Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness is out on PlayStation 4 today, giving players their first chance to explore a new world and lead the game’s (kind of ridiculous) seven-member party into battle against enemies of all shapes and sizes. But we’re not having nearly as much fun with tri-Ace’s latest RPG as we expected after our two-hour demo at PAX East.
Mechanically, Integrity And Faithlessness offers exactly what you’d expect from the next entry in the Star Ocean franchise. Like Star Ocean: The Last Hope, and Till The End Of Time before it, SOIAF uses a combination of traditional roleplaying mechanics and real-time combat to tell the story of its protagonist. This time around, players follow the adventures of Fidel Camuze, the son of a renowned military officer trying to protect his village as his country teeters on the brink of war. Over the course of the game, which tri-Ace says players should need 25-30 hours to complete, you’ll also meet a colorful cast of characters that includes Fidel’s childhood friends and powerful allies from a variety of backgrounds.
Sadly, Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness isn’t doing a great job of keeping us entertained. For starters, the game’s story is terribly uninteresting. Nations with longstanding resentment are now on the brink of war. A kid with amnesia possesses unfathomable power. Representatives of advanced civilizations must decide whether or not to break universal laws they’ve sworn to uphold by exposing residents of an underdeveloped planet to concepts and technologies far beyond their current capability. Stop me if you’ve heard any of this before.
Amazing character design from Akira “Akiman” Yasuda is largely wasted on Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness. As some of you might remember, we were particularly impressed with the work that went into so many of the game’s characters. But most of Star Ocean is spent exploring some of the most bland (and downright ugly) environments in recent memory. Textures appear to be of a much lower quality than the system is capable of supporting. In some cases, Star Ocean looks like an upscaled PS3 game. Quite frankly, Xenoblade Chronicles X offered better looking environments, despite launching a year earlier on a significantly less-powerful platform (Wii U).
Here’s a screenshot from Xenoblade Chronicles X
Here’s a screenshot from Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness:
See the difference?
There are plenty of games on PS3/360, like The Last Of Us or Destiny, with environments that look as good (if not better) than the locales we’ve seen in Integrity And Faithlessness. Such underwhelming landscapes might’ve been acceptable in another era, but seem inexcusable on a platform where gamers can enjoy The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or the Skyrim remaster debuting in October. Maybe things get better during the latter half of the game, but nothing we’ve seen on Faykreed has us convinced the remaining sections of the game are worth exploring.
Star Ocean’s characters are similarly uninteresting, despite their strong visual design. Everyone in Fidel’s party is pretty much the walking definition of a stereotype. There’s The Good Son, The Childhood Friend, The Womanizer, The Fanservice, etc. and the various NPCs you meet in SOIAF don’t display much more depth. No one seems to be experiencing much personal growth. No one’s personal story is interesting. Even Star Ocean’s Private Actions, one-on-one encounters designed to strengthen (or at least impact) interpersonal relationships between party members, are frequently so insipid we lost all desire to engage with one of the franchise’s marquee mechanics.
Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness ’ combat is also surprisingly underwhelming. Admittedly, the lack of challenge in our run is entirely our fault. We chose the easiest difficulty, in hopes of avoiding the usual JRPG grind, since we’ve never been fans of the repetitive combat so common to the genre. So maybe we shouldn’t be shocked that combat has mostly devolved into constant mashing of the X and O buttons. But some of the issues we with SOIAF ’s combat can’t be fixed with a slight increase of our enemies’ battlefield competence.
Despite giving players a massive party to control, SOIAF either doesn’t give players a way to manage aggro, or failed to explain it so thoroughly that we have no clue how to break enemy concentration. Since you can only control one character at a time, it’s pretty much impossible to isolate your damage output, to your preferred tank(s), like players do in multiplayer RPGs. Even powerful Rush abilities, the Star Ocean equivalent of a Limit Break (Final Fantasy) or an ult (every MOBA ever), frequently aren’t enough to make your foes switch targets. This makes protection missions particularly frustrating, with players flailing helplessly at enemies only to be ignored while they slaughter the person(s) you were supposed to protect.
To its credit, Integrity And Faithlessness offers players a dizzying number of ways to customize their party. Each member can be assigned up to four roles, unlocked and improved using the skill points earned in battle, which alter their battlefield effectiveness in a variety of ways. Like any good JRPG, Star Ocean also features a staggering number of items and equipment to be sold, purchased, found, earned or crafted. Players choose the Battle Skills available to each party member and even which signeturgy (spells) the casters are allowed to use. If all that isn’t enough to make you feel comfortable, you can always take direct control of anyone in the party as needed. You’ll revert back to Fidel when the fight is over but anyone is fair game during a brawl.
Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness isn’t a bad game. At least, not what we’ve seen so far. The problem is that it doesn’t seem to be a particularly good one, either. When we heard the game would be shorter than its predecessors, by dozens of hours, we hoped the streamlined campaign might even out the story-to-experience-grind ratio. But that hasn’t proven to be the case thus far. And the bits of story we do manage wring out of Star Ocean are pretty boring. Integrity And Faithlessness will undoubtedly find a loving audience, just as its predecessors have. But there’s a good chance we’ll have moved on to something else by then.
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for more Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness coverage throughout 2016 and for as long as Square Enix supports Star Ocean in the months following launch.
