# Star Ocean:(4) The Last Hope



## Zaelapolopollo (May 16, 2013)

_"Help me Generic Sword-Wielding Anime Protagonist, you're my only hope."_

Sorry, what was that? I was too busy staring at your.....kneecaps.

So about a year ago I played Till the End of Time.  If there had been no disk 1, I might have liked it more. Sadly there is a disk 1. I did not play a sci-fi JRPG to be stuck on a crappy fantasy planet. Apparently this is a common trait for all of the first three games, even 2 which seems to be the general fan favorite.

But hey, in SO4, you can actually travel to different worlds! Meet different races and cultures! It's crazy, I know, but this RPG about traveling through space mostly takes place in space.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. I started The Last Hope because I recently got a PS3 and a lot of people I talked to online said this game was crap. Now I guess you can say I have a bit of a White Knight problem - if something gets hated on enough I just get sick of all the hating. Even if it deserves it, I get tired of it eventually. And so I wanted to play this game and evaluate it myself.

I had a similar situation with Final Fantasy XIII. After i got a 360 I bought FFXIII to play. It too received a lot of harsh criticism as I'm sure everyone here is well-aware. I went into FF13 expecting to love it; to get online and say how werong everyone was.

That....did not happen. I never intend to play that game again. It wasn't so much outright bad as it was just not very fun and everything good about the game fell apart about halfway through. By Orphan's Cradle I just didn't want to ever touch the game again. I approached SO4 with a similarly sunny disposition. And this time I was rewarded. 

I loved Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It's not my favorite JRPG ever or anything but I had a ton of fun from start to finish. I would say it's pretty much better than FFXIII in almost every way except for two areas which i'll get to later.

For one thing, the plot is very fluid. You will never feel like you're just spinning y our wheels. The only time you might feel like that, it's intentional because our main hero is in a bit of a mental and mortal crisis.
There is mystery upon mystery, all starting with the meteor that caused our heroes to crash just as they're finally venturing out into space. The subsequent run-ins with a brutal alien race leads to more revelations about the meteor as well as even more mysteries. After a short narrative detour to expand on our lead's personal growth,some things are answered while new questions arise.

All-in-all the game never leaves you wanting for "what's next?" I greatly appreciate that after the entire godforsaken first disk of SO3 was irrelevant and stupid.


*Spoiler*: __ 



Leaving the exact nature of the Missing Procedure and the Grigori unexplained was an interesting move. I mentioned in my MGS2 Appreciateion thread a long time ago that fiction that leaves you with a lot to talk about with others is the best kind of fiction. SO4 certainly isn't on Sons o Liberty's level in that department but I still like that some thigns are left to our interpretation.




The cast of this game can be called a Clich Storm but not in an unpleasant way - at least not in my view. The people on SomethingAwful once dubbed FFXIII "The Biggest Anime" (using "anime" in a pejorative and stereotypical sense) but it has nothing on this game. Even still...I liked about half of the cast and the rest I was indifferent to. I ended up really liking our hero EDGE MAVERICK (how's that for a name) after a certain point in the game. He's a leader who takes the burden of leadership very seriously as he knows so many lives are resting on his shoulders.. He's young, somewhat insecure and usually gives dire situations the respct they deserve. I just can really relate to him.

*Spoiler*: __ 



The whole side-arc starting with alternate 1950s Earth was very nice I thought. Emo Edge didn't overstay his welcome and he had plenty of good reasons to be upset. It accomplished what ti set out to do - make Edge stronger as a character.




I wasn't so sold on Reimi but she still had a sweet little romance with Edge. Some of the optional scenes - "Private Actions" - you can get with her are genuinely touching. 
*Spoiler*: __ 



The best one was Edge's birthday.




Faize...I didn't care much about Faize. I didn't hate him but he never did anything for me. 
*Spoiler*: __ 



I did not predict him being the Final Boss but him ended up on the bad guy's side was pretty obvious. I thought it was a cool turn of events though. I certainly was more interested in him when he started to get unhinged.




Lymle...My fondness for Lil' Lym is probably due to me liking lolis. I won't deny it. Nevertheless I thought she was probably the third or fourth strongest character in the game from a storytelling POV. 
*Spoiler*: __ 



I certainly did not expect the inhabitants of her hometown to all die. I know the "Doomed hometown" is a cliche too but that's for the main character! I didn't count on poor Lym only joining us for good because her friends and family are all dead.





