First, the Pros:

-Brilliant fighting system. The combat is very flashy yet well-balanced, and quick but clear enough so you can in fact see what type of moves you’re doing.

-Splendid level design, even better character design. Engaging environments, characters, and plenty of side quests.

-TREMENDOUS possibilities in terms of making new items, and boosting your party’s skills. Tons of weapons, armor, magic skills etc.

-No random encounters, and plenty of freedom to explore new worlds. Alacrity owing to the game, pick your battles, or just screw around in all the towns doing side quests, it’s up to you!

-Pretty engaging storyline, but requires a excellent deal of time investment to become fascinating.

Cons:

-Rather unpleasant dialogue hurts your ears occasionally.

-Limited backstory requires you to play owing to the game a small bit to truly appreciate each character’s place in the game.

-Rather long cutscenes, taking you back to the Metal Gear Solid days. Some scenes last as long as 30 min! If you do choose to skip a scene but, the game provides a quick text synopsis.

-Unpolished graphics in some areas, particularly in the cutscenes, make it look like a ps2 game.

Star Ocean: TLH is all around a splendid game that mainly has its hangups in the unpleasant dialogue and a limited backstory, but these cons don’t take too much away from the ultimate rpg experience from a game with a unique fighting stylishness and unprecedented level of freedom; dare I compare it to Grand Theft Auto freedom? The game is set in the year 2087, and has a very sci-fi feel to it, a refreshing change of pace from traditional RPGS.

The cutscenes can be quite long, but they do advance the plot by the side of just fine. The tale itself is brilliant as well, with plenty of amusing twists and turns, by the side of with more depthy elements (you’re doing not anything small of reduction the universe of course) by the side of with the colorful characters that do their part to add to it. Another cool thing about the game is that you get to control your own space ship. Confidential Actions also return; For first timers, they’re certain scenes in the game you can trigger to raise/lower affinity between certain characters, providing some pretty fascinating possibilities….

But, one MUST get over the early unpleasant dialogue and the protagonists name: Edge Maverick? Sounds like a super-hero a 4th grader would make up in his spare time. Look over these main hang-ups, and you’ve got yourself a splendid RPG guranteed to rock your social life into nothingness for at least 2 weeks!
Rating: 4 / 5

Quick pace, and the battle system is a nice change from the norm of JRPGs.

The plot is so-so.

The beginning of the game is very shallow, plot wise. Most JRPGS introduce you to the main protagonist very early, or at least give you some sense of where you’re going, even if they throw in a plot twist later. In this game, the backstory is minimal. Your brother is a captain, you’re a small jealous, and you’re going owing to a warp hole to scout a supposedly safe planet. There’s no overshadowing threat, and no matter what kicks you out of the warp hole and forces you to crash land is just glossed over. Your brother disappears in this catastrophe, but nobody in the game really seems that concerned about it. Very weird. Also, they don’t make your relationship to Reimi very clear. They hint that there may be a hidden childhood like there…but neither of them seem to pay it (or each other) any mind…

My largest complaints: If you can’t get over the TERRIBLE voice acting, you will probably not like this game. There SHOULD have been an option to use the original japanese speech with english subtitles, but there isn’t. Also, the main characters name is the cheesiest name I can remember in recent history…”Edge Maverick?” Really? The best minds a Squenix couldn’t come up with something better than “Edge Maverick?”
Rating: 3 / 5

Next on my list of disappointments is all the female characters in the game. Between the horrid voice actors, and the inability to act like a normal female its seriously irritating. Who gives a outcome a baking adult woman voice? Kay… Next is the stupid Cat character.. wtf? all i gota say kay… Whats with RPG’s not being able to design and code a normal female character personality? Although Reimi is honestly cool.

Next i get into the progressively lame boss fights… Why would you design a boss encounter to take 3 hours? You play owing to the game just fine killing the encounters with ease… then you run face first into the wall, and aren’t able to effectively end a boss. Blindsides become nearly useless, with all the bosses having aoe whirlwind type attacks, setup a blindside just to get “interrupted,” or even worse countered. Set up for this super super cool attack, just to find out your DENIED, kay…

As far as graphics are concerned? the graphics are honestly splendid, with exception of the text. for some reason the text, for example item and character screens are nearly impossible to read. blurred white lettering with a golden-haired social class? yea what ever kay..

Hopefully another decent rpg will come out for the Xbox360, For now if i need a fix I’ll go back to Lost Odyssey or Nothingness. Better graphics, better characters, less annoyance factor.
Rating: 1 / 5

There’s no option to choose the Japanese voices, even though the developers had over a GB of free space left on each DVD for them.

Just getting moving your character from point A to B is slow and painful dealing with an awkward camera, messy cutscenes, and even a sprint button that doesn’t always work when re-entering the field…

It does look splendid at 1080p, and the soundtrack sounds splendid.

But I’d highly recommend you spend your cash on “Tales of Vesperia” instead of this steaming space-age POS.

Rating: 1 / 5