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Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

Started by Dream of Omnimaga, April 13, 2016, 11:02:21 PM

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gameblabla

yo dj,
that sounds great to me ! (except the crazy dialogue boxes, seriously wtf ?)
Not sure how to interpret your comment on the graphics... i thought they looked great.
(I must mention however i do not own a PS4 nor the Xbone and i have not played any AAA game for a while...)

Seems that you enjoyed the game, i might pick up the PS3 version, even thought it's fully in Japanese.

Also... they censored Miki's panties, right ? I thought it would kill your enjoyment for this game !

Still, it makes me wonder how they can c up something as trivial as a dialogue box....
  • Calculators owned: None (used to own an Nspire and TI-89)

Dream of Omnimaga

#16
YEah, the real-time dialogue idea was poorly executed IMHO. It's a nice idea and the game won't get interrupted every minute (although there are so many tutorial boxes that stops gameplay at the beginning that it kinds of defeat the point of real-time), but I wish it was polished more. I'm sure people would be ok if the dialog boxes became slightly misaligned when the character gets out of the screen and remained at the bottom for a while before disappearing.

This can be a serious issue if a character has an important clue or item to give, but won't ever say it again a second time. But I guess that was their first attempt and that the 6th game (if it happens one day) will fix it. I hope they make an update, though.


I could care less about the censorship, although I wish they left the game intact for more entertainment. Censorship was rampant back in the SNES days too and they often removed too many important or funny things. Also auto-censorship is not how you fight terrorism. You stand up against it by not restricting yourself.

On a side note, I wonder if this game shouldn't be the 6th? Because I just realized there is a Game Boy color game called Star Ocean: Blue Sphere, that is a direct sequel to The Second Story. I'll edit the topic title and remove V from it in case the new game is really SO6. :P EDIT According to Wikipedia, The Last Hope is 4 and it was even called Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope in Japan.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

gameblabla

QuoteI could care less about the censorship, although I wish they left the game intact for more entertainment. Censorship was rampant back in the SNES days too and they often removed too many important or funny things.
I guess it's not as bad as Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE where they censored swimsuits and more...
Thankfully, fan made patches for that game but i wished they did not censored the game so it could be preserved better in the future...

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on July 23, 2016, 04:25:36 AM
Because I just realized there is a Game Boy color game called Star Ocean: Blue Sphere, that is a direct sequel to The Second Story. I'll edit the topic title and remove V from it in case the new game is really SO6. :P
I thought the Game boy color game was a spinoff ?

I will see a playthrough of that game just to see how awful the dialogue boxes are.
  • Calculators owned: None (used to own an Nspire and TI-89)

Dream of Omnimaga

#18
Yeah the GB game is a sequel to The Second Story apparently. But for whatever reasons it doesn't seem to count as a 3rd game. Perhaps they did like Final Fantasy X-2, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns.


EDIT: By the way, I just checked graphics from SO4 and SO5 PS3 graphics definitively looks like they're a downgrade from SO4. I think SO5 PS4 has superior graphics, but they are not a very big improvement over SO4 if we don't take 4K resolution support into account. The main improvement is the frame rate, but then if we compare SO4 with SO5 on the PS3 then some textures look more blurry in SO5.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Dream of Omnimaga

#19
So I just played  over 6 hours straight. I need to figure out the pattern to learn new specialities. I wonder if there is one that lowers skills pts requirements like in SO2...

Also battles with 7 chars are epic.

EDIT: Several hours after making this post, I realize that sometimes, the controls or AI is crap in this game, at least compared to SO4. For example, in narrow or complex dungeon rooms the character will sometimes get stuck attacking from behind a wall and miss every target, and when you need to use a lot of items or cast spell, requiring switching characters non-stop, things go haywire fast because auto-targeting always targets the worst possible enemy.

Also that battle against Der Suul was freaking hard x.x and on top of that, when you save your game before the fight there is another fight plus about 10 minutes of cutscenes, so if you die, you need to watch all cutscenes and do both fights all over again.



As for the story, I kinda like it, but some plot twists are really repetitive. Basically, Remia gets captured every 15 minute during the first 15 hours of gameplay or so then you have to rescue her, with someone sacrifying his life in the process. Meanwhile, Victor quits the party every 15 minute as well, so after a few hours of gameplay, you kind of see it coming really.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Dream of Omnimaga

#20
So yeah @gameblabla if you haven't purchased this game yet, I would advise that you don't. Instead, pick games between the first four (avoiding The Last Hope if you hate long unskippable cutscenes). That's unless you don't mind an RPG with broken battle controls, rigged enemy AI, broken NPC interaction, broken speciality system, lack of any clue about where to get quest items and a considerable amount of backtracking.

