Star Ocean Universe

AD 2064. Humanity made its third and most costly mistake. World War III. Weapons of mass destruction deployed with impunity, razed the land in the blink of an eye. People believed it's the end of the world. The planet Earth was dying. So humanity began to search for a new home in space.

AD 2074 first contact. SD0001 first warp. SD0010 -- first official SRF mission. The first official SRF mission ventures forth into the great Star Ocean.

Genre: Action/RPG

Developer/Publisher: tri-Ace/Square Enix

Platform: XBox 360

Players: 1 (most likely)

Japan Release Date: 19 Feb 2009

US (NTSC) Release Date: 3 Mar 2009

EU (PAL) Release Date: ? 2009

As many of us already know, or some may not Star Ocean 4 has been confirmed as in development, the great Star Ocean series is far from over yet. This was via the 2007 Square Enix party press release statement in May 2007 which is linked below, at the same time we also gained the great news of remakes for the first two Star Ocean titles.

Just prior Tokyo Game show 2007 in September 2007 Famitsu Scans were released (and new ones on the 2nd of March 2008) which suggested the possibility of a PS3 release, but the booklet from Infinite Undiscovery stated otherwise. The lead males name will be Edge Maverick, and the lead females name will be Reimi Saionji. So far "Aeos" and "Earth" have been revealed as worlds in the game.

Star Ocean 4 will be restoring the four member party, as opposed to three in Till the End of Time. As seen in the screenshots above, the new battle system will feature a "Rush" gauge. This gauge determine whether the player will be able to have a pre emptive strike or use special abilities. The new battle system will also have a feature called "Sight In/Sight Out". Another new feature in The Last Hope is a ship for the player to control. The inclusion of a ship and a mechanical character (Baachus) are probably in response to criticisms that Star Ocean 3 wasn't "sciency" enough.

Also just prior Tokyo Game show 2007 was the release of a new Star Ocean portal site (In Japanese), which will hopefully be the release point of new information regarding Star Ocean 4, to date this has included a number of updates for First Departure (Star Ocean 1 remake). This is noticeably tagged by Square-Enix and not tri-Ace. This perhaps explains why Blue Sphere and the original Star Ocean 1 & 2 names are not used, as Square-Enix as a merged company had not released them with this name.

Revealed Characters

More information released on the 2/4/08 suggest the game will start in Space Date 0010, which means this will become the first in the series, 336 years before any other Star Ocean title (First Departure). Although even with an extended original trailer and new scans the release date and console are still unknown. Many other Star Ocean elements such as an action battle system, private actions, item creation etc are expected to be continued as well in some form.

For further information on Star Ocean 4 check out the following:

- Star Ocean 4 Official Site (Japan)

- Official Press Release by Square-Enix - Confirming the creation of SO4, 14th May 07

- Discuss Star Ocean 4 in the forum