Star Ocean: The Last Hope International (PS3) | 
| From: Square Enix
Category: Video Games
List Price: £39.99
Buy New: £15.50
as of 30/7/2010 03:14 CDT details
You Save: £24.49 (61%)
New (16) Used (5) from £15.50
Seller: clickforgamesltd
Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 573
Format: Unknown format
Platform: PlayStation 3
Genre: role-playing-games
ESRB: Rating Pending
Media: Video Game
Operating System: No Operating System
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 5.5 x 0.6
MPN: PS3STAROCEAN
EAN: 5060121826069
ASIN: B002ZNJ36W
Release Date: February 12, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
| What are bloggers saying about the Star Ocean: The Last Hope International (PS3)
Star Ocean: The Last Hope International (PS3) - Google Blog Search
Google Blog Search Results: 16,172 results for Star Ocean: The Last Hope International (PS3) - showing 1 through 10
• Star Ocean: The Last Hope International (PS3) ? Review | PC ...
by Victor Philip Ortiz
7 Jun 2010 at 1:05am
This is where the advantages of the PlayStation 3 is shown, which uses the Blu-ray disc for its games ? as it only needs one disc to fit the game. Star Ocean: The Last Hope International is the international version of the game of the ...
• Star Ocean: The Last Hope International
by Chris Boots-Faubert
16 Jul 2010 at 12:31am
Star Ocean: The Last Hope International. By Chris Boots-Faubert | Published: July 16, 2010 | 0 Comments. Publisher: Square Enix staroceani-ba. Release Date: February 2010. ESRB Rating: T (for Teens) Platforms: PS3 / XBox 360 ...
• $26 off Star Ocean: The Last Hope International [PS3], latest ...
by unknown
18 Jun 2010 at 7:07am
Star Ocean: The Last Hope International [PS3] DEAL ($26 off). The cheapest price available online.
• Star Ocean: The Last Hope International Review | PS3 Attitude
by Majiesto
26 Mar 2010 at 9:00am
Star Ocean: The Last Hope International is a PS3 exclusive RPG from Square Enix, the makers of the Final Fantasy series.
• guyblade: Title Drop 4: The Prequel
by GuyBlade
29 Jul 2010 at 6:35pm
Last night, I finished up Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It is the fourth in a long spanning series of actiony RPGs going back to the SNES era. The series tends to focus on spacefaring humans who end up trying to save the ... At this moment, I' ll say that I played the game on the 360 and that I have not played the PS3 (International) version. I had at least a dozen hard locks of my console while playing this game. Every single one happened during a battle and every single one ...
• EL33TONLINE: News - Star Ocean: The Last Hope (International ...
by unknown
23 Mar 2010 at 3:55am
Star Ocean: The Last Hope (International) Review (PS3). Posted by Oltman on March 23, 2010 at 08:55 AM. Stop me if you have heard this one before: It is the future, shortly after the big WW3. Everything is destroyed except the White ...
• PS3 Review: Star Ocean: The Last Hope - International ...
by Luigi Bastardo
4 Mar 2010 at 10:19pm
Break out the Mountain Dew IV, hook up the catheter, and enjoy.
• Star Ocean: The Last Hope International Review | Middle East Gamers
by rabie
4 Apr 2010 at 3:24am
So when I got the chance to review Star Ocean: The Last Hope International, I had a couple of doubts in my mind: one, is it going to be fair to the game for me to play and review it? ... At the end of the day, people that played this game last year on the 360 have nothing to look forward to in the PS3 version. Everyone else though should probably give this game a shot and see how a bunch of teen boy band look-a-likes end up saving the human civilization. ...
• Worthplaying | 'Star Ocean The Last Hope: International' (PS3 ...
by Rainier
9 Feb 2010 at 9:06pm
With the launch of Star Ocean The Last Hope: International, PS3 users will be able to explore the fantastical science fiction world of this hit prequel to the Star Ocean series. In addition to English and Japanese voice options, the PS3 ...
• PS3 Review - Star Ocean: The Last Hope International : BuzzFocus.com
by Bags
25 Feb 2010 at 9:04pm
In the past year, several Xbox exclusive games have been making their way over to the PS3 from the Xbox 360. Star Ocean: The Last Hope International from Square-Enix is the latest title to make the leap. Overall, the game is 90% a port ...