*Spoiler*: __ 



I'm not sure how I feel about her and Faize's relationship.... I definitely did not predict they were gonna go for a sort of love story between the two of them. I mostly think the relationship did more for Lymle's character than Faize's though.




Bacchus...Bacchus is the man. There's no other way to put it. He's voiced by  Travis Willingham(Roy Mustang), he has probably the coolest design of any of the party members and he has quite an interesting past for how little we hear of it. 

I'm gonna skip right now to Myuria. Together with Edge, Lym and Bacchus, she was part of my final party and those four characters are my favorite members of the cast. Next to Bacchus she had the best voice of any of the main characters. Her sassy personality complimented a pretty sad backstory and motivation that I think everyone can empathize with. 
*Spoiler*: __ 



Sure it was beyond obvious that Crowe didn't kill her husband but I still think her grieving was well-portrayed and written. Her snarky demeanor was just her way to try and distract herself from the pain.




And then there was the rest. 
Sarah was adorable but probably annoying to everyone else.
 Arumat arrived way too damn late for me to possibly care about him. Plus the writers tried way way too hard to make him seem "badass." As someone else put it, it's almost a parody.
and Meracle...well, Meracle had potential but I don't think they used her enough. She ends up feeling like the developers just had a check list of archetypes they had to shove in the game and Cat Girl was one of them.

I think I'll bring up one area I prefer 13 now. It's the voice-acting. If I had to rank the two English dubs, I'd give SO4 a C+ and XIII an A-. The dubbing in this game gets an undeserved amount of hate but it still has some pretty bad parts.

I wonder what the dubbing budget was like. Laura Bailey had a couple big roles as did Hebert and I'm pretty sure I heard Michael McConnohie around 3 or 4 times in the game. (then again he's often cast for two roles in the same series...dunno why)

While we're on an audio topic, let's talk music. That is the second area I prefer XIII. Oh, don't get me wrong, SO4's OST is quite good. It just doesn't have quite the number of sandout tracks like XIII does.

If I had to list my favorite pieces of music from the game...

I Do, Therefore I An It's fortunate that this track is so awesome because you'll be hearing it for a long time. I know I heard it for a good 20-30 minutes at least when fighting a couple bosses. And i was playing on the Earth (Easy) difficulty. I actually did a lot better at this game than i did with SO3 so I might try a Galaxy (Normal) run.

Brilliant Rose Quite a unique choice for final dungeon music. The Palace of Creation was amazingly short too which is also surprising. Anyway, this tune isn't very ominous or creepy but it fits the rather bright and vibrant POC. Overall the dungeon and dungeon music were both very different but very good.

For Achieve This is apparently a remix of an earlier SO game song. It is by far the best battle theme in the game and it makes even the 1,000th normal battle seem awesome.

Don't Be A Hero While this game is no Baten Kaitos, Sakuraba proves that he is by far the king of RPG battle themes. The guy can crank out so many gems per game.
(if you really want to see the master at work, GO PLAY BATEN KAITOS ETERNAL WINGS AND THE LOST OCEAN)

Silk Road in the Sky II This game's OST is pretty different from Baten Kaitos' in a few ways and one way is the large number of "dark" tracks in this game. This particular piece plays after you are pulled right back into the thick of the main storyline. For me at least it did a very great job of establishing the foreboding atmosphere of that point in the game.

Anyway, I''m running close to the character limit so let me end this.

I think it's healthy to approach different things with different standards or expectations. Now if I went into this game expecting Xenogears, I probably wouldn't have much cared for it. HOWEVER, I knew what this game was and I accepted it. I don't view that as lowering my standards or anything but if you do, that's fine. This game is far from perfect - there is some pretty clunky dialogue here and there, and it's especially bad in the ending when they constantly use "evolution" in both a real and metaphorical sense. They also just use the word too damn much in the climax.  About half  of the cast also isn't used well enough to justify them being in the game from a storytelling perspective. I also felt the final boss was a bit out of nowhere. 
*Spoiler*: __ 



Really hammering home the fact that fighting "angel-like beings" is just a JRPG staple this point.




But in spite of its failings, I thought Star Ocean: The Last Hope was a neat little game with some nice ideas and characters. I'd gladly play it again in the near future. And if you're an old school SO fan, you can rest easy as one of the pluses of this game is that it made me intensely curious to play the first two in the series. Till the End of Time put me off SO in a very hard way but this has me fully back onboard.

Well that's enough of me talking., I'm curious to hear what others thought of the game.


