Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness – Review

We have heard of it cooked and raw, on this long awaited and much discussed title in recent days. The team of tri-ace has finally landed on European soil, with this new one Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness. The memories of this series take us to different chapters, and personally, they remember the many good times spent with Star Ocean: First Departure, between scleri for too many casual encounters and feels from a very well-curated plot. Almost a year after its release in Japan, Star Ocean returns exclusively to Sony, proposing - according to them - some succulent news, and despite everything, we wanted to see with our eyes and evaluate which of all these succulent news is worth. worth a try.

Our deeds are personified by Fidel Camuze, a skilled swordsman who protects his native village, and where his father's sword school is also based, Daril Camuze. The protagonist is introduced in a very marginal way, but let's see him already in action in the first minutes of the game, after a short training, it will be possible to witness an attack on the village of Stahr. The boy as well as being an excellent swordsman, is a good strategist, in fact, at the first attack on the village, he will be able to undo all the bandits, rejecting them without losing trusted men, thus reducing the city's army. Although there is no good blood between father and son, Fidel decides to set out for the capital, accompanied by his faithful childhood companion. Miki Sauvester. Along the journey he will meet several companions, some of these will show him the right way, others are just passing through for a dialogue, but among all these, there is Relia, a child persecuted by criminals, perhaps due to her immense powers. From this point on, the story will be a succession of ambushes, and a few weak twists, and then finally come to a conclusion of this narrative. We are sorry to say, but this chapter of Star Ocean has a fairly weak narrative, which fails to live up to the quality of the saga, nor to create anything solid for this chapter. Probably everything is also caused by the poverty of animations, just look along the dialogues the movement of the mouth, similar to that of a robot, which unfortunately makes even the past generation shiver. Another negative aspect is certainly the poverty of Cut Scenes, given that the latter are rarely present, if not almost completely non-existent, leaving the videos to a fairly poor and detailed graphic engine, which fails to do justice in a decent way. to this chapter. As for the characters, we cannot even be completely satisfied here, many of these are stereotypes already seen in other games, with an incredible presence of Fan Service to outline the events, in order to attract the most "curious" of the players, who they let themselves be duped by certain provocative curves. Fortunately, a quite unique and different setting, with the Sci-Fi style that pushes the player to admire certain places, thinks about seasoning and making it more interesting.

As for the gameplay, the game takes the basis of many of the modern JRPGs, such as the initiative of the battle. In fact, if we surprise the enemy, we will have an initial advantage for the fight, otherwise, the enemy will have an advantage over us, launching the first attack. In the game there is a selection of roles for the heroes, which is very reminiscent of the structure of the thirteenth chapter of Final Fantasy, since every time you change a role to a character, the attacks and skills will change along the battle, adopting and creating so always different strategies, depending on the situation. As the character increases in level, the role also has its own level, in fact as the latter increases you will have access to new classes along with other new skills for the current role, which most of the time are useful to defeat the enemy defenses when it comes to offensive roles. The enemies of the game did not seem so aggressive to us, in normal mode they are very accessible to a wide range of players of the genre, giving the right challenge until the end of the game. We were a bit disappointed with the AI ​​of our companions, it often happened to run into unarmed companions who did not react in any way to the battle, and to be able to unlock them we had to take control of the latter and return to the character we previously controlled. Although as mentioned earlier certain places are to be admired, unfortunately the same cannot be said of their structure, since they have long corridors with a linear structure, connected by a classic change of area. Unfortunately the exploration is poor in this chapter of Star Ocean, due to this pressing linearity. There has remained a problem that has accompanied the serious for a long time, the excessive obligatory grinding due to the excessive presence of enemies with high experience points, thus rapidly increasing the level of the characters and making them quickly invincible and indestructible.

As we had already anticipated a moment ago, the title is behind the times, the graphics engine is very, very thin, if it were not for those few polygonal models and that well-kept character design. Unfortunately, the title is dotted with browsing environments, and with some textures treated only marginally, which it is difficult to believe that it is a game developed for the current and past generation. Fortunately the melodies remained excellent, even if the lack of an incisive Opening, the game ost remain the strong point of the production.

 

Unfortunately, the wait was not completely rewarded, the result, although not completely negative, did not fully satisfy the expectations we had on this new and highly anticipated chapter of Star Ocean. The causes of a not great triumph are certainly those of an almost completely obvious narrative, if it were not for the mystery that lies behind the girl we will accompany along the journey, moreover, a graphic sector and poorly curated animations also affect the whole. and devoid of any quality. Despite everything, we feel compelled to say that Star Ocean V isn't an evil title, but it certainly isn't the masterpiece everyone expected.