Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness
PlayStation 4
When I first got my PlayStation 4 a little over a month ago, I had a long list of games that I wanted to check out. Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness was not on that list. In fact, it was nowhere even near that list. I had never heard of the game.
I had played exactly one Star Ocean title in the past. That was Star Ocean: The Second Story for the original PlayStation. Back when I was a teenager I purchased the game for dirt cheap from the bargain bin at a Blockbuster Video near my house. I played it for a few hours. I didn't hate the game, but the fact that it was the second in a series (when I had never played the first one) bothered me. I didn't have reliable access to the Internet to look up and see if this was a direct sequel or a standalone title. I couldn't shake this nagging feeling I was missing something. There was a point relatively early in the game where I got stuck. Rather than persevere, I just decided to give up on the game and sell it back to the video store.
I should have stuck with it since now I hear that it is one of the best games in the series. I didn't need to know anything about the first Star Ocean game to enjoy the second. But alas, I did not know that back then. I would say that this happened in 1999, maybe the year 2000. A minimum of 18 years passed before Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness would come into my life.
The game was loaned to me by my pal Dominic when he heard that I had just gotten a PS4 for Christmas. Admittedly, playing the game was not a high priority for me. As I mentioned before, I had a giant list of games that I wanted to play for the PS4. I was a late bloomer after all. The system had already been out for a little over four years and there was a giant library of games out there for me to explore. But after wrapping up Uncharted 4 and the Telltale Batman game, I decided to give this a shot so I could get the game back to my friend. A different friend of mine had loaned me Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas several years back and I never got the games back to him (I still have them) because I never got around to playing them! I didn't want the same thing to happen here. And yes before you yell at me, I know that Fallout 3 is an iconic game and that I need to play it. I honestly don't know what has taken me so long.
I digress. Since I had never heard of this Star Ocean game, I didn't know what to expect. My experiences with newer RPGs have not been that great. The last thing I wanted was another Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels on my hands. I read a few reviews beforehand, and they were not kind. Still though, the reviews all seemed like they were written by long time Star Ocean fans who were disappointed in the direction this game took the series. Since I didn't know anything about Star Ocean, maybe these flaws would't bother me? The reviews all said the game was short, too. Certainly if I didn't like it I could easily rush through a 20 or so hour RPG and just be done with it and move on.
So I gave the game a try. My first impression was not a good one. There was little to zero setup as far as the game's universe or what was going on in the game's world. No big introduction or anything. They just start you out as your character (Fidel) as you duel with a friend in the training ring. I guess this is good as it teaches you the mechanics of the game's battle system right off the bat.
Graphically the game is a mixed bag. The landscapes look really nice. Some are stunning, in fact. The characters look good. The towns and the areas that you walk through are all very sharp looking. For the most part everything looks decent, but there is just something about it that is very unsatisfying. Everything feels a little generic, a little sterile. Uniformity abounds. You explore one part of the city, you have basically seen it all. Look through one room of a dungeon, you know what the rest of it is going to look like. There is a lack of small, personal detail in the environments of this game. The whole time I was playing this I couldn't shake the feeling that this game looks like it was made on a Sega Dreamcast back in 2001 and this is its HD remaster.
Voice acting is also a mixed bag. When I first started the game I thought it was awful. It sounded like a really terrible anime complete with cliched whiny shout talking (I'm looking at you, Miki!). Admittedly, it is not that bad. The voices get less grating as you go along. It is never great, but you get used to it. Perhaps it is when I really started to get to know the characters that I started to look past these faults. The game's musical score, however is pretty good. There are some solid orchestral themes that stick with you as you play. No true classics though. It's not Final Fantasy VI or VII; there are a lot of forgettable songs in this game. But for the most part the musical score left a positive impression on me. It could have been better (as could have pretty much everything in this game) but it was definitely not one of the game's glaring flaws.
Combat is also one of the game's stronger points. You control a party of up to seven characters. You control the main character, Fidel, but you can assign roles to the rest of your team. The characters will act semi-accordingly within their assigned roles. Battles take place in real time on the 3D map. You can move your character around as you fight. The X button is your weak attack. The circle button is your strong attack. You can just tap these buttons for regular attacks, but you can hold them down for more powerful MP guzzling alternatives. You gain special attacks as you play the game, but I never saw a reason to switch off of my default attacks. I always just held down circle or X, and that was my main attack for the entire game. If it worked, why use anything else?
