Star Ocean: The Last Hope

God bless JRPG developers. Without them, videogames’ sole vision of humanity’s future in space would be filled with space marines and overly serious alien races sporting dense vocabularies. But with them, well, it’s a completely different star-smocked universe populated by giant pink bunnies, shortcake-baking brunettes (among other dismayingly well-endowed extraterrestrials), and plenty of intergalactic goodwill in the face of multi-tentacled dungeon bosses.

Now that’s a future we could all live with.

But tri-Ace’s whimsical space epic Star Ocean: The Last Hope isn’t completely tethered to its cutesy wackness — beneath all those fruity layers of anime-style melodrama is a twisty-turny tale and an addictive formula for RPG gameplay. And it all stems from TLH’s initial premise: Humanity has basically sucked the life out of Earth through mega-wars and pollution, forcing our species to scramble beneath the planet’s surface. But it’s become increasingly unbearable, and with space travel a recent practical solution, you suit up as newbie space cowboy Edge Maverick to head into the inky reaches of the galaxy and scout inhabitable planets for your peeps.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple. Finding a new home for humans eventually spills over into run-ins with asinine Earth-bound bureaucracy, spooky hive-minded meanies, and galaxy-wide threats that push you through all 50-plus hours of Last Hope’s far-flung journey. So, thank god for a good battle system. Last Hope favors the fast with a real-time combat system that keeps your adventure clipping by at a speedy pace. No turn-based chumpery here, folks — instead, you’ll manually control your character (any of the game’s eight party members are on-the-fl y controllable during battle, depending on which ones are in the active four-person combat) to move around the battlefield and strike with regular attacks, spiffy special, stackable attacks, and/or something called “Blindsides.”

Truth be told, we didn’t even know what Blindsides did until about halfway through the game. And then we discovered that they were ESSENTIAL for getting through the rest of it. Pulling one off involves good timing when you’re being targeted by an enemy — do it right, and you’ll slo-mo shuffle to your adversary’s vulnerable backside for some critical hit-level whacking. In some boss fights, executing Blindsides is the key to surviving. And they don’t even feel jazz-hand-y or gimmicky. They add an interesting dynamic by forcing you to actually do the opposite of what your gut tells you to do during combat — stop, look your enemy in the eye, and wait for them to fully target you before acting. Ballsy stuff, especially when you have only two healing berries left.

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