimi – a couple of childhood friends that are tossed into space on a mission to find humanity a new home. That foray away from home is led by several ships, one of which is the Calnus. Star Ocean: The Last Hope really catches my imagination in that way, because it sees humanity reaching toward the stars to find a new home after they destroyed Earth in a massive nuclear holocaust. I’m in awe of space exploration in general, seeing new things, finding out what is out there, beyond the blue jewel we call our home. I grew up on watching reruns of the original Star Trek and then spent my teenage years watching The Next Generation. I’m innately drawn to just about any form of entertainment with a sci-fi setting. How did my second encounter with this latest Star Ocean game fare, taking into consideration all the additions to the PS3 iteration? Read on to find out! I was so enraptured by actually having a fresh JRPG to play that I let a lot of things slip by in my mind, possibly putting the game up on a higher pedestal than it really should have been located. I pre-ordered and played the game on the 360 and really enjoyed it, for the most part. With that in mind, I purchased my little Microsoft box in late 2008, because I knew what was coming up – the latest Star Ocean game by tri-Ace, one of my favorite JRPG franchises. To my surprise, they turned up exclusively on the Xbox 360. There was a time, not all that long ago, where I was really hurting for some decent JRPGs. I’m having a feeling of déjà vu, but in a good way. ![]()
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