Star Ocean: TLH brings a lot to the table to entertain, but certain aspects leave a bit to be desired
Well, rapid is a relative term, seeing as how I just finished the third world after some 20 hours of gameplay, thanks mostly to my obsession for maxing out the collections and abilities. At this point, I have only completed through the third world. I returned to the second to complete some quests and gather some items and such. But this time has given me enough of an impression of the overall game to make an accurate review. The battle system is entertaining and adaptable. You can just slash away at the enemies and kill them if you don't want to get too involved. At the same time, though, you can really get into it. The medals awarded for completing various tasks in battle while controlling each character are an entire game in themselves. The Blindside system, as well as the Rush and Combo and Bonus Board systems, add a substantial level of depth to the battles.
As mentioned before, the voice acting for Edge and Reimi is pretty good almost all of the time, and Raize isn't bad either. But once you get Lymle, you pretty much want to turn the volume off. Her monotone, five year old's voice is enough to make you rupture your ear drums with the first thing you can find that will fit in your ear. Fortunately, we have the wonderful combination of mute and subtitles for those not blessed with eternal patience.
Other than the voices, the character design and modeling are excellent. Nothing revolutionary or groundbreaking to be sure, but they are original without being grotesque and classic without being monotonous. Enemies are varied for the most part, but the sheer number of battles can take their toll on your interest in the enemies themselves. A lot of the enemies early on act in exactly the same way, so you find yourself doing the same actions over and over no matter what you're fighting. Later on, though, the enemies become much more varied, which adds a lot of refreshing value to the battles. As you fight ever larger and more daunting enemies, it becomes necessary to actually think about what you're doing, rather than just going on auto-pilot. However, I found that even if I didn't really think too hard about what I was doing, there wasn't any real threat of dying during battles. This may have been due to my leveling, however. I tend to fight more battles than necessary.
Which isn't hard to do, since the worlds that house these monsters are pretty damn nice to look at. The first world, Aeos, stands as my favorite of the four I have seen thus far. Described as a jungle, but more like a grassy area with some tall plants and a beach and a cave thrown in, Aeos displays a lot of the prowess of the graphical system in TLH. The lighting effects, nuances of color, and just art direction in general all served to impress me in this introductory (though still vast) world. And the graphic quality remained impressive throughout the rest of my current experience. My only complaint is that on the third world, I was slightly visually overwhelmed by the designs on the walls. Everything had roughly the same pattern, and by the end of the world I was really f***ing sick of seeing those colors.
And this is where my only real complaint comes from. The world design. Worlds are very large by most standards, and as a result can tend to feel very repetitive. Aeos wasn't bad, because it had variety in the type of area you were wandering through--forest, cave, forest, beach, etc. But in the third world, every single macro-area was designed almost exactly the same way. The layout was different, but the visuals were identical. By the time I got to the third (and thank god final) consecutive room of concentric circles, I was begging for mercy from the game god of dullness.
But all in all, despite these minor, specific instances of redundancy and frustration, this game holds true as a very solid RPG, and, in my opinion, one of the best on the 360. The system is slightly lacking in high-quality RPGs. I rank Oblivion, Fallout 3, Eternal Sonata, Mass Effect, and TLH in the upper echelon. Overall, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is an entertaining game with a lot of depth for the hardcore gamer that is also accessible to anyone just looking for a fun 100 hours of gameplay.
A Quick Summary
Likes:
Bonus Board: Allows for customization of how you want to grow your characters at the time. Makes growth less time consuming and adds a level of depth to the battle system.
Graphics: Stunning, even when they're repetitive.
Item Creation System: Very deep, but at the same time very simple and accessible.
Story: Just from what I've seen so far it's interesting, even if it's not real deep yet.
Difficulty: Four difficulties make the game playable by basically anyone while still offering challenge to veterans and crazy people.
The Little Things: Square and tri-Ace did a lot to fix the little details that generally nag in RPGs, such as adding the sprint feature, easy character swap, loading from the game menu, minimizing yet optimizing the battle HUD, and a lot of stuff like that.
Dislikes:
Voice Acting: It's usually good, but Lymle and Welch are horrendously annoying.
Level Design: Again, generally good, but can get really redundant. Even when not repetitive, it doesn't feel particularly creative. Feels a bit generic most of the time.
Menus and Text: If you don't have an HD tv, as with Infinite Undiscovery, text can be really difficult to decipher at times. Colors also don't mix well and end up overlapping, causing more reading difficulties.
Middle Ground:
Sound: I didn't really even notice the music until ten or so hours in. And even then I really didn't pay any attention. The default settings make the music a lot lower than the other sounds. The battle music is always the same, as in basically every game, but the problem here is that it's really underwhelming and unimpressive. All the other sounds are really good, though. Battle sounds an voices can be customized for who/what you hear and what you don't. And slight noises made by enemies in the field can sometimes be really useful for locating an enemy just off the screen that you didn't know about.
Final Rating: For me, 8.5 seems about right. Not great, but pretty good. Just a few tweaks could have made it fantastic, but as it is, it's just really good. Some will give it closer to a 9.5, some will hate it. It's not for everyone, to be certain, but for solid RPG fans, it will be very satisfying.