Characters freely roam a set area for the battle using the left stick, and players can swap between characters at any time during the fight. These large scale fights are frantic and genuinely enjoyable. Action-based battles take place with up to seven party members. Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness’ saving grace is its combat, and even that has flaws. Overall, the game ends up feeling (and looking) less polished as a result. The fact that tri-Ace chose to implement more traditional cutscenes later on exposes the stark contrast in quality between the two styles. In other instances, party members may have conversations on-the-side of the main discussion, and voiced dialogue will even sometimes overlap. Character models may move or perform an action during the scene and the player can unknowingly miss all of it. Herein lies a glaring issue with this presentation style: without a fixed camera, the player can miss key elements of these scenes, thus cheapening the experience. This style of cutscene was implemented to emphasise a more seamless integration of story and gameplay. Other cutscenes are handled via real-time conversational moments in the game world the player maintains control of Fidel and can often wander (and move the camera) within a small radius as these unfold. They even become more prevalent in the second half of the game.
These traditional cutscenes are, for the most part, done quite well and used to emphasize more significant moments in the story. To quell a lot of speculation: there are traditional cutscenes in Integrity and Faithlessness. Even then, I found myself extremely reluctant to waste time pursuing any side quests at all. The only motivation to complete these quests is the offer of some useful rewards. As you can imagine, these get tiresome very quickly. You take on the quest from the board, and you submit the quest to the board. On top of that, you often never even meet the NPC who posted the request. Never do side-quests deviate from being formulaic you’re either killing monsters, gathering items or locating something or someone. They never expire and you can take on as many quests as you want at one time. In each city, job boards offer side quests for you to complete at your leisure. Enemy encounters also remain the same each time you traverse through a map. This makes navigating previously explored areas a mundane task. Be thankful that the landscapes are beautiful you’ll frequently backtrack through the same few maps throughout the main narrative. Enemies are diverse and antagonist character designs are generally fine, albeit mildly unoriginal. I found the party member’s character designs to be generally quite attractive – Fiore’s peculiar wardrobe is sure to make the odd player cringe, but this is entirely subjective. Roaming through futuristic facilities becomes less interesting when nearly every room looks identical to the last. Dungeon designs, unfortunately, range from looking fine to uninspired.
Grassy plains, snow-covered mountains and deserts are all visually appealing. Star Ocean’s world features a diverse range of landscapes and these are, more often than not, quite beautiful.
Star ocean free#
Is it worth the investment? Feel free to read on. That being said, its combat is still sufficiently enjoyable. Unfortunately, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness struggles with genre clichés and poor execution of important gameplay mechanics.
Star ocean series#
Developer tri-Ace designed this JRPG with newcomers in mind, allowing even those unfamiliar with the series to follow along. The most recent title, Integrity and Faithlessness, releases seven years after the previous title, The Last Hope. For those of you unfamiliar with this series, I recommend our article on 20 years with Star Ocean. It remains a series known alongside the Tales series for providing quality JRPG comfort food. STAR OCEAN: Integrity and Faithlessness_20160717182813 The Star Ocean franchise is long-running and beloved by fans for its engaging characters, vast science-fiction worlds and action-based combat.
0 kommentar(er)
