Review of Star Ocean: The Last Hope

This game is a prequel of sorts detailing man's first trips into the vast star ocean. Played the third game, but not the first two and this one is about the same as the third one, though very very wordy. I am the type of role playing gamer that loves story over game play, but even I have to admit some of the cut scenes in this one were like watching an entire movie. The story has a young man named Edge Maverick and childhood friend Reimi on a ship making its inaugural flight into space, their goal to find a planet to inhabit as Earth has been decimated by wars. Well the first flight does not go to well as they soon find themselves crashed on a planet and numerous ships launched alongside theirs missing including that of Edge's and Reimi's friend Crowe. On the planet they uncover a few mysterious happenings and soon come into contact with a race of people called Eldarians who help out Edge and everyone by establishing a base on this new found planet and soon they are accompanied by one of these people named Faize. This is just the tip of the iceberg as our young hero ends up captain of his own ship and meeting a whole lot of other people as he meets a young strange girl named Lymia, a scientific type cyborg named Bacchus, a cat girl named Meracle, a winged girl named Sarah, another girl out for revenge named Myuria. They end up having to uncover these strange objects known as Grigori that seem to have unnatural effects on all life around them and soon end up on the trail of mysterious ships that seem to have no other purpose than to destroy. The game was rather fun, the characters funny and rather good and the fighting was a bit like the third Star Ocean, however, now one only need monitor their health rather than their health plus like magic or something in the third. You can get rather powerful in this one as it does not have the all to familiar 9999 cap for hit points and other stats as most role playing games do. The game is more story oriented than fight oriented, to a very high degree as even I, a person who enjoys story over fighting got kind of annoyed at some of the longer lasting cut scenes. The problem being they were not fast paced enough, to much Edge looking dire and making speeches. You do travel to a whole slew of planets in this one, unlike the third where the majority of the action took place on one planet, here there is a planet where a lot has to be done, but it does not comprise over 50 percent of the game or greater like the planet from the third one did. A lot more space travel this time around. All in all rather good, and I will play the first two games now as I have them for the PSP and hope they will be as entertaining as this one, with perhaps a few less cut scenes.