Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness will probably not be remembered as one of the PlayStation 4’s finest. It’s greatly let down by technical issues with a camera that actively works against the game’s strengths: the epic sense of scale and the beautiful presentation. Dig beneath that, however, and you arrive at a game with an enjoyable narrative, fun characters, and a solid action JRPG combat system – all the stuff that’s actually important, in other words.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is one hell of a role playing game with complex mechanics unlike those of a regular JRPG. The main issue is that the narrative is quite predictable and the story as a whole feels uninspired. The presentation, on the other hand, is great and will help the player feel comfortable while playing this game.

The game’s presentation feels very dated, graphics performance fluctuates, players new to the franchise may feel left out in the cold, and the story is somewhat predictable. Yet, despite these issues, the game is ultimately very fun for RPG fans, both Japanese and Western, thanks to the meaty campaign, countless strategy options, and numerous unlockable and upgradeable skills and roles. Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is a perfect time-sink to game away those lazy summer afternoons on.

A game that has many cool ideas but, sadly, some of them doesn't work. Although it has a great combat system and character design, its narrative feels hallow because of the absence of cutscenes and its difficulty gives the sensation that it wasn't well-polished. These errors, among many other flaws, make this a wasted opportunity but not a bad game at all. How ironic!

If you consider how long we had to wait for Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness, everything seems rugged. Nonetheless this cornerstone of JRPG-franchises still manages to entertain on a solid level.

A really decent JRPG that pays homage to the very first Star Ocean. A game for old school fans with an interesting combat, anodyne story and too much backtracking for its own good, but a nice adventure nonetheless.

Excels in areas like combat and crafting but not in narrative or characterization. It has enough gameplay options to bring any JRPG fan to the table, but not everyone will leave content.

While Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness pulls together a strong story and great gameplay, it's plauged by technical issues.

There’s promise in Integrity and Faithlessness that Star Ocean’s next incarnation could be really something special. Right now, it’s just not quite there in this edition.

This is one of those games that are becoming rare to find. It has a great amount of positive qualities, but there are also quite important issues that prevent it from being something better.

More proof of the JRPG decadence these days. It's not only a problem about graphics or art design, it's about gameplay, and that's always bad. It seems that Tri-Ace and Square-Enix didn't put enough money and resources into this project.

It’s a very solid RPG that will likely appeal to fans of the series more than anything, but it certainly does appeal.

Star Ocean 5 is an all-around solid JRPG that has a tendency to play it safe, an unusual move for a developer known for trying really weird things. It rarely stands out in any meaningful way, but still remains thoroughly enjoyable.

In conclusion, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness truly encapsulates a feeling of excitement and adventure with a wide range of locations and enemies testing even skillful player’s abilities. In addition to this the debut of a newer and smoother combat system allows even new players to easily access the game’s world and combat within it.

Star Ocean 5 had the potential to be a great game, but the game feels only average now. The characters are interesting and look great, but the world itself feels empty. Combat looks great as well, but your team's AI is terrible sometimes. An 'OK' JRPG.

With some scenario problems and a flat evolution of characters, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness succeeds in being both fun and dynamic. A fun that, unfortunately, lasts less than other JRPGs do.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness feels like a solid title that got trapped in old gimmicks. It’s beautiful, but empty. There’s nostalgia, but in the wrong places. I still enjoyed much of my time with it, and I’ll even revisit it soon for the bonus dungeons. So many little things hold Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness back, but there’s still something under the flawed surface that’s worth giving a shot.

Integrity and Faithlessness is a much faster game than previous Star Ocean entries, but it sacrifices narrative and contextual depth for it.

A JRPG with great classic tones, but too "inflated" and formulaic to recover only through a discrete combat system.

Quotation forthcoming.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness can be loads of fun, but also doesn't really offer anything new. Fans of action JRPGs such as the Tales series will find something to enjoy, but it's definitely not a game for everyone.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness has some good ideas, but they don't jive with the messy camera, the short campaign, and the shallow combat. Fans of the series might be willing to put up with these shortcomings, but with games like Odin Sphere Leifthraser out there, it's hard to recommend it.

There just isn’t much here to get excited about, and it feels like the game is just checking the boxes of what it had to have, instead of bringing any new ideas to the table. Still, I kept playing. Even with all of its shortcomings the game kept me interested to its end. It just doesn’t feel like a full-priced title.

Star Ocean returns with its fifth installment, but after 20 years its evolution has not been quite good. The AI is terrible, the mechanics are really repetitive and the story is pretty dull. Only players who enjoy the classic JRPG games will have fun with this one.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness isn’t a terrible game by any means, but is let down by some poor story-telling, dreadful delivery and a lack of originality. If you don’t mind the slightly repetitive nature of the combat, the poor camera and hammy acting then it’s well worth a look.

It's probably that fans of action JRPGs will enjoy the game, but it sacrifices narrative and contextual depth.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is a beautiful game that is well crafted in some areas, especially in the menu and combat systems. Sadly, the game trips on its own inconsistent difficulty and poor or incomplete feel of the gameplay design.

Traditional to a fault, 505 hits every target on the JRPG dartboard...except the bullseye. [Sept 2016, p.107]

Strong premise, mediocre execution. [Issue#177, p.82]

The battles are greatly improved over The Last Hope, but that’s squandered on a predictable journey that’s woefully short, and lacking in artistic direction. [September 2016, p70]

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is the kind of game that is full of potential but needed a lot more development time.

