Star Ocean: The Last Hope is first

I'm going to see if I can remember the game from a year ago.

Story 3.5/5
World War III destroys the living conditions on Earth, leaving the survivors to find a new planet to live on by traversing into outer space. A new organization is created dedicating itself to space explorations and research. As part of the space fleet, Eeedji-kun and Reimi venture into space on their first mission only to be disrupted by an unexpected meteor which forces them to emergency warp out from their travel course. They crash land on a monster-infested planet and create a new team to continue on the main mission while the old team stays behind to figure out what exactly happened. They find and destroy planets, combat diseases, and answer a number of questions from the Star Ocean series.

As the prequel, things surprisingly made sense. There were some recurring themes that linked with the other stories. I still question the last boss though. The biggest wtf was definitely [spoiler] the space dragon!! [/spoiler]

Characters 3/5
Everyone's so lawl about this. This game's the greatest generic stereotype library: we've got the happy-go-lucky protagonist who turns emo at some point, the cute childhood friend who gets jealous easily, the orderly one, the loli, the father figure, the megane airhead/kultz, the cat fetish, the boobs, and the goth. They covered most of their bases.

Personality-wise, I don't think there's a character I particularly loved (although I suppose Reimi scores pretty high) but I can definitely tell you my most hated character was Meracle. Eleyna, who was just a side character, might've been even more interesting than the main cast. Playability-wise, I enjoyed using Edge, Reimi, and Lymle.

Oh and wtf happened to Welch? Welch in her early days or not, she's no pink-haired ditz. Super disappointment. :(

Sound 3/5
More yays for the international version. Fortunately I avoided the English voices completely so my game was graced by the voices of Kishio Daisuke (Edge), Sawashiro Miyuki (Lymle) and Saiga Mitsuki's (Faize). The unfortunate part is that their voice actors couldn't make up for their in-game counterparts.

Sakuraba Motoi's music style really shone through in the battle tracks. Can't say much for the other stuff though.

Graphics 4/5
Pretty decent looking game with blinding lightning effects. The glassy doll eyes are really creepy at first. Like Magna Carta 2 but they actually stare straight at you as opposed to looking away.

PS3 wins with 2D character profiles.

Gameplay 4.5/5
4 brings back all the classic gameplay features from the other games - crafting, real-time battles, private actions - and adds blindsiding (going behind the enemy), battle bonuses (wait were there bonuses in 3?), and a special attack gauge (Rush Mode - a la Tales' Hi-Ougi). Rush mode is one of the more exciting parts of the gameplay since it can be super cheap if used correctly.

Swapping characters mid-battle is a great added feature. If you're so dying to the point that it's hopeless during the ass-pain that is the second optional dungeon, the Wandering Dungeon, then this is the function to use to your advantage stat.

Overall 4/5
Speaking of the Wandering Dungeon, gee-zeus it's so tedious so no I didn't kill the hardest boss in the game although the Seven Star Dungeon was deliciously fun and entertaining.

With a passable story, not so desirable characters but excellent gameplay, the game is still worth many, many hours of gaming dedication. Just remember this game is Japanese so playing with Japanese voice overs will help those strangely awkward moments.