Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

[Kat]

So I know there was a general Star Ocean thread a while back that seems to have been lost, but I haven't seen anything about this game recently. I know it only hit NA about a month ago. I'd read that they tried to go back to their Tri-Ace roots for this one, and that they'd also taken inspiration from Star Ocean 3. I enjoyed 1 and 2 and 3 was a favorite of mine, so I decided to give it a shot despite the negative reviews.  So far, it's ok.

The game looks and sounds great - While the graphics aren't exactly next gen, they're very well done and certainly scream Star Ocean. Likewise, the music is pretty nice(although I'll admit nothing has been super memorable so far). The battle system seems to have taken it's roots straight from Star Ocean 3, with adjustments for new systems and the like. It has a gambit-like system where you assign up to four roles to each party member, which adjust their battle behavior and adjust stats a bit. The characters, while somewhat generic(Hey look, another blue haired swordsman leading the cast) and trope-filled, still have pretty cool designs. They're sort of likeable. I mean, if you're a fan of JRPGs or Star Ocean in general it won't come as a surprise.

There are little bits of charm/lame puns everywhere. In a marketplace area I walked by a woman who proclaimed "I could look at these wares all day long...". Oh, and she was looking at a guy across the street, not a stall. A weapons vendor, meanwhile, wanted to 'axe' me a question. Overused? Sure, but still caught me off guard. Speaking of weapons vendors:

Honorable nitpick: In the very first town there's a weapon/armor merchant proudly manning his shop and touting about how great his weapons are, whilst standing in front of several bins of fruit and vegetables. Not a trace of any sort of weaponry or protective gear around.

So, anyone else playing this?

[Supercoolmike]

     ya I love the game, Only nitpicks I have with the game is that the game is very short compared to its siblings. SO3 I feel has the longest story and this version really can be completed within 20 hrs as long as you'r not trying to complete every side mission. The other thing I hate about it is mostly on the review(s) side of the game, A lot of complaints go towards the game when it actually has a mechanic to battle against said issue but just weren't utilized so they had a bad experience. For example there will be a couple of sections where you have to protect Anne during a fight, the only catch here is that ALL of the enemies will only focus on her and if she dies that's an automatic game over. Yes it feels very cheap cuz even the boss of the area will do the same thing and she gets melted within a few seconds of combat, However the reserve rush mechanic will battle against this as it would wipe out the whole enemy team in one move if used correctly. Last nitpick of the game is that you NEVER get to be able to control Relia, so the majority of the time she is just doing her own thing wandering what the hell she is even casting ( i think its buffs for your characters).

     The game may not be next gen in graphics but it totally fits the next gen material in other aspects. Constant 60 FPS with a team of 7 characters on the field plus enemies. when near the end of the game skills and magic are everywhere on your screen and I never really experienced frame rate issues during all that chaos. The crafting system is huge, full of capabilities that will give you an edge against the enemy and sometimes in certain cases will flat out almost make you god like. The roles in this game is the most important mechanics in the game as they will make your characters more powerful and increase there AI Intelligence; so they will actually do attacks/skills instead of just standing there wondering what to do when they're in the middle of the battle ( yes, this happens if you further decrease there intelligence). Of course the best roles in the game have requirements and they mostly need other specified skills to be a certain level to unlock.

     Just recently completed the post game dungeon (That only unlocks until the main story is completed) with all my characters being above lvl 230 and at least 3 characters having there ultimate weapons. Currently doing another run but on Chaos Difficulty; The enemies have 2x - HP/MP and 1.5x - Atk/Def/Etc... Overall I enjoy this game and I plan to 100% it.

[Kat]

16 minutes ago, Supercoolmike said:

Last nitpick of the game is that you NEVER get to be able to control Relia, so the majority of the time she is just doing her own thing wandering what the hell she is even casting ( i think its buffs for your characters).

I gave her the Scavenger role so she loiters around on the edge of the battlefield and makes me more money, so I guess there's that.

I have a couple nitpicks. Having 7+ people on the battlefield at once is cool, but it also gets really chaotic. I've also run into situations where several enemies use particular spells(I'm looking at you, Earth Gale) repeatedly, causing you to get knocked up, fall to the ground, get up, get knocked up, fall to the ground, get back up, etc. Circumvented by switching characters to deal with the problematic enemies, but if your party happened to cluster together so help you. Relating to the that, I sort of disliked having the battles on the same map. It's obvious they designed the maps with huge battles in mind, resulting in some very generic/linear paths. It was annoying because the maps often railroad you into battles by having larger areas with fights connected by small pathways. This is probably because of my love for Xenoblade Chronicles X, in which the terrain wasn't tailored for most of the battles. You just had to deal with whatever environment you were in.

The crafting is top notch though. While I do sort of miss SO3's Inventing it is satisfying to actually get to craft the stuff yourself and see the results right away. As for the length, I'm only a few hours in so far. The pacing does feel rather fast if you just go through the main story, but I'm going off and crafting/grinding/sidequesting a lot. I'd imagine the people complaining are just rushing through the story.

So I've also heard the post-game content is rather lacking. As spoiler free as possible, is this true? SO3 had a ton of stuff, from all those extra Sphere levels to the official post-game dungeon. I never properly played SO4 so I'm not sure about that.

[Supercoolmike]

a quick tip on those quests is that you should just focus on the ones where the reward is going to give you a skill or specialty ( the manual/book looking reward) since the other quests hardly give out anything great and may just be wasting your time, unless you were planning to complete them all anyway.

The Maze of Tribulations ( name of post game dungeon)  is definitely shorter then what SO3 had to offer but that doesn't mean its not going to kick your ass. Its shorter in retrospect because a lot of people complained about how big and tedious it was in previous titles. So MoT is shorter in comparison but that just means the difficulty spike is huge when progressing through it. Of course the real difficulty in the game is chaos mode but since you don't unlock it from the get go, the best thing you can do is complete complete some of the battle trophies since the roles unlocked that way can transfer over to a new save file AS LONG as you keep the files separate. 

[The Legendary Zoltan]

You guys must be the two greatest people ever! Star Ocean V is great. I definitely prefer previous games in the series but it still gave me the Star Oceany goodness I was looking for. The downsides for me are that the story is not very interesting to me, the side quests are too boring, and the private actions are HORRIBLE. They're not funny and they're not interesting!

But I had a good time with the battle system, a great time with the roles and specialties, and THE TIME OF MY LIFE with the crafting system. It's pretty much exactly the same as the one in Star Ocean 4 but with the addition of the creative synthesis mode. That thing is CRAZY! Star Ocean 4 is still my favorite though.