YMMV / Star Ocean: The Last Hope

• Ass Pull: Meracle just happens to have the Unobtanium necessary for the crew to escape the alternate Earth with no mention or foreshadowing right up until the very moment.
• Character Perception Evolution: Reimi was widely accused of Wangst when the game was first released because she disliked being immune to all disease. Over time, she has come to be viewed more sympathetically as more players paid attention to her Survivor's Guilt and noticed that her bout of Stone Sickness came with an adjustment period and the horrifying implications that had for the radiation poisoning incident.
• Contested Sequel: Is this game a step up from Star Ocean 3 in terms of gameplay and story with no pointless and convoluted plot twist? Or is it a complete disaster with horrendous and unlikable characters and worse voice acting than the PS1 games?
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Arumat is quite well-liked despite his minimal screen time.
• Faux Symbolism: The Grigori have an angel motif going on: They're all named after fallen angels from the book of Enoch (who were also called the Grigori), the energy they emit as they transform takes the shape of an angel, and the transformed Grigori all have wings, or a wing of some kind. The angel motif culminates with the final boss Satanail, the Grigori with the most angelic appearance. This doesn't get elaborated on at any point in the game, which makes the symbolism seem faux. However, Fridge Brilliance sets in when you take into account the nature of the Missing Procedure, the entity that created the Grigori and the Phantoms. While it's described as a phenomenon resembling a black hole, it's also described as a "will" that's acting towards a specific end, implying that it has some kind of sentience. As a powerful, esoteric entity that created beings themed around angels and whose activities will result in the destruction of the universe if left unchecked, the Missing Procedure is effectively a science fiction interpretation of an evil god that aims to create a new universe by destroying the current one, with its Grigori creations sci-fi takes on fallen angels that carry out the will of their evil god by tempting mortals to sin. The Faux Symbolism with the Grigori might not be so faux after all.
• Fridge Brilliance: The attempt at an awesome name for Edge Maverick can technically follow the same logic as Fayt Leingod, given that Fayt's game had the revelation of the Star Ocean universe being a massive MMO. Their names fit right in as NPCs named by developers trying too hard to be cool.
• Game-Breaker: Has its own page.
• Goddamned Boss: The fifth Grigori boss (Armaros Manifest), like the others, has a ton of health points and can only be properly damaged trough its weak point. The problem is that said weak point can only be attacked when blindsided, which only lasts for a few seconds. Occasionally, the boss will summon five silence-inflicting minions to help, dragging on the battle. As Armaros loses HP, it will call them more often.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Your default team name for the Arena is "Ocean's Eight". This is an obvious nod to the film/series Ocean's Eleven. In 2018, the Ocean's spinoff Ocean's 8 would be released in earnest.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Lymle's infamous Verbal Tic "Kay".
  • Edge Maverick's full name, due to how ridiculous it is.
• Narm:
  • The scene after the alternate Earth is destroyed, in part, due to Edge's actions. The scene is supposed to be extremely sad and depressing, triggering Edge's Heroic BSoD, but due to the cheesy voice acting and him generally being a Large Ham, it comes off as unintentionally hilarious.
    Edge: *slams both hands on the control panel* Oh yeah? You know how it could've been prevented?! If I hadn't started it in the first place! DON'T TRY TO CONSOLE ME, DAMMIT!! Who cares if it wasn't our Earth? It doesn't even matter... It's gone, either way... Don't you get it? It's all gone forever. My bad judgement put those people over the edge! The Earth was annihilated! Every last speck! Everything!! EVERYTHING!! People! Children! Animals! Towns and houses and everything! Everything! Everything! Everything! Everything! EVERYTHING!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
  • His name alone is this. Edge Maverick.
  • Lymle's English voice acting can cause particularly sad scenes to have no real impact whatsoever. An early example? Her grandfather's death.
• Never Live It Down: The game's voice acting. It isn't perfect, but there are still some solid performances by actors like Jason Liebrecht as Faize, Matthew Mercer as Edge and Kyle Hebert as both Arumat and Crowe, but very few people acknowledge any of the voice acting as anything but bad. Especially notable given how many of the voice actors would become some of the prolific voice actors in the industry, or at least already were.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: General consensus is that while the story and characters are rather lackluster, the gameplay itself is solid.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The bonus board gets some dislike because it gets wiped every time you end a particular playthrough and load a savefile. Sure, this is specifically designed to prevent Save Scumming, but surely there could have been at least a little leeway that could have been programmed in (e.g. allowing you the choice to keep it if it's been an hour or more since your last save, or something like that)?
• Spiritual Adaptation: To Neon Genesis Evangelion (minus the giant robots). Both works have alien eldritch abominations named after angels whose goal is to wipe out all life as primary antagonists, and the backstory involves an apocalyptic event that severely altered the planet and put the future of the human race in jeopardy, with the powers of the world uniting and taking special measures to ensure humanity's survival. Finally, some of the main characters are "special" youngsters that are specifically chosen to perform a task upon with the fate of humanity rests.
• That One Level: The Cardianon Mothership. Sure, you get Bachus, but the area is hard to look at, the camera hates you and once you get to the force field area, it becomes a LARGER pain in the ass to navigate through. Add to that several large enemies that can stun lock you, break your bonus board and a general lack of breathing room, it becomes a major slog very quickly.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: One of the first major plot points is Edge and crew accidentally traveling to an alternate-reality 1950s Earth. The potential opportunities and consequences of this story arc could have been profound - the reality of dimensional travel, exploration of history, and a whole heap of ethical, scientific, and practical concerns - especially after Edge is indirectly responsible for destroying alternate-Earth and the entire human race thanks to his naivete. It really could have fueled an entire game's plot all by itself, or at least provided some powerful character development. Instead, our heroes (plus one party member) return to their own dimension and resume their mission, and the only lasting effect is Edge being a mopey jerk with confidence issues throughout the next major plot arc. Once he's back to normal, the whole alternate Earth might as well never have happened.
• Wangst: Edge's breakdown after the alternate Earth arc, while somewhat understandable, is very over-the-top. Furthermore, what followed was Edge being generally unhelpful and acting like a jerk throughout the Roak arc of the game. As a result, many players got rather irritated at Edge with some labeling that phase of his character as "Emo Edge".
• The Woobie: Poor Faize. He meets a girl on Roak who is part of a shepherd tribe and it's implied that they get mutual crushes on each other. But at the end of the arc, just as the party is celebrating that they saved Sarah from being sacrificed, Faize finds the bodies of the girl and her people at the bottom of a pit after they were sacrificed. It only gets worse as Faize watches his people die and becomes possessed by a Grigori, pushing him into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.

---