Star Ocean - Integrity and Faithlessness (5): Unfinished, or just uninspired...?

I was going to complete this damn game, no matter what it took.

You see, as a huge fan of Star Ocean 4 (The Last Hope), this was a day-one purchase for me. Little did I realize just how much of a mistake that was at the time.

This time around - unlike the other four false starts I had, I saw this through to the end, and frankly, I was left more frustrated and confused than satisfied; though less annoyed than the other attempts.

What I Liked

A lot of flack was given to this game for cut-and-paste enemies and battle animations; this didn't bother me as a fan of The Last Hope. Actually, I enjoyed the battle engine more here than The Last Hope or Till The End Of Time (3) by far. Once you've learned more of the battle skills the fights flow naturally. The only thing then missing was the Blindside tactic from The Last Hope and the battle engine would have easily been one of the best out there.

It really is a beautiful game. Besides the character models it's arguably more visually appealing in areas than even Dragon Quest XI on a PS4 Pro. This is especially true when looking at detail on large castles and dungeon areas.

I grew to appreciate the cutscenes, which go from non-interactive to interactive and had a strange feel around them the first time. Not my favorite, but again, I grew to appreciate them for what they were.

Final boss was your standard 'J'RPG fare, but for some reason I enjoyed fighting this one more than almost any other. Stage was simple layout as well with minimal twists and false corridors (i.e. no "last boss stage" burnout).

What I Didn't Like

I have absolutely no idea what they were trying to do with that story. By the time the last fight came around I knew what we were doing, but not really why. The thing is, the game DOES show you cutscenes about this, but the underlying story is told very poorly. You're left to your own devices to put the pieces together, and for a game with this many cutscenes (quite a few of them useless), I find that unacceptable.

Speaking of cutscenes - some of them are EXTREMELY long. One in particular looks like it was ripped off of a Star Trek: Enterprise episode and it had to be at least 3 minutes long of just...irrelevant talk. I love me some cutscenes, but they'd better make me chuckle or make me interested. These did neither.

The beginning of the game has you involved in a war. This war doesn't really get resolved. I mean it does, but it doesn't. That's a problem. It was arguably more engaging than a different war you end up getting involved in that has nothing to do with the original plot.

Eventually, you'll get fast travel options, but prior to that you're footing it, and this gets annoying real fast. Even though the overall map is tiny compared to other such games, it's the fact that you're backtracking over and over again. One quest in particular has you chasing an NPC literally all over the place.

Welch has been toned down. She will occasionally say something pleasantly inappropriate, but she's nowhere near as prominent as she was in, say, Till The End Of Time.

Difficulty spikes abound as you will find enemies that you can beat with one finger, then find some boss that one-shots people with ease. One boss in particular (to be fair, this is an 'optional' boss...I put that in quotes because not doing this results in you missing weapons I consider mandatory to beat most required bosses including the final one), will happily chase your primary (might as well be only) healer down to take them out and ignore the four-sided beating they're getting from more durable characters.

Which brings me to my final complaint: the game's AI.

Unlike other games, you equip Roles that should (I stress should) influence AI behavior. In practice, certain ones simply don't work like they should. One role describes itself as making your AI move whenever they're in danger; yet the 'optional' boss I mentioned above has no issues nailing your two healers because they stand right in the path of its destruction. This of course forces you to take control of them to keep them safe. Another role says that it makes your healer heal more frequently; in my testing, this was only true when the healer themselves was NOT in danger; which of course, against the worse bosses, doesn't work. (And yes, I had disabled all other non-healing skills. It didn't matter).

There is, of course, no New Game Plus and therefore no real reason to play the game again. But you can clearly tell that they had lofty plans for this game and either ran out of money or ran out of ideas.

I may get 'heat' for this, but I say it's worth a play through if you can tolerate the terrible first 10-ish hours or so.