My review of Star Ocean: The Last Hope is up on SciFiWire.com. One of the cool things about my game review gig is that I get to try out games that I'm curious about, but wouldn't necessarily run out and buy. Star Ocean is one of those. It's a Japanese role-playing game with all your standard JRPG tropes (teenage crew out to save the galaxy, obnoxiously cute child prodigies, half hour long cut scenes). I play the occasional JRPG game, Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, etc., but I normally stick to the American-style games like Mass Effect.

I'm glad I branched out. While I can't say that Star Ocean breaks any radical new ground for the genre, it was a fine space opera-style game that evoked the good ol'days of Star Blazers and Robotech (though admittedly it's got far too much fantasy influence to to be a pure space opera like those TV series were). I look forward to getting back into it someday soon.