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the latest game in the popular STAR OCEAN franchise. As a prequel to the series, it reveals the beginnings of Star Ocean universe, making it ideal for both existing fans and new players. Combining the best features of classic RPG gaming including a compelling story and unique characters with a real-time action battle system and incredible graphics, Star Ocean: The Last Hope International will become a favorite of RPG fans. The year is A.D. 2087. In the aftermath of World War III, Earth has been ravaged and the population decimated by a deteriorating environment. The countries that survived have joined together to form the Greater Unified Nations and turned their eyes skyward...to space.
Edge Maverick and his childhood friend Reimi Saionji are chosen as pioneer members of the Space Reconnaissance Force, which was created to seek out new worlds beyond the stars. Their ship, the Calnus, takes its place on the lunar launch pad along with four other starships of the first reconnaissance fleet. These ships humanitys last hope blast off one-by-one and sail into the awaiting wormhole that leads to the vast star ocean.
And so, Edge and his crew begin their voyage in search of a new haven for humanity...and a second chance. - Combines sci-fi and fantasy elements, spanning multiple planets and the vastness of space itself to recount the origins of the STAR OCEAN universe
- Item creation and Private Actions, two hallmarks of the STAR OCEAN franchise, also make their return, allowing for players to enjoy upgraded versions of both systems
- Exhilarating combat expands upon the franchise's dynamic real-time battle system, now featuring amazing graphics through Blu-ray Disc
- Up to four characters can take part in battles simultaneously and party members can be switched mid-battle
- New Blindside battle system fuses eva
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| Customer Reviews:
 Top marks for battles, as for everything else...? June 14, 2010
Gunny (UK)
Star Ocean 3 was one of the highlights for PS2 RPGs for me. Although having a poor storyline, it was fast, fluid, had some cool characters and a nice learning curve with hundreds of hours of gameplay.
Some would say that this game is sort of similar. The gameplay is certainly polished, and there is a typically 'Star Ocean' colourful cast of characters. The story is pretty lackluster, and I (and i'm sure you would) find 'liking' most of the cast quite difficult with some characters ranging from rock-bottom depressing to listen to, and others having such unbelievably annoying voices that you'll be muting the screen every few minutes.. >_>
...that said, there are many comic relief areas in the game and it feels far more lighthearted overall than the heavy seriousness of some of the dialogue in other Star Oceans.
The battle system is this games main seller. Nine playable characters, each with individual abilities and styles - some that are more 'beginner friendly' than others. There are four difficulty options to be played/unlocked. The harder it is, the more damage enemies give and the longer it takes to kill them. Your choices are: fight close range, long distance archery, magic, or using Blindsides.
"What are Blindsides?"
This is the new aspect of Star Ocean. In a 'Dragon Ball Z' fasheeon, your character will squat down when holding down the 'O' button. After about a second, you are a ready to blindside. What this means is, when an enemy is targeting you, you have the opportunity to dodge the attack, run behind them, and maul them from behind. This not only whacks out the damage, but also looks stunning! In different situations, blindsides can either save your neck or send you to your doom.
If you hold down 'O' for to long, your character gets so tense that they seize up and become temporarily stunned, leaving you wide open for a bruising. Blindside the 'wrong attack' (if you're being targeted with red crosshairs rather than flashing ones) and your enemy will spot your attempt, counter your attack and make you look like a complete idiot. Fun, fun, fun. In addition to blindsides, there's the old favorite, the bonus board.
"What is the bonus board?"
Fourteen blank tiles on the right of the screen allow for aiding your battles/training. Similar to the last game, there are a number of benefits you can recieve, however, in SO4 you have to meet very specific requirements in battle to get these rewards:
+ %Experience
+ %Fol (currency)
+ %HP/MP resoration
+ SP (points for raising abilities)
These are the two most important new additions to battles. The only other thing to point out is the sheer amount of things to do. I would personally say there is too much. There are 100 battle trophies (not to be confused with PSN trophies, but they do link) PER CHARACTER! So that's 900 battle trophies to collect O_o
Some are rediculously mundane and show no respect for you, the gamer, whatsoever. For example 'stay airborn for 60minutes' or 'run x number of km in battle'. I don't know what the designers have hoped to achieve by putting things like this in... Okay, some might argue that gaming in general has a 'pointless' quality to it, but for those of us who are playing for enjoyment... well, do you think jumping up and down in battle for over an hour is fun? This is why the game sort of falls flat. There are far too many 'pointless' tasks outside and inside of battle. It's as if they are trying to detract us from the poorly concieved story by giving us brain-numbingly boring tasks to sap our brain cells.
Sorry to leave this review on a low, but it has just hit me how badly some aspects of this game treat the player. So as a summary:
Battle System = excellent and fun.
