The Last Hope does have some visual flair however. It's a pretty, shimmering sort of game that's almost oversaturated with colour. Both the locations and characters are endowed with an impressive amount of detail, and the game's aesthetic as a whole is bright and distinct. Unfortunately it can be guilty of some significant frame rate drops when attacking multiple units in battle. The camera in the field can also be troublesome. In wide open areas it's perfectly fine; you can pan out to a distance or pull in close to Edge as he traverses the landscape. Get yourself in a smaller area with corridors and rooms however and it's a completely different story. Entering and exiting rooms seems to really confuse the camera, not knowing whether to be in or outside of the room you're entering or exiting.
They're just chillin', watchin' Discovery Channel.
The Last Hope's battle system is quite strong. All combat is in real time within a large arena that launches when you touch an enemy in the field. Chasing them down will give you the attacking advantage, and likewise being chased down by them gives the enemy that advantage. There are a maximum of four members to a party and you can switch between them at any time with a touch of the bumper buttons. Whoever you aren't controlling will act according to one of a small number of very basic strategies, such as attacking with everything, attacking without MP use, or holding back. While these are sufficient in terms of attack they're useless for defence. Particularly irksome is that there's no strategic option dedicated to healing, made even more so by the fact that the AI just doesn't have the good sense to heal themselves most of the time.
The A button dispenses regular attacks, with special attacks assigned to the left and right triggers. Pressing Y pauses the fight and brings up a wheel menu from which to select other abilities and items. The targeting system does a reasonable job. Facing an enemy will cause a loose auto-lock which can be confirmed with a press of the analogue stick, though the auto-lock can be messy and unreliable. When an enemy targets you you'll be surrounded with a yellow reticule. That's about the time you should be pressing the B button, which prompts a semi-helpful dodge. However, holding down B will make the party member stand their ground and charge up. Releasing the button at the right time results in a Blindside, which puts the party member behind the vulnerable enemy and gives you a good chance at a critical hit. Finally there's Rush mode, which charges as you deal out and receive damage. When it reaches 100 it can be activated with X and gives your character a temporary boost in power and defence. Your enemies also have their own Rush bars for you to keep an eye on.
Feeling blue? OH SNAP.
The repetition of battling is softened by the fact that everyone seems to level up rather quickly. In addition to the regular levels characters also level up something called a BEAT status, one of three classes that earn development bonuses according to the fighting style of the character. It seems that in every second or third fight somebody is either levelling up or gaining a BEAT status level and so the player is rewarded with a consistent, albeit manufactured, sense of progression. The Bonus Board is the game's sole but rather good piece of innovation. It's an assortment of tiles that starts out empty but can be filled with different coloured gems for doing certain things in a battle. For instance, by killing an enemy using only special attacks you'll gain a pink gem on the board. At the end of the battle, that pink gem will restore one per cent of your current HP and MP. If you collect more, your bonus will be higher. Experience bonuses can be obtained by executing critical hits (most easily achieved with a Blindside attack), which exacerbates the joy of fast levelling even more. Other bonuses include additional money for winning fights and additional SP points, which go towards juicing up abilities. Importantly though, your bonuses can be cruelly torn away from you. If an enemy gets a critical hit on you the board will break, and you will lose some or even all of your hard-earned bonus gems, leaving you to refill the board all over again.
The game's story is passable; Maverick is an ambitious space pilot, and when the ship of his rival Crowe goes missing, he and his crew go searching for it, uncovering a galactic conspiracy along the way. It's sort of like Mass Effect, JRPG style. Some of the dialogue is adequate, some of it is just bizarre. Before one particular boss battle the usually cool-headed Edge is struck with a sudden bout of mania, screaming 'Why?! Why does this always happen to us?! DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!' After the fight he's back to normal. The other particularly bad thing about the dialogue is that it's entirely lacking in subtlety and often goes in circles. Case in point, far from verbatim but faithful to the gist of one particular scene:
Character 1: This ship is going to explode.
Character 2: The ship is going to explode?
Character 3: It seems so.
Character 4: But if the ship explodes... we'll die!
Character 1: We will die if the ship explodes.
Character 2: We have to get off the ship before it explodes!
Character 3: Wait, what happens if we don't?
Character 4: We'll die!
Character 1: 'Okay, just so I've got this straight...'
Whenever some kind of plot point develops you're dragged through the same horrible sequence of reinforcement and repetition, the player not trusted to comprehend even the most basic plot point. The voice acting is also a mixed bag. There's unfortunately no Japanese dub and the lip synching is terrible. Characters like Edge and Reimi are fine, if overly earnest. However, the voice of Welch will break any surrounding glass, and Lymle's 'Kaaaaaaaaaay?' at the end of every sentence (regardless of context) will cause internal bleeding due to pure hatred. The music is competent orchestral fare, doing nothing in particular to annoy or to inspire.
An important point: if you don't like cutscenes, you won't like this game. There's a lot of them. Some are long, and not entirely interesting (though always pretty). Whenever you're moving between planets you can bond with your crew via Personal Actions, which is really just initiating a light-hearted cutscene, sometimes with a choice that can increase Edge's affinity with other characters. Some of them are genuinely amusing, and some of them are genuinely creepy. The little girl character wants to have 'nappy' time with Edge? Let's just back away slowly, now…
'Erm, I'm not sure this is ethically sound...'
At least there's plenty to do over the game's three discs. It's a completionist's dream, with all variety of encyclopaedic galleries and information that's begging to be filled out. There are jillions of fetch quests if you're into that sort of thing, and each character is loaded with the intimidating challenge to obtain each of their one hundred individualized battle trophies.
What this game has going for it are some appealing visuals and a quite decent battle system. Its flaws are contained to small niggles and annoyances that collectively bring it down a notch or two on the ladder. In the end though, The Last Hope is sturdy, competent, and does all the things an RPG is supposed to do.
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