Things I dislike about Star Ocean: The Last Hope

  1. Difficulty spikes. One area you're winning battles with your eyes closed, the next all enemies have 6 times as much health and do loads of damage.
  2. Lymle. She looks and behaves like a particularly bratty 6 year old yet is supposed to be 15. She talks in a droning monotone which could bore the hind leg off an elephant. She says "'kay" at least once per sentence, 'kay, sometimes more, 'kay. She's rubbish in battles. She's nasty towards one of the few tolerable characters for no reason and we're supposed to find this cute.
  3. The way the AI targets whatever character I'm using in battle 95% of the time.
  4. Lymle.
  5. The way most enemies now have attacks which stun lock my character until I've lost half my health.
  6. The ridiculously low limit on stackable items in your inventory. 20 of each. 20 where most games allow 99. 20 - so I'm constantly having to throw away perfectly good items in order to open treasure chests. Which links to below:
  7. The way you cannot open a treasure chest if your inventory is full of one of the items it contains.
  8. Lymle.
  9. Bosses where you cannot tell how much damage you are doing or if you are damaging them at all until they drop dead.
  10. The way the camera is set too low, around waist level instead of shoulder level.
  11. The way moving the camera up so you can see where you are going also zooms it out so you can't see anything.
  12. The way Edge runs so slowly when in large areas.
  13. The fact that they expect you to hammer X in order to make Edge dash when on the world map. The way dashing makes me feel motion sick, and makes Edge hard to control.
  14. Lymle.
  15. The way Edge is so clumsy to move. Analogue controls my right foot; it feels like I'm using a D-pad style set up. Either you're stationary or you are running. You won't move at all if Edge can't take a full step. If you're in a smaller area Edge will walk - slowly. Very slowly. Unless you push a button to make him run. Why?! What happened to pushing the stick further to move faster? And why is lining up to open chests one of the hardest things in the game?
  16. The long cutscenes where characters repeat what other characters have already said. You mean that they repeat things that characters have already said? Yes, they do repeat things that characters have already said.
  17. The fact Edge fell for the world's most obvious trap and now will not stop moping, whining and being emo about it.
  18. Lymle.
  19. The fact that the game keeps on making areas and quests permanently inaccessable with no warning. If you don't follow a guide you're stuffed.
  20. The fact that the next area wants me to ride on giant pink bunny rabbits without thinking this strange and/or twee.
  21. Needing to run across massive areas in order to get back to my ship to do item creation, only to then run all the way back in order to hand the item over to a quest giver.
  22. Lymle.
  23. The way the battles seem to be expecting me to let my party use skills and spells all of the time, when either they do less damage than my ordinary attacks or cost so much I run out of MP and MP refill items.
  24. The fact that every now and then it's good so I never feel able to shelve it as a bad game and walk away!!


I'm about halfway through the story now. It's taken me 3 months to put in the 23 1/2 hours.