The latest Star Ocean shines in its combat, but the small world filled with padding ensures repetition sets in quickly. With a bigger budget this could have been something special.

Despite its shortcomings, it’s enjoyable, but only for hardcore JRPG fans.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is a mess of a game. There's still something charming here and there which will appeal the most hardcore fan, but there's a couple things going wrong every time something goes right. Disappointing to say the least.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness isn't a bad game, it's just another Japanese rpg among many others. We've seen this done before, and a lot better.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness has serious flaws to be a leader in the J-RPG genre. A flat and full of clichés history does not compensate decent combat system.

To be honest, we expected much more from this game. A boring plot and characters you don't care about, along with stiff gameplay mechanics, make this a game for fans only. Not a good choice if you want to start with JRPGs.

Star Ocean is not an outstanding game, but fans will find many classic elements of the series in this chapter and the combat system is very good.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is a clunky, sometimes beautiful mess, navigating between some exciting highs and many disappointing lows to fall short of its promise.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is a weird game in that it's a by-the-books RPG one minute, and a completely new feeling the next.

I just wish that Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness was a little more refined: it isn’t an unpleasant experience, but there is very little ground-breaking about it.

Overall, I think you’ll find Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness to be a serviceable RPG in a time when serviceable doesn’t quite make the grade.

The newest Star Ocean is a serviceable JPRG marred by uneven production values and poor A.I.

With its galore of tropes and cliche characters, new Star Ocean can barely satisfy even the biggest fans of the franchise.

A clumsy attempt by Square Enix to reach the heights of the first three chapters, but the lack of personality and boldness, together with some technical issues and slightly flawed gameplay, make this fifth installment a game for hardcore fans only.

While it’s understandable that Square Enix wanted to create a Star Ocean more like the fondly remembered early titles of the series, they seem to have forgotten what made those titles great. Whatever it was, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness has none of it.

Despite having nearly seven years to figure out a way to improve upon The Last Hope, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is lacking in just about every department. Not even a solid soundtrack is enough to salvage this wreck. There’s nothing special about this below average RPG, and it completely misses the mark.

As often as it threatens to break the shackles of convention, it's just as content to fall in line with JRPG custom. [Issue#296, p.116]

Within half a dozen hours, party members move from distant strangers to lifelong companions. These shifts feel completely unnatural and alienate the player from forming emotional connections.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness carries a weight of expectation that it is incapable of satisfying. A legacy JRPG franchise, published by Square Enix, should have some meaning, but here it translates to pure mediocrity. Series fans may find some brighter elements to latch onto, but for JRPG stalwarts there are far better examples of the genre.

To be honest, our main worry is: have they played their game? And when you come to ask that kind of questions, it's usually a very bad omen. Star Ocean V has some good ideas, some nice features but failing to tell a story as tri-Ace does in this new entry, displaying something so technically obsolete can only result in a bad RPG.

Although Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness has a more interesting story than the one we saw in the last entry in the series, it has so many problems that make it seem like a low budget game.

Between its endless backtracking, lengthy, unskippable cutscenes and space battles in which nothing happens, this feels like a five hour game that was padded out to five-times its length, with some ridiculous cleavage grafted onto it in an attempt to distract. Integrity and Faithlessness is not a game that respects or deserves your time, and perhaps Star Ocean is a series that's ready to be jettisoned from the airlock.

While Star Ocean started as an innovative series full of fun, bold ideas, its current form amounts to the most middle-of-the-road RPG experience you could possibly have. It's not particularly awful, but in a reality full of RPGs, so many better options exist.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness wants to be a grand sci-fi JRPG, but its mediocre production values undercut it at almost every opportunity.

Recycled content, excessive grinding, boring fetch quests, and bad save points are just some of its smaller shortcomings. What's more concerning is its inability to give you reason to care about the characters or the journey. In a generation where RPGs are pushing the boundaries with better storytelling and unique worlds, this just isn't going to cut it. It's sad to see a franchise that once captivated me continue to fall from grace.

I hate being so harsh on Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, because I love the series, and I’m excited by the potential for greatness within its conceits. For the first fourth of the game, I believed it might realize that potential. By its end, Integrity and Faithlessness feels like a black hole, its good ideas never able to escape the pull of an underwhelming, underdeveloped game.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness' payoff was not worth the time I put into it. The story feels bloated and empty, with no worthwhile emotional payoff in character development or narrative. Combat and its subsequent upgrade systems are genuinely fun, but the overall experience is held back from being great by issues elsewhere.

A lacklustre offering in a long-running series of great games. A huge shame. [Sept 2016, p.80]

Overall, Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness is not a good game. It’s plagued with a bland narrative, generic characters, repetitive gameplay, unskippable custcenes with sparse savepoints, unbalanced battle system, dumb AI, a jarring camera, inconsistent visuals and performance and an unsatisfying ending.

This game tries to hitch a ride on the nostalgia train without paying the due fees first. For hardcore Star Ocean fans only.

Woefully inadequate AI makes boring combat frustrating.

Star Oean: Integrity & Faithlessness does not try anything new, but it builds on JRPG stereotypes that we have experienced too often. It's simply too cliche.

Old school to a fault, the worst thing about this Japanese role-player is it doesn’t seem to have any idea just how clichéd and outdated it really is.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is a microcosm of everything wrong with modern JRPGs, from its slapdash presentation to its trope-filled narrative. Worst of all, it's seen fit to cram in everything that genre aficionados hate: unskippable cutscenes, greyed-out save points and painfully poor AI are just a few of the hurdles you'll face on your way to fun.