The game isn't that bad at the beginning and the broken NPC interaction gets a pass since almost all NPC's give no clues anyway, but once you get halfway into the game and realize that you still can't do alchemy and that only 1 option in the creation section is available, you realize that something is really wrong with the game. And the problem is that Tri-Ace and Square-Enix seems to have made the difficulty as cheap as possible in order to artificially extend the game length, and the poor battle controls when selecting targets or characters makes the difficulty even harder than it actually should be, getting you in for a very frustrating experience.


Let me give you examples of how cheap this game can be:

-Late game, certain bosses and enemies will almost only target or go after Miki, your only healing/reviving spellcaster. This can't be a coincidence, considering this even happens when she is set to avoid getting close to enemies.

-Lots of instant kill (or multi-hit attacks that kills you instantly), often as soon as the battle starts. Oh and often on Miki too. It also seems that enemies there always target anyone that tries to use revival items, so reviving someone in those battles is impossible.

-Lots of backtracking. You always have to go all the way back from the east of the world to the west, or north to south, and back and forth, repeatedly, with no teleportation available until the end of the game. I guess that can be a good occasion to grind, since old maps usually gets populated by stronger enemies over time, but it sucks that they chose that way to extend the game length.

-In most RPGs, finding special items or skills requires talking to NPCs to get clues. In SO5, you have to buy the official strategy guide or Google it (and it's not like a lot of info is available yet on Google). Oh, and finding them will require doing even more backtracking unless you wait until the end where you get a teleporting device.

-Unlike previous Star Ocean games, most specialities such as alchemy will not be unlocked by leveling up other specialities or your characters. Instead, you have to complete side-quests by finding special items and bringing them back to a specific quest board. So you might very well find yourself unable to unlock those special chests nor use alchemy even after beating the final boss.

-In a few occasions, the game will trick you into saving your game inside a dungeon that cannot be exited until you beat it. If you're underleveled or miss a very important item/skill, then your save file is screwed and you have to restart the entire game from the beginning. At least, the final dungeon warns you about that, but some enemies are so strong (even more than the first boss) that this still most likely managed to trap unsuspecting players.

-Half of the storyline is Relia getting captured every 30 minutes and to a lesser extent Victor leaving your party every 15 minute out of the blue. It kinds of get repetitive after a while, although at least this improves late-game.

-In some occasions, you're about to reach a save point, expecting to safely preserve your game progress. But noooooo, sometimes a cutscene will happen right before, with a mini-boss warping in. Often, those are not very hard to beat, but it's still fscking cheap. That said, I had this happen once in The Second Story too.


And don't get me started on the game flaws:

-Camera often goes haywire during battles

-If a character dies he cannot be selected in battles anymore. This is a serious issue when you try to revive him then need to manually move him elsewhere on the field. Often you'll end up selecting the wrong character afterward. Oh and when you die you are very prone to make the automatically selected character do an action by accident, putting him in danger as well.

-Selecting a different enemy target is incredibly hard. Not only the camera is an issue, but also it's pretty much trial and error, not to mention the controls are impossible to memorize.

-Talking to moving NPCs is even harder than beating Storm Dragon. After a few hours you'll just give up and never interact with them again (it's not like they give much clues anyway, except maybe a few quests)

-When you're game over, it takes a long while to load the game back, but that probably doesn't count since most modern games have the same problem. But in this game it's even more frustrating when the game over happens as a result of an aforementioned flaw.


On the plus side, at least now item creation has a 100% success rate, so it's no longer luck-based, and you don't have to backtrack all the way back to a spaceship in order to create items either. Graphics are not perfect but they're still nice and it doesn't abuse unskippable cutscenes as much The Last Hope did. But I would say the game deserves a 55-65% score at most.


So in summary, my opinion about SO games are this:

-SO1 original: 95/100

-SO1 PSP: 95/100

-SO2 PS1: 90/100 (lower score only due to game freezing bugs)

-SO2 PSP: 95/100 (it would get 100 if it had preserved the original game difficulty)

-SO3: Never played it

-SO4: 80/100 (too many unskippable cutscenes, else it would get 95)

-SO5: 60/100 (cheap difficulty and too many problems). It's a shame because this game felt more like SO than SO4 did.


I hope that Square-Enix eventually does like they did with Final Fantasy XIV and re-release an improved version.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

gameblabla

Well, thanks for the review DJ.
This sounds like the kind of game i would absolutely hate.
I hate games that rely on cheap difficulty for their lackluster content and lengh.
The worst offender of this kind in my opinion, although not an rpg, is Tails Sky Patrol : extreme difficulty with only 4 short levels.
I guess i will pass on this one.

