Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope | Review | PS3
Developer: Tri-Ace
Publisher: Square-Enix
Platform: Xbox360, PS3, PS4, PC
Whilst Star Ocean 4 was announced in 2007, the story really begins in 2008. Microsoft, having received a less than warm reception from the Japanese in response to their Eastern release of the Xbox 360, threw a truckload of money at some big names in one of the most misguided deals in gaming history. Microsoft hoped that companies like Square-Enix and Bandai Namco would betray the core JRPG audience, forcing them to buy Xbox 360s to play the upcoming high profile project Blue Dragon or the next instalment of franchises like Tales Of and Star Ocean. The big companies did betray the fans of course, but the plan didn’t work as well as they’d hoped. Sure, the JRPG’s topped the Xbox charts in Japan, but the Western release of these games was met with total apathy. Western Xbox owners were apparently far too content playing their shooty bang, america fuck yeah games to consider trying out a JRPG and others like me, who absolutely adored Star Ocean, could only laugh at the idea of a JRPG on Xbox and knew that the home of great Japanese games would always be the PlayStation.
In 2010, the proper version of Star Ocean 4 was released on the PlayStation 3. It contained both English and Japanese voice-over, a choice of 2 UI styles and an extended soundtrack that was included in the Japanese version, and all on 1 disc instead of a ludicrous 3, which needed to be changed when travelling to different planets. It was also bloody awesome.
Star Ocean 4 is a prequel to the first game in the series and opens with a background of the near destruction of the human race from nuclear warfare. The rest remain on space colonies orbiting the moon. Our first of the ensemble cast of protagonists are Edge Maverick and Raimi Sanjiori, (and by the way, they have the most normal names of all the characters) part of a spacefaring research team looking for habitable planets for the human race to colonise and rebuild civilization. This makes a nice change of pace from the previous games in the series as it feels more like you’re part of this spacefaring organisation rather than a lone castaway trying to return home.
That doesn’t mean things go smoothly though, as in the opening parts of the game you explore a planet the team has crash-landed on and several revelations launch our heroes from their humble beginnings into the epic universe-shattering adventure that follows. Though the story is often presented as a tropey, Japanese cheese-fest, Star Ocean 4 manages to deal heavy doses of intrigue and moments of truly heart-wrenching drama. Each character that joins the team, does so organically, they feel like they are becoming close friends as their objectives align. This is bolstered. Of course, by Star Ocean’s excellent ‘private actions’ system which we’ll talk about in a minute.
You may think for instance that Edge is just a blonde carbon copy of Fayt from Star Ocean 3, but where Fayt was reserved, shy and a little awkward, Edge is courageous, outspoken and passionate about space exploration. Reimi, the main female character is Edge’s childhood friend (were you expecting anything different) but as his second in command, she knows when to challenge Edge on his decisions which elevates her character immensely. She also instigates some of the game’s funniest scenes through her apparent paraphobia (Fear of perverts.) There’s also Bacchus, my favourite character, he built himself a robot body to commit fully to the goals of his advanced alien race, which the other characters become intertwined in. He approaches every situation with cold logic to the point that he fears he has lost some of his compassion. He is the best, but again, Tri-Ace did a great job in writing all the characters with flaws, despite their initial impressions as typical JRPG archetypes.
The writers have utilised expert pacing throughout this lengthy story, with smaller stories taking place on each planet which become increasingly high stakes, alongside the overarching threads tying them all together. Several tear wrenching moments bolster the main thrust of the plot, which is essentially an alternate take on the grey goo theory, tying in nicely with the events of Star ocean 3, whilst still being simple enough to understand without the added context. The carefully constructed moral dilemmas and grey areas throughout the story lead directly to the forming of the UP3, a cornerstone of Star Ocean lore. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Star Ocean 3 but in revisiting this game I had forgotten just how good the story elements were.
Where Star Ocean 4 stepped up its game is in having the player visit a wider array of planets this time. Fans have frequently laughed at the setting of Star Ocean being a medieval fantasy for the majority despite the sci-fi premise. This game delivers, not only in its narrative themes, where characters are fumbling in how to deal with an underdeveloped planet in a pre-UP3 universe, but also in a new philosophy to the art direction and level design which makes it in some instances one of the most striking looking games on the PS3. Bloom, lighting, water effects and bold use of colour make each planet you visit completely visually distinct as well as providing a feeling of truly discovering alien worlds rather than a series of mostly earth-like ones. Attempts were made to make the environments feel far more open this time which was met with mixed success. Whereas Star Ocean 3 felt like it was packed with little details, 4 seems to have a fair few big open fields of nothingness, leading to the pop-in problems common in modern Japanese games. The fauna comes in the form of the many colourful, well-designed enemies, but if there was a bit more flora in a few areas, the underlying ground textures, for instance, may have aged a bit more gracefully. Star Ocean’s presentation has always been excellent, despite its somewhat doll-like character models, but Star Ocean 4 is undoubtedly the most beautiful in the series with its randomised, rainbow of menu backgrounds showcasing anime stylisations of each of the characters.
