A good combat system and interesting, albeit simple, item creation fail to compensate for uninspired plot and characters
The story follows the atrociously-named Edge Maverick and his female childhood friend into space as they attempt to seek out new planets for mankind to colonize. Unsurprisingly, Edge has an ambiguous superpower which he slowly comes to understand in a black-and-white quest against an ancient evil threatening to destroy everything. While some supporting characters, such as the space elf Faize, are forgettable foils to the protagonist, others such as Lymle, the little girl with a speech impediment,and Meracle the Cat Girl, are genuinely irritating and even insulting.
The scenery certainly looks nice, but you will be unsurprised to find yourself on generic metal space stations, ice planets, and forest planets. The game's music is fitting but unexceptional. It helps create ambiance, but is a long cry from many JRPG classics.
That is not to say the game is without merit. TLH's combat system is perhaps its best quality, and the constant fighting that drags many JRPGs down is spiced up by combo-based, real-time combat, with an interesting, though generally useless 'blindside' tactic. The Battle Trophies, distinct from, but similar to, the game's achievements, add an extra element and can keep dedicated players looking for ever-new ways to battle.
The Last Hope also carries on the item creation tradition from previous Star Ocean games to significant effect. Creating new items is often challenging and rewarding. Furthermore, the skill points your characters attain through leveling up can be spent on item creation skills, as well as on combat skills and passive skills, giving each character substantial potential for short-term variety, and giving the player important choices.
I will not say that Star Ocean: TLH was unenjoyable; the game does combat, item creation, and some visual design very well. Moreover, if you have no qualms with playing trough a variation on a common theme (which we all will from time to time) you will likely find this an enjoyable title.
The Last Hope makes a very interesting comparison to the recently-released JRPG Persona 4. Persona 4, while burdened with horrible dungeons, outdated graphics, and a creative, but not exceptionally fun combat system, tremendously outshines Star Ocean: The Last Hope due to its memorable characters and unique plot.
Star Ocean, then, represents the complacency and narrative unoriginality that has unfairly given JRPGs outside of the Final Fantasy series a bad reputation, even if it eschews random encounters and other typical detriments of the genre.