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Star Ocean: The Last Hope International

Worst cast of characters, ever.


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Here we go --- another rant. Keep in mind that I am thoroughly enjoying the game, and that I love the battle system. However, I am not here to praise the obvious. I'm here to spew linguistic hatred and rant, so I can keep my sanity intact. Bear with me, and leave if you can't take anyone beating on your beloved two-dimensional characters.

 

Star Ocean 4 has the worst cast of characters in a JRPG. Ever. Others who entered the competition for this title are Tales of the Abyss and Atelier Iris 2 (dear fucking God), but the Gold medal goes to Edge and co.

 

I can't get around just how bad the cast is in my eyes. The only one I find remotely interesting and tolerable is Myuria, because she seems to be the only adult on the ship. That, or it might just be because her tits are hanging out. My brain goes dead while watching the cutscenes, which surely has something to do with the fantastic dialog, so my cave-man instincts together with IQ dipping in the low 60s would pay attention to things like that.

 

Not only that, the relationships between the characters are way too Full House for me. I am seriously waiting for Bob Saget to show up, take a knee and explain to us how friendship will prevail, and that family reunions are important to uphold the bond between you and your loved ones. The whole Edge/Reimi thing just SCREAMS high school to me, and it's your typical cliche "I love you, but I'm not telling you" storyline. I mean, come on. How many more hints does Edge need that Reimi wants him? Then again, Edge is your typical "I don't like what you do, and I will yell in your face why I don't while saying how important friendship is" character, so nothing he does will surprise you or intrigue you; ever. Same goes for Reimi. This doesn't make them terrible. It just makes them frighteningly generic and empty.

 

Meracle is just there to support the furry-fetish of some people, and to fulfill the criteria for cat-girls in anime. Just like the LAPD has to hire a certain amount of Hispanics, Japan has to incorporate a certain amount of cat-girls or the masses will be in an uproar, and the government will not approve.

 

I also don't understand what Lymle is doing there. She has absolutely nothing to do with the storyline, apart from the fact that grandpa got turned into a flag stone for next to the pool, waiting for some character from Final Fantasy to show up with a Gold Needle. Even so, she has the mind of a 6 year old, apparently, due to traumatic events, so she wouldn't know anything about going out into space to avenge his ass. Not only that, would a traumatized 15 year old, who thinks she is 6, be a serious contender for a fucking astronaut? I don't think so, but the SS Edge would love to recruit her, because we're about 3 retards short to fill the equal opportunity minority laws. Not only that, on numerous occasions, she gets the entire party in trouble with her juvenile behavior, so shouldn't she just stay inside the ship and play with Polly Pocket or some shit? It's rather irresponsible for Edge to take a 15/6 year old with him into life-threatening situations. That, and I see it as intergalactic kidnapping anyway.

 

At first, I thought for sure that Lymle took Vaan's (FF12) spot of being the most irrelevant and annoying character in JRPG history, but just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Sarah enters the battle field and obliterates the competition. Never in my life have I wanted to reach into the screen with murderous intentions this bad. Ever. Sometimes it feels that the SS Edge is merely a mental institution under the guise of a spaceship, and the government secretly made up the entire storyline just to huddle up the universe's most notorious retards, and keep them in one confined spot ready for treatment.

 

Who the fuck sat at the table to think of this feathered bitch? Sarah represents everything that will kill your boner, and turn you gay. Her voice acting alone is terrible enough, but that could've been remedied slightly by decent dialog and development. No, she completely reclaims her idiocy by being, by far, the most mentally retarded character in RPG history. Yes, Barret, your spot has been taken. Goddamnit $@%^!

 

It's one thing to be an airhead for some corny Japanese "comic relief". Though I prefer the "comic relief" of hard-hitting dialog with awesome delivery (Pulp Fiction), I guess some people would enjoy this. Fine. However, Sarah is just completely mentally retarded, making it more annoying than funny. I have literally worked with 8 year old kids who had down syndrome, who were far more capable of grasping information than Sarah. This is no lie.

 

Would you seriously associate yourself with a girl like that in your school, college or at work? What if you were a manager, and you had Sarah running the register, punching in random buttons, smiling, while fucking up all your shit? Would you fire her, or would you just shake your head, get a weird japanese emoticon over your head, and hear the audience laugh? No, you'd strangle her with her gravity-defying pigtails, rip her wings off Legacy of Kain; Soul Reaver style, and throw her into the parking lot.