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## Unlosing Ranger (May 16, 2013)

I'm sure you get to travel to more worlds in SO3 than SO 4.
Do you even Director's cut?
The main character is near shinji tiers of bad for most of the game in So4.


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## Stunna (May 16, 2013)

I've had this game for what feels like two years now, yet I've never played it.

I love SO3. Would you recommend 4?


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## Unlosing Ranger (May 16, 2013)

Stunna said:


> I've had this game for what feels like two years now, yet I've never played it.
> 
> I love SO3. Would you recommend 4?



Do you love watching train wrecks?


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (May 16, 2013)

Unlosing Ranger said:


> I'm sure you get to travel to more worlds in SO3 than SO 4.
> Do you even Director's cut?
> The main character is near shinji tiers of bad for most of the game in So4.



Well in his defense, at least he had a legit reason. And at least he shuts up around that point until he gets out of that slump and decides to deal with it.


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (May 16, 2013)

I mean he could've been like Luke Fon Fabre and outright lose any personality he had and becomes a doormat.


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 16, 2013)

Unlosing Ranger said:


> I'm sure you get to travel to more worlds in SO3 than SO 4.
> Do you even Director's cut?
> The main character is near shinji tiers of bad for most of the game in So4.



Uh...the way I remember it you are stuck on Elicoor II for 98% of the first disk. You are on a resort station or planet for the intro of the game then you stop off at another planet where you meet Cliff and then you are stuck fighting a medieval fantasy war on Elicoor for the rest of Disk 1.
Then Disk 2 starts and none of that matters. You are on another space station thing I believe and then you go the planet with the Time Gate. Then you're in 4D Space.

In SO4 you go from Aeos to Lemuris to the Cardianon Mothership (which is a planet sort of) to Earth to Roak to En II to Nox Obscuros.

Also Edge was only "Shinji-like" due to a pretty horrific event. He was not at all like that at any other time.


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 16, 2013)

Stunna said:


> I've had this game for what feels like two years now, yet I've never played it.
> 
> I love SO3. Would you recommend 4?



i was better at the combat in this game. Maybe that means it's easier than in SO3.

I found the characters in this game far more likable than anyone in your SO3 party. Then again, I only really liked Cliff and Nel.

If you played SO3 for any of the "shipping" aspects - like you wanted to get a certain "paired" ending or whatnot - this game isn't for you. Edge has one solid love interest from start to finish. 

If you liked the second disk of SO3, where they actually get out into space and start fighting cosmic threats, I'd recommend this game.

I will say that I thought SO3's final boss was better all-around. I will admit to loving the shit out of that music.


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (May 16, 2013)

> Really hammering home the fact that fighting "angel-like beings" is just a JRPG staple this point.



Wouldn't exactly be out of place in Star Ocean.



Definitely not.


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 16, 2013)

Well I don't think the SO series has ever been popular because it breaks the mold or whatever you want to call it. 

Still, all the stuff on Roak really makes me want to play the first game. And after that I'll play 2.


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## LivingHitokiri (May 16, 2013)

the best thing about So4 is Sakurabas music, honestly i was highly disappointed with the game, characters felt dull and it felt really hard to like or even care about em. The endings where lame the story was weak and so on.
I still believe SO 2 is the best with SO 3 having the best combat in the series.
So4 was a huge disappointment for me.


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## Unlosing Ranger (May 16, 2013)

Raidou Kuzunoha said:


> I mean he could've been like Luke Fon Fabre and outright lose any personality he had and becomes a doormat.



Luke has characters to make up for him.
SO4 doesn't have this very nice liberty.


Zaelapolopollo said:


> i was better at the combat in this game. Maybe that means it's easier than in SO3.
> 
> I found the characters in this game far more likable than anyone in your SO3 party. Then again, I only really liked Cliff and Nel.
> 
> ...


And that is why SO3 combat is better and had better skills and more rewards.
I'm sorry but who the fuck plays an action RPG for shipping?
So4 isn't a space opera, it's comedy and every moment I played it to when I beat it was like nails on chalkboard the entire time.
If you like nails on chalk board for 30 hours this is the game for you, So4.



Zaelapolopollo said:


> Uh...the way I remember it you are stuck on Elicoor II for 98% of the first disk. You are on a resort station or planet for the intro of the game then you stop off at another planet where you meet Cliff and then you are stuck fighting a medieval fantasy war on Elicoor for the rest of Disk 1.
> Then Disk 2 starts and none of that matters. You are on another space station thing I believe and then you go the planet with the Time Gate. Then you're in 4D Space.
> 
> In SO4 you go from Aeos to Lemuris to the Cardianon Mothership (which is a planet sort of) to Earth to Roak to En II to Nox Obscuros.
> ...