I just played Baten Kaitos for 29 hours and it is basically the complete opposite of SO5. (according to you, that is)
The clever battle card system, though at first annoying, makes each battle unique and the story is pretty interesting with some twists.
Most of all, it does not depend solely on a damsel being in distress. (or some other c like that)

Seems that you are recommending me either SO1 or SO2 PSP :
Too bad SO2 for either platforms is expensive, even more so then SO3 !

Guess you should have spent that money on SO3, not SO5.
I'm sorry you bought a less than stellar game.
  • Calculators owned: None (used to own an Nspire and TI-89)

Dream of Omnimaga

#22
To be fair, though, I was kind guilty of artificially increasing difficulty in my past calc RPGs. :P But again, back then I was still learning to program and used no ASM libs, plus my games were generally much easier than the average calculator RPG (other people's games made the first battle nearly impossible). But I made many RPGs in which half of the game was grinding. :P

As for SO5, it's now easier with relying on online walkthroughs to find items. I had no choice (I beat SO4 without using any external help), but it's still a nightmare to find items. Also I can teleport between locations now but it's still kinda tedious with the long load times and it sucks they had to wait until the very end of the game before giving us such ability.

Right now I threw away my alternate save file that was in one of the final areas and restarted before heading there. Instead I'm not raising my skills, doing quests and finding as many enemies as I can. Also yeah I am now relying on a cheap trick to win that is identical to bloody armors in SO2: Have Miki equipped with Dead Man Walking. This role drains her HP very fast during battle, but makes her invincible against every attack (I think it even blocks status aliments). With the role that speeds up spell casting and the healer role equipped, she's now pretty much invincible.


Regarding SO3 I already have a copy. I just never happened to play it myself yet. I heard some people who don't like it, but many others say they like it. Go figure.

As for SO2 it's not that expensive over here considering how rare it is. You can get a copy for $50, which is high, but we would expect having to pay $100 for such game. The PSP version was cheaper here, though.

If you play SO2, make sure to save often, though, because a game bug causes the game to freeze (black screen) after battles, even though it's rare. It's more common in the Cave of Trial, which has 13 floors and no save point.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Dream of Omnimaga

So I finally beat one of the Storm Dragons (the LV 96 one in Northern Territory of Sohma). I got my ass kicked last time because my equipment and skills sucked, but I racked up my skill points in the last two days to try maxing out some of them. I think I'm around LV 60 so the fight took several minutes (he has over 3 millions HP and I hit between 1500 and 10000) but Miki had Dead Man Walking, healer and that other role that speeds up spellcasting equipped, meaning she was invincible and kept spamming healing spells just fast enough to keep my entire party alive. I got a quite powerful weapon for Victor. I'm gonna try to find the other Cathedrals of Oblivion later to fight the other Storm Dragons.

I wonder if the weapon rewards there are the best in the game?
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Dream of Omnimaga

I just beat every Storm Dragon as well as the game. I'm curious about what gets unlocked now. Final boss was quite challenging but not as bad as the first mini boss enemy in the last area
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Dream of Omnimaga

So now I am doing the bonus dungeon. I wonder what's the max level in this game, because I beat three bosses there so far and the guy with the Spicule attack was friggin annoying.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

gameblabla

Just curious, how much time you spent playing on it ?
Sounds like you spent more than twenty hours. (or maybe the game was short but difficult)
  • Calculators owned: None (used to own an Nspire and TI-89)

Dream of Omnimaga

Yes I spent more than 20 hours. I don't remember the exact play time, but it was more around 26-30 hours, just like Chrono Trigger.

You could theoretically finish the game in 20 hours in easy mode by not doing any private action nor side-quest, but then beating most mid to end game bosses would be as hard as lasting 1 hour without dying at Hong Kong 97. The problem is that in this SO game, finding specialities for item creation and even more rudimentary stuff requires doing side quests, some of which are very difficult or tedious. Even after completing the game I still don't have all specialities and it took me until 70% into completition before I finally unlock alchemy.

By the way, like in SO4, once you beat the game there is an extra dungeon that gets unlocked. I think it's in almost every SO game (in SO2, there is a way to come back on a virtual reproduction of Expel planet and use an airship there to reach the bonus dungeon)
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

TIfanx1999

So, I really liked the soundtrack in The Last Hope (as mentioned previously) and I'm really thinking about getting into this series. Which game do you recommend I play first? I see you did a mini review, but I was wondering which you thought would be the best introduction to the series. Kind of leaning towards lLast Hope. The music really was fantastic. :D Are the cutscenes really overdone though? Do you think another would be a better first choice? Note that I don't have a PSP or PS4.

Dream of Omnimaga

I would recommend Star Ocean The Second Story on the Playstation. The Last Hope is not bad but the cutscenes are overdone.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

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