Everything else = pretty much an abhoration.
A decent JRPG overlooked by other recent RPGs June 11, 2010
Russtafarian (London, UK)
Okay, so if you mentioned RPG, you instantly think of Final Fantasy, or maybe Dragon Quest.
This Star Ocean isn't actually produced by Square Enix, but Tri-ace, and just had funding and what-have-you given by SqEnix.
Star Ocean has actually been going on since the days of the original Playstation. (Take a look, the very "first" game will set you back about £100 quid if you want it.) There's also been releases on the PS2 and the PSP. This is the first release on the PS3, which is a revamp/update of an Xbox360 game.
This is also a kind-of reboot for the series. It's a prequel to the whole series, so if it sells well, I'd be expecting a future PS3/Xbox360 release in future.
I've never actually played any other Star Ocean game, so I can't give you a history lesson or comparison to game mechanics.
The plot is pretty average, but enjoyable. You spend way too much time on Roak considering you're supposed to travel space to find new planets and civilisations!
Gameplay is pretty good - the fighting style takes a bit of getting used to compared to traditional RPG gaming. It's more of a cross between FFXII and FFXIII. The fighting is fun, but gets repetitive. The blindside aspect is good, but not ground-breaking.
When level grinding, it gets stale, but some of you out there might enjoy that.
Monsters get a repetitive. There's a lack of invention: a change of name and colour is lazy. But there are plenty of creatures to dispose of.
There's plenty of characters to use, whose fighting style differs from one another.
Characters can level up to something ridiculous, like 200. This is really only essential if you want to achieve the stuff AFTER completing the game, which is kinda pointless seeing as there's no plot involved.
The side-quests aren't bad, but these also get repetitive. The Battle Coleseum is a nice addition, but even though there's only 100 rounds, in order to face the final boss you need to go about 200 fights to face him. This is pointless... I didn't get all the way to Number 2 to not be able to fight you. (That's bad game planning by the developer!)
Graphically it does look pretty amazing, but bare in mind it is actually a couple of years old. It's not as slick as FFXIII.
Overall, despite the short plot, there's plenty of stuff to do, such as obtaining 100% analysis for all monsters and gaining battle trophies. PS3 trophy whores will be going at it for ages, as trophies really must be earned. But, some of the tasks aren't enjoyable, many are.
There's not exactly a lot of replay value, with two pointless harder difficulty levels available after first completion.
Although, after you complete the game, there's a hidden dungeon and secret bosses to defeat. But, it doesn't progress the story further. (It's literally for the hardcore among you who love playing fight after fight after fight... Yawn!)
If anything, when you play - do turn on Japanese voice acting - the English acting is pretty horrid, while the actual voices of Lymle and Sarah are painfully awful. At least in Japanese, you may not be able to tell what bad voice acting is!
This whole review sounds like a rant. It's actually an enjoyable game flawed by a lack of finess. But it's not expensive, and will take up hours of your time... so it's a pretty decent purchase. Do buy the game guide if you want to do every single thing!
Attention aux livraisons sans recommandé June 2, 2010
Fefeder (France)
Point négatif : Livraison rapide mais pas de recommandé ! (chez Gzoop)
En plus sur l'enveloppe était déclaré "Software and informatic material" (obligation légale pour les douanes, je pense) mais cela incite le vol du courrier par les facteurs mal-intentionnés de la poste !
J'ai eu de la chance, pour ma part je l'ai reçu, mais je ne sais pas si je reprendrai le risque !
People Who like and Know the series will get more from It May 9, 2010
A. Vincent
Star Ocean is a series that has been around for years and while I'm not a big fan of the series, I heard good things about Star Ocean The Last Hope -International-. First thing that is blindingly obvious that is wrong with the game is the English Voice acting. It's Horrible, I highly recommend switching to Japanese voices with English subtitles. There are other minor things like camera angles and the difficulty tends to spike at times.
The best thing about the game has to be the battle system, its not a turn based system but a real-time action system. Attacks and skills can be pulled of effortlessly and a simple dodge can turn the battle around, its very in-depth. Though powering up skills could be refined more from the get go you can power up a character suited to how you fight and later, when you have enough characters, the perfect team.
Highly recommended if you enjoy RPG's, It has a story good enough to keep you playing and a must for fans of the series.
A vast and exciting, but flawed JRPG April 15, 2010
Mr. Ja Vaughan (London)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
If you've played a Star Ocean game before, you've no doubt bought this game, completed it and are now attempted to obtain the 900 battle trophies.
