What is Star Ocean: The Last Hope?

A prequel about the first starship out, made for the one console the series had never touched.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the fourth main game, developed by tri-Ace and published by Square Enix. Announced without a platform at the 2007 Square Enix Party and revealed as an Xbox 360 title in 2008, during Microsoft’s push to bring Japanese RPGs to the system, it launched in Japan on February 19, 2009 and in North America four days later. It is a prequel to the whole series, set in S.D. 10, in the aftermath of a World War III that has made Earth unlivable.

The story follows Edge Maverick and Reimi Saionji, young officers of the Space Reconnaissance Force, aboard one of humanity’s first warp-capable ships, the Calnus, hunting for a new home world and running into a threat called the Grigori. Character designs are by Katsumi Enami, and the cutscenes were produced with Square Enix’s Visual Works studio. It is the most science-fiction-forward game in the series, and for many Western players of its generation it was the first Star Ocean they could buy.

THE TWO EDITIONS

360 original · International on PS3

The Xbox 360 original, 2009

The launch version spread across three discs, with CG-rendered character portraits in its menus and English voice acting only in the West. The disc-swapping and the dub were the two complaints that followed it everywhere.

International, February 2010

The PlayStation 3 edition arrived a year later on a single Blu-ray and answered both complaints: Japanese and English voices, six subtitle languages, and the option to switch the menus to the original illustrated character portraits. It is the edition most players now treat as standard.

The 4K remaster, 2017

Star Ocean: The Last Hope 4K & Full HD Remaster brought the International edition to PlayStation 4 and Steam in November 2017, the version still on sale today.

The end of an era

Series producer Yoshinori Yamagishi, who had overseen Star Ocean since the Enix years, said after this game that he would rather make something new than remakes, and later that he was finished with the series. Star Ocean would not return for seven years, under a new producer.

ITS PLACE IN THE SERIES

The far end of the timeline

First contact, told first

As S.D. 10, The Last Hope predates the original game by more than three centuries of story time. The Calnus name, the Federation and the underdeveloped-planet rules that govern the later games all begin here, as deliberate origin stories.

A divisive favourite

Its combat is regularly praised as among the series’ deepest, built on blindside attacks and board-style bonus systems, while its story and dub became forum shorthand for mid-2000s excess. Both reputations are documented facts of its reception, and both are why it still gets argued about.

Integrity and Faithlessness Star Ocean in English

What is Star Ocean: The Last Hope?

THE TWO EDITIONS

ITS PLACE IN THE SERIES

THE FIRST WORD