This extends to Motoi Sakuraba’s iconic sound effects and music, something Star Ocean shares with its sister series Tales Of. When simply pressing a button on a menu screen can be made this satisfying by sound alone, it makes these games a distinct experience above many other JRPGs of its type. The compositional style of Sakuraba is no exception to this, he uses intense and sometimes eerie synthesisers and timbrally similar electric guitars for the majority of his main melody lines which are practically extended solo sections with few repeats. The tracks remain expertly grounded however with syncopated, yet repetitious drum beats and bass lines that often use interesting and complex time signatures that distinguish one piece from the next.
As Edge and his crew travel around the various planets in the game, there’s the usual RPG fare of talking to people in towns, shopping for new weapons and items, and taking on side quests here and there. There’re chests to open all over, as well as harvesting points to get cooking ingredients and mining points for some of the game’s rarer crafting materials. The party gains experience for practically every one of these actions which may seem strange at first but is actually a stroke of genius and serves a dual purpose. If you’re familiar with the events of Star Ocean 3 then you will know that this is probably another nod to the mind-bogglingly meta direction that game took. It’s also a tool to balance levels of the entire party throughout the game considering that only characters that took part in battles can gain experience normally. This means the player is not punished or forced into a party composition throughout the entire game, just for having a preferred party setup. The game is also highly replayable and uses separate saves for both your current playthrough and your progress as a whole which includes any bestiary entries you have. These get gradually filled up the more you battle and once all the intel on a particular enemy has been learned, that knowledge can be converted into a powerful ‘monster gem’ accessory.
The combat itself is going to be the thing that makes or breaks the game for most people as this is where the majority of time is spent. The action-oriented combat system is not only one of the best seen up until this point and a massive improvement on previous games but is also unmatched in accessibility and fun for any player who doesn’t want to spend hours min-maxing stats and figuring out each character’s strengths and weaknesses. You can (and I have) play as Edge throughout the entire game, picking skills that you find most fun to use that alongside standard combos focus on easily juggling enemies in the air, outmanoeuvring and confusing them, and drawing fire away from weaker, longer-range characters. It makes complete sense that the main character is the easiest to use and if I’m honest, a little over-powered sometimes.
However, if you want to obsess over this game (and I do) it’s possible to deep dive into each and every character, setting up optimal skills for different situations or party compositions playing off the strengths and weaknesses of each character. You can try to master one or all of the 9 characters, each one of them different from the last and complimenting different play-styles. They all have a variety of skills and magic (symbology) that can be chained together using the L2 and R2 buttons, the bigger the chain gets the higher the bonus damage inflicted. There’re 4 excellent new systems in Star Ocean 4’s battles. Firstly, blindsides are now a core aspect of battle which allow a character to flank an enemy that is about to attack. The enemy has to be targeting your player character but from there it may lose track of you and will be open to combos and critical hits. Then, the rush gauge which fills up when giving or receiving damage and when full allows you to enter a powered-up state for a time. You can also expend the entire gauge to perform an extended, unblockable skill combo alongside the closest teammate.
Enemies also make use of their own rush gauges and cannot be staggered when in rush mode, so the main challenge of battle is knowing when to go on the offensive and when to blindside and avoid enemies who are on a rush rampage. The blindside and rush systems both synergise and oppose each other in terms of how you set up your character with the BEAT or ‘battle enhancement attribute type’ system. For each character, you can freely choose between type A or type B. Type A boosts offensive attributes and through experience, the character learns skills that make blindsiding more effective, such as being able to evade multiple enemies or performing double blindsides for enemies that can counter. Type B is primarily for long-range or spellcasting characters, it prioritises defence and makes charging the rush gauge far easier, meaning later on, some characters can enter rush mode extremely quickly.
The final new battle system is the bonus board, a successor to the bonus gauge and far easier to get your head around. The board has 14 slots for coloured jewels, each indicating one of 4 bonuses and each time a jewel is added, the bonus increases. These are increased experience, money, recovery or SP (SP being an extra way skills can be improved throughout the game as well as what is expended to create new crafting recipes.) You earn jewels from performing specific actions in battle like killing with a critical hit and lose jewels when a critical hit is landed on you or your character dies. Jewels can be melded together in the sequence they were earned which means you will only lose half of the jewels in a particular combined colour stack. The bonus board is a fun little addition that incentivises varied play styles and allows the player to progress how they want to an extent.
