It's no wonder that the final part of the game is all in disc 3. The final dungeon is actually pretty straightfoward, despite it being huge, but the amount of cutscenes and their overall duration is just insane.
If I count the 2 hours that it took me to cross the entire dungeon and even the other massive boss fights (because if you're not careful, you'll run into bosses from the previous dungeons, but they aren't as tough), I would say that the other two hours is just me looking at cutscenes.
Not that they were bad or unwatchable(Lord knows there are a lot of cheesy moments within), but it really feels too long. Think of a Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King type of ending that just seems to go on and on...([spoiler] Though the comparisons to Lord of the Rings are spot-on, because when you think about it, the primary antagonists(the Grigori) in the game are something of an abstract entity. When you look at it through Judeo-Christian tones, you'll notice that every major enemy in the game refers itself as "We are the one who is all", it feels like a take on "I am legion, for we are many."[/spoiler] And oddly enough, they are the only cutscenes that you cannot skip, nor the end credits.
Nevertheless, it was a fun and memorable ride. It's not quite Tales of Vesperia-calibur but it's almost up there.
Like I said before, clearly Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the first RPG, nay, the first SquareEnix game in which I had actual fun. I didn't feel like the game was throwing a wrench into my fun factor, but make no mistake, it's not an easy game despite playing it on the lowest difficult. The dungeons, like I said before are a chore to get through, which is stunning when you consider that the game barely has any puzzle, but also a lot of boss fights in particular are tough, because, first, there's no disceranble way to see their life bars. Because when you start plowing the baddies, all you get is how much damage you dish out, but you don't get a sense of how much punishment you're dolling out and the monsters just keep acting the same way, doing their own thing over and over again, with no discernable way of knowing that the monster is dying or something along those lines. A lot of times, I'm actually stunned to see that the boss died because I'm still the same type of attacks and it looks the same.
But nevertheless, despite these issues, it is an awesome game. I would recommend gamers and JRPGs fans to track this one down before the copies vanish.
