Nearly a year after the release of Star Ocean: The Last Hope on the Xbox 360, along comes the PS3 version with a fancy new International suffix to boot. The PS3 version doesn’t offer any huge changes but it does offer up new audio tracks in the form of Japanese voice acting. Anyone who’s suffered the English dub available in the Xbox 360 version will greatly appreciate this. But just how has Star Ocean: The Last Hope aged? It’s a mixed bag of fun but with a harsh old fashioned JRPG exterior making it unwieldy for those used to the newer, friendlier RPGs that are now on the scene. Think of Star Ocean: The Last Hope as Final Fantasy XIII’s antithesis in terms of accessibility.

The Star Ocean series has always been unashamedly Japanese with very little sign of diluting the cultural effects in order to be more popular in the West. This is both a blessing and a curse with The Last Hope. The characters are quaintly Japanese in nature so it’s great to see that finally players can hear the Japanese voice acting. Despite my lack of understanding I could still appreciate the emotion conveyed through the original voice acting. It matches with the mannerisms of the characters so much more effectively than witnessed in the Xbox 360 version and really adds to the story of the game. Having said that, players need to have an appreciation of Japanese storytelling and anime to really get it otherwise it’ll just seem irritating and overly long.

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