This review however, is aimed at people new to the series. This game is by no means perfect, it has some pretty serious flaws, but if the linearity of FFXIII doesn't really appeal to you, then this might well do.
I've broken down my review into sections about the game to make it easier to pick out whats important.
Story:
Following WWIII man sets off to the stars in order to find suitable second earth to migrate to. This goes awry with the discovery of the Grigori who are hell bent on destroying the universe and as a group of steriotypical JRPG heroes (teenagers) its up to you to stop them.
The story is delivered through distinct cut scene segments in between dungeons or exploration. The story may sound stale and reused, but it has enough plot twists and hooks to keep you interested enough to press on.
Characters:
The hero (edge), his childhood friend (Reimi) and the enigmatic and quiet third character (Faize). So business as usual. However, the supporting cast are much more interesting; A cyborg scientist, the cat girl and the lady who decided the best form of armour is a bikini. Each character has enough of a back story that you empathise with them and (with the exception of Lymle) all of the characters are completely tolerable and overall make a very good bunch of space heroes.
Battle System (Gameplay):
The battle system is where this game truly excell, IMO far better than FFXIII, its all in real time and you control one of your four battle party (you can change both the character you play as and your battle party on the fly), this means that if you run into a difficult boss, where you need more support characters you can change them in and modify your tactics (as opposed to FFXIII's "retry" system). The combat is pretty fast paced and the difficulty through the main game is largely linear with a few slight jumps up. Each character can assign special attacks to the shoulder buttons, with up to three in a combo on each allowing for huge damage combos. With the rush gauge, blindside, rush combos, killer moves and variety of character play styles its impossible to get bored of combat; I'm 150 hours in and still love each battle.
outside of battles are the cities, dungeons and map sections. At cities you can buy new armour, weapons, rest etc. there are also LOADS of side quests: shop orders and other quests, ranging from fetch quests to synthesis to additional dungeons and with 201 quests in the game theres loads to keep you entertained. If this isn't quite enough, there is always item creation, which is streamlined and easy to master, just develop recipies using party members, find the components needed and your away.
Graphics:
The game is no doubt inspired by anime, the character models have big eyes and some interesting hair colours, but are very good. the textures are also very good, there are a few hit and miss textures earlier in the game, but overall the graphics are very good, especially as this game was first released in Feb 2009. the in game cut scenes are also well animated, although the majority are in game rendered as opposed to FMV (full motion video), although these do occur occasionally and are of a very high quality.
Sound:
The music in the game is varied, from rock-y dungeon music to more subdued music for villages. It fits with the scenery and adds a nice atmosphere to the game. But then.. the voice acting... I warn you now, that the voice acting from Lymle and to a lesser extent Sarah, is pretty dire, kay? If Lymle's repeated use of the word "Kay?" doesn't make you change to the japanese dub or at least tuen the volume down i don't know what will xD thankfully, the rest of the casts voice acting is solid.
So, in conclusion, I really do recommend this game, yes some of the voices are terrible, and the story is a bit bland, but this game excels where it matters, in the game play and content. This game is great for the casual player as the main game can be completed with minimal grinding/ side quests/ item synthesis, but its also great for people who want collectables and tons of side content. With the quality where it matters and enough material for a playthrough to be anywhere between 60-150 hours this game really caters for everyone. If your bored of linear RPGs were the game play seems largely superficial and a means of telling a story then you should buy this game. :)
Story: 8/10
Characters: 8/10
Game Play: 10/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound:7/10
For the fans/ Hardcore:
Post Game:
Aside from all of the quests/ IC etc, post game there are the two additional dungeons (Cave of the seven stars & Wandering dungeon), COTSS is a gentle introduction to what can be expected post game: brutal boss fights and the overpowered equipment. Gabriel Celeste and Etherial queen also make appearances :P Wandering dungeon is truly for the hardcore, with 20 levels of randomly generated dungeon, with a boss every 2 floors and Etherial queen on the 20th it is truly formiddable (luckity Santa has set up shop in the dungeon with the usual overpriced wears like tri-emblems). The best IC gear also requires you to kill both GC and EQ 5 times to get the feathers required for the best gear.
Trophies:
DO NOT buy this game if you expect to platinum it in 50 hours, with 900 battle trophies to get, every item to synth, every chest to open and every quest to complete a platinum will take 400 hours+. But its an accolade if you get it :P
Post Game Content: 10/10
Trophy difficulty 10/10
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