Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is the fifth game in the main series and the first one on current generation hardware. The story is set between the second and third games, on the planet Faykreed. It follows protagonist Fidel and Miki as they come across Relia, a child with unimaginable power. Transitioning seamlessly in and out of combat is extremely impressive, as is the ability to instantly switch to any of the seven party members with the D-Pad. The music is excellent. However, the same cannot be said about the battle system.
Players can perform a weak or strong attack, as well as one of four slotted skills, depending on how far they are from the target. The fighting feels good, but the low number of options means you’ll be spamming 1-2 skills. You also learn skills very slowly, and having all 7 party members active at the same time makes battles chaotic. The brain-dead AI means you’ll often switch to individual characters to prevent them screwing up.
The franchise consists of 35-40 hour long sprawling adventures that take players on an epic journey. But here, none of that is true. Players are confined to a small number of areas with painful backtracking. The story itself is uneventful, due to the fact that the game doesn’t have any cutscenes from the wars. Most of the storytelling is done with characters talking during forced slow walking sequences. If JRPGs are expected to make a comeback, it certainly doesn’t begin with Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness.