This isn't necessarily an action RPG like Kingdom Hearts or Zelda. Even though you can control your characters movements in battle and you are mainly just mashing or holding circle and X to attack, there are turn based elements to the game. You have to wait between attacks. You can bring up a menu to use items or cast magic spells. If I had to compare it to anything I guess it would be Final Fantasy XII. Maybe Knights of the Old Republic?
The major issue I have with the battle system is the way your allies act in battle. As I mentioned you can assign them roles that dictate how they should behave in battle. But a lot of times they don't actually do what they are supposed to do. I gave Miki all the healer roles and still she feels the need to attack in battle while everyone is dying or low on health. That is frustrating. Luckily you can switch characters at will in battle, so if she isn't doing her job you can do it for her. Another complaint is that a lot of your allies are totally useless. Fidel dishes out all the major damage. Everyone else seems to just deal out minor damage and get killed a lot. I was keeping them leveled up and I was buying them all the best equipment too. But they were never much help. I often felt that Fidel was the only character that mattered in battle.
The game's difficulty level is constantly shifting up and down. Ever get stuck on the freeway driving by someone who is going really slow, then really fast, then slow again, then the speed limit, then fast, so on and so forth? I do, and it drives me nuts. Like, pick a dang speed. The game's difficulty level reminds me of that. I would be cruising along, crushing everyone in sight. Then all of a sudden here comes a boss battle and they wipe the floor with me in ten seconds. Wait, huh? This happens a lot in this game. Then you gotta grind for an hour if you want to have any shot at the boss. You beat him easily. You move on in the game. You cruise for a while, and then BAM! The difficulty spikes and you hit another roadblock. It is frustrating. I felt that good majority of the time I spent with the game was grinding to level up so I could make it past some of these really tough bosses.
As challenging as the game is in spots, I always took it is a personal challenge to do better. There actually are a series of tough battles later in the game that are pretty enjoyable.
Star Ocean's story line is also an up and down affair. It starts out very simple. You are caught in the middle of a battle between two warring nations. Then your character discovers a little girl with magical powers who had seemed to survive from a space craft crash out in the wilderness. He takes the girl under his wing, especially when he discovers that her powers could win the war for his nation. But of course, there are forces in hot pursuit of the girl, which complicates things. The story goes many places - all over the world's map and even off into outer space.
It is a fun story, but just like everything else in the game - it is average. I enjoyed the setup and I really felt that it could go places. Instead, even though there are interesting things about it, it sputters and stumbles most of the way to the finish line. I wanted to like it. I wanted to care more. Instead the game felt as if it was just going through the motions most of the time.
Other pet peeves about the game. When you want to talk to NPCs (non playable characters) in villages and cities, you have to come to a complete stop in front of them and align the camera so it is looking right at them. If you bump into them, your character makes a "woops" or a "sorry" sound as he contacts them. And then you pass through the character and you have to turn around to talk to them. And although the game's main story moments are told through spoken words, the conversations with NPCs are not. The words appear in a speech bubble located way above their heads. They can be very hard to see at times. Impossible to see if the camera is not pointed right at them, actually. Just walking around and talking to people in a city should not be this difficult.
Also, a lot of the game's story moments happen at random as you are walking around. You'll hit a barrier marked with a red line. Someone will start talking behind you. Who is talking? That can be hard to tell unless you whirl around and look to see whose lips are moving. You have to sit there and wait until the conversation is over before you can move on. Why can't they walk and talk at the same time? You constantly are getting pulled into these kinds of scenes as you are walking around and trying to explore. It upsets the flow of play and can take you mentally right out of the game. Characters also occasionally like to converse in the heat of battle and you will miss entire important conversations as you are battling to save your life. The story telling mechanics in this game could have definitely used some big work.
All in all: Average story. Average graphics. Average music and voice acting. It had a fun combat system. But overall one word comes to mind when I think of this game: average. I didn't hate it. I liked it in parts but I never came close to loving it. It was mildly enjoyable. But AVERAGE. Would I recommend this to someone else? Nah. Would I ever play this game again? Nah. It did feel like a drag at times. But although there are things about the game that bugged me, I can't say I hated it. It was okay. Maybe a little less than okay. I think a C- is more than appropriate here. I could have been a lot harsher but I was never going to give it higher than a C.
Take it and run, Star Ocean. Take it and run.
Overall:
C-
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