 

If I hear Faize say the word 'brethren' one more time, I'm going to commit a hate-crime. I don't care if I put it in Japanese. I KNOW the bastard is saying it in a different language, so I'll still get mad at the principle. Also, his man-love for Edge became slightly disturbing, to say the least. Together with his Roger-The-Hairy-Sailor voice, we have ourselves a potential catastrophe aboard the SS Edge.

 

Bacchus, as I explained before, needs to shut the fuck up and get to the point. He rambles on in the most unrealistic text-book way, under the guise of robotic intellect, but shouldn't robots be more efficient? He could make the Architect from the Matrix Reloaded tell him to get to the point faster, and that says a whole lot. Just poor dialog to shoe-horn in mature intelligence to make it more appealing, but instead it feels like a weekly seminar at the Oprah Book Club.

 

Who's left. Oh, right. The Emo; Arumat. I have the feeling that I'll find him listening to The Promise Ring while slitting his wrists in one of the back rooms. Your typical JRPG bad-boy, who crosses his arms and puts up his fucking feet on the dash you just cleaned. If someone replaces a lightbulb in the SS Edge, Arumat will be the 'badass' who has to write a poem about how he misses the old one, while updating his myspace with more depression. Other than that he's tolerable. Maybe it's because the rest is so bad that I can allow him to breathe.

 

And why the hell does a bow and arrow work perfectly, whereas a fucking Railgun from Quake 3 Arena does nothing? Really, wtf?

Edited by Aidan
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I have to agree with every point made here...

 

The problem with this game is, I'm not choosing a team by how good the characters are but by how cool they look... or how lame they look and have the okay looking ones in my party.

 

Seriously, the characters would be some what tolerable if they wore good clothing.. Who designed Bacchus, Lymle, Myuria and Edge? They deserve to be shot. The sad thing with Edge is you have to look at him the most.

 

And if I ever hear 'It's all my fault... cry....sulk....cry....sulk.... NO IT'S MY FAULT' another god damn fucking time I will put a bullet through my fucking BRAINS!

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You're not alone. I too pick my character based on a shallow "looks > personality" system. For instance, I prefer characters with darker hair, so I leave as many blondes out as I can. This is why I'm still stuck on the title screen in FF12...

 

Like I said, I am enjoying the gameplay a lot, and overall it's very fun to play. With games like Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid and Vagrant Story, I looked forward to the cutscenes and plot development. With SO4, I'm actually hoping they stay away, yet I don't want to skip them because then I feel as if they won, or that I'm robbing myself.

 

Star Ocean 3 was indeed on par with this, but nothing beats this cast in my eyes. The voice acting in Star Ocean 2, on a quality level, is arguably much worse, but at least that was so bad that it became laughable. (Claude screaming "OH IT'S JUST THEM" in some retarded German pornstar voice brings back giant ROFL moments)

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I could've confused it with Tales of Legendia. There were too many Tales characters that I hated at some point for me to tell them apart.

 

Abyss had Luke, Guy, and Jade - the ultimate badass.

 

Legendia - yes, had a rather poor cast.

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Lymle is supposed to be 15?

 

At least that´s what I read from your post. She is 6, says so herself when you get her and behaves like a 6 year old too. And just like RL, she doesn´t have an off-switch.

 

Or does she age 9 years somewhen in the story?

 

I haven´t got Myuria yet, but I guess she is the big boobed bimbo from several early cutscenes who they wrote some extra lines of code for, so that her boobs are always in motion.

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Lymle is supposed to be 15?

 

At least that´s what I read from your post. She is 6, says so herself when you get her and behaves like a 6 year old too. And just like RL, she doesn´t have an off-switch.

 

Or does she age 9 years somewhen in the story?

 

I haven´t got Myuria yet, but I guess she is the big boobed bimbo from several early cutscenes who they wrote some extra lines of code for, so that her boobs are always in motion.

Yeah, she is 15, but supposedly due to a traumatic event, she now either a) uses that as an excuse so she can get away with being a total annoying brat who refuses to grow up, or b) is really that mentally instable, and is thus the least qualified candidate for space exploration and saving the galaxy. Check out the dictionary in-game for her "details". She's an incredibly irrelevant character to the team. In fact, every character feels shoe-horned in like that.