You do know you can go back to all of those planets you have been to right with 4D space?
Then the 100 floor maze , several hidden bosses, hidden challenges, trophies, etc, The god damned alchemy,sphere 211,4D space activities, a very detailed dictionary for every damn thing in universe more so than any other SO game and it has substance.

SO4 only has 149
SO3 has 475 many concerning space
In fact SO3's space almost outnumbers SO4's entire dictionary.
That is how much more of a space opera SO3 is.

I don't tolerate failure when it's possible to prevent it and he ended up having a planet blown up by being a whiny bitch.
Literally that is why the planet blew up.
Edge is a character beyond redemption because of this he whined before he fucked up and then he whined AFTER he really really fucked up.

That wouldn't have happened to the SO3 cast they would have gotten shit done. Just a single one of them, just, just one.
Yes, even the little fucking girl.
So4 lowest tier in character quality.


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (May 16, 2013)

> That wouldn't have happened to the SO3 cast they would have gotten shit done.



Actually they wouldn't be in any better situation. Actually anyone for that matter.


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## Rukia (May 16, 2013)

Own it.  Have never played it.


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 16, 2013)

Unlosing Ranger said:


> L
> And that is why SO3 combat is better and had better skills and more rewards.
> I'm sorry but who the fuck plays an action RPG for shipping?



A lot of people apparently. Why else would they keep including Private Actions or the paired endings?



> You do know you can go back to all of those planets you have been to right with 4D space?
> Then the 100 floor maze , several hidden bosses, hidden challenges, trophies, etc, The god damned alchemy,sphere 211,4D space activities, a very detailed dictionary for every damn thing in universe more so than any other SO game and it has substance.
> 
> SO4 only has 149
> ...



Well I don't care about optional dungeons. I only played through the main game of SO3 and never cared to play it again.

The Dictionary in SO3 was indeed amazing. It's probably better written and more interesting than the cutscenes in either SO3 or 4..

I fail to see how SO3 is more of a space opera. Both series are focused on  threats to the galaxy/universe and traveling through space to try and contest  those threats. It's just that SO3 also spent a ludicrous amount of time forcing us to fight on a stupid fantasy planet that had almost no story relevance.


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (May 16, 2013)

The only ones who were genuine heroes were the Star Ocean 1 team who liberated a planet from an ancient demon, and restored Roak's people from being petrified. And then fought down the main guy who caused the situation and stopped a war that was going on.

As well as the Star Ocean 2 team who did a bunch of shit which lead up to the defeat of the 10 Wise Men.


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 16, 2013)

That's something I'm curious about. SO4 says Asmodeus is going to destroy the planet.

 Till the End of Time and Last Hope had threats to the universe.

Are the bad guys in SO1 and 2 only planetary threats? How much of space do we see in those games?


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (May 16, 2013)

SO1 had a petrification virus that can spread across Roak. And there's a ship that destroys a planet IIRC in the SNES intro. Though I forget if it was done in First Departure. Though the main villain was more of an interstellar threat since he had an army and the Feds were busy fighting these guys and you essentially were told to help take out their leader.

The 10 Wise Men required weapons that can destroy a small planet just to get hurt. Indalecio/Gabriel had access to the Crest of Annihilation which was gonna create a Big Crunch.


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 16, 2013)

That's pretty cool. I kinda figured the Enforcers from SO3 and Luther were the strongest things ever in the series but it seems like the rest of the games have some badass stuff as well.


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## Yagami1211 (May 17, 2013)

SO4 

The main character after 
*Spoiler*: __ 



He blows up Alt!Earth just made me puke.
Ikari Shinji, get out of that body !




I even got the PS3 version with japanese voices and shit, but does not make the game better.
Story is just


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## LivingHitokiri (May 17, 2013)

Can we call agree that SO 2 had the best final boss? XD


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## Unlosing Ranger (May 17, 2013)

LivingHitokiri said:


> Can we call agree that SO 2 had the best final boss? XD



Yes.
A mix of SO2 and So3 would be something to see.


Zaelapolopollo said:


> That's pretty cool. I kinda figured the Enforcers from SO3 and Luther were the strongest things ever in the series but it seems like the rest of the games have some badass stuff as well.



Luther is a weakling there are much stronger things in SO3


Raidou Kuzunoha said:


> Actually they wouldn't be in any better situation. Actually anyone for that matter.