Let’s get deeper into character playstyles themselves as there’s a lot to talk about! I’ve covered Edge, next is Reimi who is a stark contrast. She uses a bow and is best at long range, interrupting enemy casters or supporting more aggressive characters. She has the highest base critical hit rate of any character and when combined with a complementary set of weapons and equipment alongside her set of skills which unleash barrages of arrows across the field, can be racked up to inflict massive damage.
Lymle is an offensive spellcaster with a few early game healing abilities too. She has an arsenal of unique fire-based skills at her disposal revolving around her conjured demon dog Cerberus. These attacks can pin groups of enemies down in a staggered state or deal high damage to a group with explosive force. Equipping her for high intelligence and with accessories that boost fire damage will mean any monsters encountered that are weak to fire can potentially be dispatched in seconds.
Then, there’s Bacchus….awww yeaaahh! Bacchus is my personal favourite to use, despite his size, he can dodge around the field with incredible speed and is the only character that can do so and also attack. (Reimi can jump attack, but she doesn’t go very far.) You can constantly switch between peppering the enemy from afar to a powerful close-range assault and not to mention, Bacchus’s blindside is one of the most effective in that it launches him up in the sky to land behind the enemy. Bacchus’s skills are equally versatile for both close and long-range and his black hole sphere can pull in a group of enemies, leaving them helpless playthings to be picked off by the entire party.
The only character that is not that fun to play as is Faize, he is not only the weakest character but his move set is rather clunky and his most powerful attacks are pretty much standard symbology for the rest of the casters in the game. Faize lacks a focussed play style but at the same time, isn’t as flexible as either Edge or Arumat, the latter of which is better than Faize in every conceivable way.
Battle trophies make a triumphant return and are implemented far more gracefully in Star Ocean 4. Each character has 100 BTs that are tailored to their skillset and only unlock when you play as them. Cool stuff can be unlocked as you earn these, the best of which for hardcore players is the removal of the level cap so each character can go up to level 255. As mentioned, on normal difficulty, the average player doesn’t have to think about much of this. They can take the game at their own pace and enjoy messing around in combat with their favourite character, but on the two harder difficulty levels, some might say this is where Star Ocean 4 really begins. You will find yourself having to utilise the huge variety of supportive items including stat-boosting potions and food that grants effects for a number of battles. You’ll have to think more about what you’re going to craft and synthesize to bring out the best in each character, for instance boosting Reimi’s critical hit chance even further or making sure casters can recover MP. Bosses can pose a huge problem and must be approached with extreme caution when in rush mode, even if you believe you’re over-levelled for a particular area a boss can come along and utterly devastate an unprepared party. Some BTs are not even obtainable at higher difficulties just because of the difference in enemy resilience. It’s a testament to the depth of the game that these higher difficulties can be overcome by using all the tools the game provides to set up a strategy and party composition to suit each challenge.
What remains beyond the combat system is a surprising amount of side content, though the nature of this could be seen as more of a hindrance to the game than anything else. The reason being, every single side-quest is as basic a fetch quest as can possibly be, with not much in the way of intriguing characters or locations beyond what you would have already seen in the main quest. There’s an unlockable colosseum which allows you to take part in special battles and bunny races, and a gigantic end game bonus dungeon which is always good to see, but some players may find these side activities so bland that they may ignore them entirely or even find their experience with the game as a whole dampened.
Star Ocean 4’s best elements though, are some of the best in the genre as a whole and in my opinion, it is only surpassed by Tales Of Graces which released later in the same year. I prefer the story and setting of Star Ocean 3 for its political themes and fantastic ending, but in almost every way this game is an improvement. A few years ago I got some stick for heavily criticising Star Ocean 5. I wasn’t just talking out of my arse there, this is one of my favourite series and I’ve spent hundreds of hours of my time experiencing just how deep it is. On the same note, I know that the games have many flaws and would probably be able to make some amazing suggestions as to how the series could be improved. In revisiting Star Ocean 4 I have surprised even myself in how good this game actually is and how it’s easy to learn, hard to master. This is a JRPG experience that is not to be missed and hopefully someday, could find a rival, until then, well...I’ve probably got another good hundred hours to put in.
Pros:
Deep combat system with a tonne of variety
Some very emotional character moments that move the story in the right direction
Interesting art direction with flawless presentation and sound design
Cons:
Fetch quests bog down the pacing (and fun) tremendously
Movement outside of combat feels strangely stiff
Outdoor environments are sometimes pretty empty
