When Square merged with Enix back in 2003, the two big JRPG’s that Enix brought with them were Dragon Quest and Star Ocean. In-fact the PlayStation 2 game Star Ocean: Till the End of Time was the last game published by Enix in their native Japan before the merger. Since then the only new entry in the series has been The Last Hope which released in 2009. That is until now.
Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness brings the series to the current generation for the first time and it holds a lot of familiarities with its 3D predecessors. In some regards this is a good thing as it still feels like a Star Ocean game. On the other hand it may feel a bit too familiar to the last two games in the series you’ve played, without making the next step to make it an impressive current generation game.
Environments feel scarce of life, whether it is out in an open field or in an apparently populated city. This is a shame as the main character models and environment graphics all look rather lovely. At one point early on there is a battle that is hyped up to be epic, yet on the screen there’s rarely more than 9 soldiers at once. Dialogue points are poorly directed and most have no camera direction whatsoever. Although it’s great to allow the player the means to position the camera and move about, you’re limited by invisible walls (which show up as a red outline when you hit them). This means that something that was no doubt meant to encourage immersion, inadvertently makes it anything but immersive thanks to the constant limitations of the player’s camera and space of movement.
It’s not just during cut-scenes that invisible walls impede you. Frequently when exploring the world, especially in the early hours, you’ll reach areas that are just blocked showing a red circle with a line through it. All of these things would be situations that could be ignored on previous generations of gaming due to lack of system power. Even then though, the games on the previous generations seemed to not fall down these rabbit holes. I recall plenty of cut-scenes when playing Till the End of Time actually having camera direction.
The lack of camera direction means that the voice acting lacks impact at times. It’s adequate for the most part, falling just on the line before getting too hammy. The characters develop a bond as the game progresses and their interaction makes sense, but a large amount of them are introduced to the player without a proper cut-scene, and just a huge amount of spoken text. It doesn’t help that the story is fairly bland too. Is it all doom and gloom for Integrity and Faithlessness though? What does it do right?
First off there’s lots to do in the game. There are various skills you can learn, from cooking to blacksmithing. You can also find a huge amount of side-quests to help keep you occupied, although a lack of fast travel and a proper world map for large parts of the game can make them more of a chore than they need to be. Some of the side-quests involve hunting down some special enemies on the world map and combat is one of the stronger areas of the game. It blends seamlessly with exploration, meaning you don’t have a little pre-battle transition like a lot of JRPG’s used to have. If you see an enemy it’s up to you whether you attack it or try to avoid it. Combat itself is hit and miss, but there’s plenty of customisation if you want to do it. It’s very similar to previous games in the series where you can control one character at a time with the ability to switch in battle.
It all happens in real-time and when your party increases in size it can get a touch overwhelming, but in a good way. There are up to seven party members that can be found in the game and they’ll all be active in battle and exploration at once. It’s a nice touch that helps avoid the usual trappings of JRPG teams in terms of having to select a few party members and normally neglect the rest.
To get the most of the battle system though you’ll have to spend some time experimenting with roles in the menu. There’s a lot to learn, but the AI won’t always do what you think the role will advise them to do. Enemies tend to focus on weaker characters, which is fine, but the AI is far too temperamental about whether or not it’ll let you distract them. There are also some battles where some characters can’t reach zero health or it’s game over. This makes no sense considering you’d be able to revive them in a normal battle with a simple item.
If you are willing to spend some time experimenting with the menus and characters then you’ll enjoy Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness a lot more. The issue is the game has so many flaws and fails to take the series to the next level. It lacks basic things expected of a JRPG, whilst failing to include anything that ever feels remarkable. It looks nice enough and plays nice enough, but that’s more or less it. It’s a passable JRPG, but for a main entry in such a long running series it should really be a lot more.
- To see me playthrough the first hour of the game and look at some of the mechanics a bit more check out the video below.