Except it was really easy to see what the hell was going to happen and could have been prevented with brute force before hand.
CIS all over the place in SO4.


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 17, 2013)

From a plot perspective, obviously nothing should be stronger than Luther. He designed the "game" and can do as he likes with it.


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## Kirin Thunderclap (May 17, 2013)

I loved SO4, I perosnally think the combat shits all over the other SOs. 

Voice acting was shit though.


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## Unlosing Ranger (May 17, 2013)

Zaelapolopollo said:


> From a plot perspective, obviously nothing should be stronger than Luther. He designed the "game" and can do as he likes with it.



[YOUTUBE]lE9FqZFkGVI[/YOUTUBE]
You never bothered getting this far so go ahead and watch some.


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (May 17, 2013)

LivingHitokiri said:


> Can we call agree that SO 2 had the best final boss? XD



Final/Super Boss

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbHx8qlq7ng[/YOUTUBE]


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 17, 2013)

Ya know the voice-acting in this game gets an undeserved amount of hate. Yeah it has some pretty weak performances but overall it's decent enough.

There are certainly a plethora of games with much worse voice-acting.


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## Unlosing Ranger (May 17, 2013)

Zaelapolopollo said:


> Ya know the voice-acting in this game gets an undeserved amount of hate. Yeah it has some pretty weak performances but overall it's decent enough.
> 
> There are certainly a plethora of games with much worse voice-acting.


I've only heard of one or two that is worse than SO4.
SO4 would be better off with no voice acting.


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 18, 2013)

I think you're a bit too biased against the game.

Either that or you haven't played any of the old Silent Hill/Resident Evil games.
Or those Tenchu games.

 is worse than SO4's dub.

SO4 actually had several popular VAs working on it. The presence of Travis Willingham alone puts it above any of those games.


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## Unlosing Ranger (May 18, 2013)

I've listened to enchanted arms for beginning to end, it sounds better than SO4 in the voice cast even if the rest is worse than any SO game.
Also I see zone of the enders 2 in that list.
Site is invalid automatically.


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## LivingHitokiri (May 18, 2013)

Yeah but you're comparing a 2009 game with one that came in late 90's since then voice acting improved drastically. For a company like Square Enix SO4 voice acting was unacceptable, it was one of the few games that i literally  turned down the volume .


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 18, 2013)

That's true but my point was only that SO4 isn't even close to the worst voice-acted game ever. It probably doesn't even break the Top (Bottom?) 200.

If I could enjoy Baten Kaitos' voice-acting to some extent, SO4 is no problem.


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (May 18, 2013)

The voice acting is functional.

For as long it's not Chaos Wars, it's functional. No matter how bad it is. Because Chaos Wars practically is THE pure definition of bad voice acting. When I mean bad voice acting, I don't mean sucking, I mean "why bother even having voice acting in the game, period."

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pD83hmKjr0[/YOUTUBE]

And such is why voice acting is never a concern of mine.


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## LivingHitokiri (May 18, 2013)

What the hell did i just watch ?
fandub ?
1:38  what the hell


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## Jake CENA (May 18, 2013)

If you platinum this game I will suck your cock.


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## Zaelapolopollo (May 19, 2013)

To each their own.

So I just found out why Myuria's voice is so familiar and why it made me love her character so much.

She is voiced by Jessica Strauss - the woman who voiced Sasha.


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## Deimos (Jun 3, 2013)

Are there any interesting characters in Star Ocean TLH? I'm thinking of picking it but they all look meh in the trailer. Everything else looks good. Never played any Star Ocean before that one.

So are there any awesome characters? Like Balthier or Gabranth for example. If yes, who?


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## Zaelapolopollo (Jun 18, 2013)

SO4 ia no FFXII but I think it has one or two memorable characters Bacchus the badass cyborg voiced byRoy Mustang mainly comes to mind. There's also Faize who has a pretty nice bit of development later on. 

I also liked Edge but a lot of people absolutely hate him so I dunno.


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## Foxve (Jun 18, 2013)

I've gotten to the last boss in SO4 on the xbox ( never got past him and gave that one away and got one on PS3 now, yet to play it) then after a lot of loooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggg ass battle sessions (Seriously what the fuck ), I ran out of items and energy at the last guy/form (hope it was at least) and my party got destroyed. I wanted to level up by grinding in the last dungon next to the boss, but those motherfucking little clowns.  


Here a random question I always wondered, did Remi get raped?


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