 

Yes, Myuria is the one with the boobs that bounce, which is why she gains the most points.

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I thought Star Ocean 3 was much worse.

 

Althought, Lymle is insanely annoying. So is Sarah.

 

I like Sarah. Her shpiel in her final PA is just hilarious: "I didn't mean in a romantic...but if you insist." Also, I like the fact that she calls enemies "cute" when going to battle.

 

I think I'm the only one that likes these characters. With the exception of Edge (because of his stupid whiny period), and Remie(sp?) (all around, but I really hate her later level-up statement, which is something like "I have more self-confidence now!"), I like them all. Even Lymle.

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Lymle only seems to be usefull in the beginning (gramps) and the end (I reconise you Faize)

 

as for arumate, now that you mention the slitting whrists.. he indeed does have alot of scars.. and seeing nothign is ever capabel of touching him they must have come there somehow xD?

 

 

 

Okay I'm not agreeing on this post (though I loved reading it xD) but I just wanted to say the arumat part :D

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Lymle only seems to be usefull in the beginning (gramps) and the end (I reconise you Faize)

 

as for arumate, now that you mention the slitting whrists.. he indeed does have alot of scars.. and seeing nothign is ever capabel of touching him they must have come there somehow xD?

 

 

 

Okay I'm not agreeing on this post (though I loved reading it xD) but I just wanted to say the arumat part :D

 

It is funny, Arumat is supposed to be this badass from the top division of the Eldarian military but when I got him he was no better than Edge / Meracle or Bacchus.

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Uhhh, Arumat is an insane badass. Its too bad they changed the chest from a holy to fire for "Dragon Roar" though. With that skill, he does an insane amount of damage compared to everyone else.

 

I know... having to beat Gabriel Celeste before you get dragon roar... fucking annoying.

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I think my main gripe with the cast as a whole is how generic they all feel, as if a PC has a JRPG-character-generator and they renamed Alex into Edge.

 

I just hate games that become life lessons. The constant speeches about how friends prevail, we can do everything with our friends, we all love our friends and friends for life are starting to wear on me. That's just way too corny and childish for me.

 

Yeah, I'm an adult. I have friends I had for years. We never sit around the campfire saying "George, you and me are good friends. We can do anything as long as we stay friends. I feel a certain warmth when I am with you, and I can't thank you enough for being my friend." George will most likely think I'm gay, and get uncomfortable.

 

I suppose it fits the fantasy theme of having a highly unrealistic cast, but almost everything that happens is so far-fetched and surreal that I have a hard time getting involved with the cast. I doze off during almost every cutscene, if I don't have replacement embarrassment feelings yet, and just don't care if they all live or die. In fact, I hope most of them die, and not just of old age, but very slow and painful, by my hands!

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Thanks for this thread Aidan. I almost completely agree with you. It's not that I hate the whole cast, but seriously Lymle and Sarah are just beyond annoying.

 

Lymle does have some cute and funny moments, but she usually just says useless things and she says it so fucking slow, that I wanna slap her from time to time.

 

And Sarah's voice gives me a headache.

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Um... Meracle X-Claws Juggle? :D

 

as for the topic, i disagree and agree on many points. (Lymle and Sarah, I hate you.)

 

I used to love using Meracle, but I loathe controlling her. The only time I've controlled her this go around on anything worth meaning is getting the 2 gabriel BTs (which I did first shot $$), and aramos manifest.

 

Lymle and Sarah are terribly annoying, Lymle isn't annoying with Japanese voices, but Sarah still is.

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Yeah, I'm an adult. I have friends I had for years. We never sit around the campfire saying "George, you and me are good friends. We can do anything as long as we stay friends. I feel a certain warmth when I am with you, and I can't thank you enough for being my friend." George will most likely think I'm gay, and get uncomfortable.

 

LMAO! I went from liking my cast of characters to hating my cast of characters in the span of 4 lines of text! :D

 

Seriously, I completely agree. The idea of having the crew explore planets, early "Star Trek" style, was great. But once Edge had his breakdown, I really got tired of the platitudes. And yeah, the "With my friends, I can overcome anything!" message was really, really stupid. Thanks for the after-school special, Tri-Ace!

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