Star Ocean: The Last Hope for spring Comments by Robert Purchese

Yay \o/ Never played a Star Ocean game before, but heard lots of great things, and am very much looking forward to this! Although, hopefully it'll be multi-region anyway and I'll just import it from the US. :)

"Other than that, Square Enix has kept the (so far) Xbox 360-exclusive game under wraps"

So this may appear on PS3.

/looks forward to 360 fanboys stating the opposite.

Oh for god's sake, just because it's an exclusive, do we really have to start talking about fanboys straight away?

/is probably not helping

FeralUK: I think so. But I wouldn't get my hopes up. It depends on how much MS paid, and we have no idea of knowing that :P

Someone tell SE that all the Star Ocean fans are waiting patiently on the PS3.

Until then, we'll keep playing Star Ocean on the PSP.

Ive got this really horrible feeling that it may die a slow death on the 360 like all the other JRPGs that are switching platforms.

I find it very hard to believe that any of the big-name 360 'exclusive' JRPGs are going to stay exclusive forever.

Glad that Squenix aren't giving us the usual interminable wait. Spring is what, somewhere around April? Not too bad. Personally I'm lucky enough to have an NTSC-J regioned 360 so I was seriously considering grabbing the asian english release when it comes out, but if there ends up only being a few extra weeks to wait then it's probably not worth the hassle.

"Someone tell SE that all the Star Ocean fans are waiting patiently on the PS3"
That sums me up. I've got a 360 as well but i just don't like playing them on it.
360 is for my action / shooter games.

@Vistrix

I thought that the JRPG's sold pretty well on 360 tbh, Lost Odyssey and Eternal Sonata, two of the biggest ones both sold well. Even looking at VGChartz, Eternal Sonata 360 outsold Disgaea on the PS3, and Disgaea is a hugely popular long running series! So what you are saying seems quite wrong.

Edit: They were the closest example I could think of, although it should have tipped more in the PS3's favour as Disgaea definitely has a lot more die-hard fans. You're more than welcome to prove me wrong with different examples though. :)

Disgaea 3 also isn't out in europe yet, which won't help it figures much.

edit: VGCharts doesn't seem the best comparison as it doesn't include Eu figures for Eternal Sonata, or JP figures for Disgaea 3.

Your figures there have Eternal Sonata data from the US and Japan while Disgaea is missing Japan. The Japanese market would be larger than the US.

Be interesting to see if SO4 is any good, I played the 3rd one but kind of drifted away from it. The battles gradually became a case of mash X to win.

Here you go, Valkyria Chronicles:

http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?i...

That matches Eternal Sonata in Japan and US figures, plus there is the EU amount on top of that.

More JRPG goodness! I'm absolutely loving the Jap attention the 360 has been getting.

Still need to finish Lost Odyssey and the superb Infinite Undiscovery but this will almost certainly be a purchase for me.


@FeralUK

Fuck off with your pathetic juvenile baiting.

Really hope that this is region free. I'm hoping, but not holding my breath.

@ Widge, please don't depress me with those miserable sale figures for Valkyria. Best game I played last year by a long shot.

@ Early, unfortunetly every SE game on 360 has been region locked, april aint a bad date for this anyways

Yeah, VC deserved much more. I think the look of the game puts people off. More textures and Unreal needed obviously. Must look realistic.

good stuff, this is my most anticipated game this year. I look forward to it

"More textures and Unreal needed obviously"

Oh god please no. One of the reasons I like Infinite Undiscovery so much is that it looks old-skool with no popup, tearing and no harsh overdetailed shiny armour.

Yeah, I spotted they were selling in different regions, but as both version sold in the US, thought it'd be a good enough rule of thumb :) I forgot about Valkyria Chronicles, but it still isn't that far off in terms of overall sales, not in the western regions anyway! And certainly doesn't prove Vistrix's original point that all JRPG's "die a slow death on the 360 like all the other JRPGs".

I have actually been trying to get hold of Valkyria Chronicles the last week too funnily enough, but no bloody shop sells it! GAME said that they never had any new copies of the game, only second hand copies, which is quite odd. I will no doubt end up ordering it online.

Lost Odyssey did a bit well! Thats got to be the best of the gen so far?

I apologise in advance for my ignorance but in my defence I've never played any JRPG's.

Is this game going to employ turn based combat?

Not really keen on turn based games, but would love another space opera epic RPG.

I hope this is good, I could really tuck myself into a nice rpg... the only problem with Xbox exclusives is having to wait for a european release date.. why region lock, so bloody annoying.

Well in Star Ocean 3, you set up your character to have attacks on certain buttons... you'd hit an encounter and it'd go into a battle screen arena, within that you can dash about and smash things up to your hearts content without a turn interrupting.
Sadly I found one combination of moves very early on that literally spanked the opposition without me having to think. Made the game a bit of a 'going through the motions'. Same criticism I had for Crisis Core except Star Ocean 3 didn't have the strength of story to back it up.

I just hope SO4 has a better story than SO3, that was definitely the weak spot of this otherwise stellar RPG.The premise was very intriguing, but it all went to shit quickly, with a big ugly twist that really put me off.

That twist ruined of what I thought, up until that point had been a great storyline. I really hope that the Last Hope doesn't have such stupidity going and spoiling things.

Star Ocean fans are just weird - That twist was the best bit of the game!

I have actually been trying to get hold of Valkyria Chronicles the last week too funnily enough, but no bloody shop sells it! GAME said that they never had any new copies of the game, only second hand copies, which is quite odd.

This is the problem all across the PAL areas. Sega released hardly any copies with no advertising and no fanfare, then complained that the game didn't sell any copies.

@farticusmaximus: your really like Infinite Undiscovery? I found it to be pretty terrible, personally. Maybe I'm missing something.

@NegativeZero

"your really like Infinite Undiscovery? I found it to be pretty terrible, personally. Maybe I'm missing something."

Initially I was a bit underwhelmed. The escape from jail sequence seemed a little confused and I wasn't really 'feeling' the combat system, then the pseudo-stealth section in the dark forest initially felt a little confused too..

..but then I 'got' the combat system and now I love it. There are subleties like if you get on the edge of range of a targetted enemy and stab one of the attack buttons you do a dash in and get to stun the enemy. Holding down the attack button for a special move is easier after a stun, and using combination attacks at a distance to kick off a surprise attack and get rare drops is also cool.

Outside the combat IU does everything I could ask for in a JRPG. The last JRPG to have such a wealth of things to do outside fighting and cutscenes was FFX where there was stuff like monster collection and chocobo races.

IU has loads of hidden items leading to side-quests, a superb and detailed item crafting and enchanting system and mission bonuses where things like completing a section in a certain time or, for example, the water chain boss: If you beat him without getting hit by a wave crash (by using rocks as cover) you get a situational bonus.

There are a lot of chests and other items that can only be accessed by playable characters introduced later in the game so lots of revisiting to pick up goodies, and using combine mode to get other chars than Capelle to talk to people (and pets) gives new dialog and quests.

These little things add so much to the game. I also thought the characters were nicely distinct and they really develop through the story, and the locations are beautiful.

It's the stuff out side of 'go from A to B via 25 fights and a boss, see cutscene, go to next area' that hooks me and UI has plenty of that, as well as a superb game engine and compelling story.

Obviously your mileage may vary.

@scimarad: back in 2003, after 3 entries of matrix and the infamous MGS2 , this twist felt neither innovative, smart nore welcome.

@ Widge - Thanks

I think I might try before I buy though