The Star Ocean series therefore celebrates its 4th anniversary with this fifth episode. You would think that tri-Ace and Square Enix would work hard to give us a very memorable episode, just to mark the occasion. Especially since this very pompously baptized Star Ocean V: Integrity and Faithlessness also inaugurates the passage of the series on PlayStation 360 (return to a Sony exclusive after a brief passage on Xbox XNUMX). So many things to celebrate. Unfortunately, the celebrations turn sour within a few hours of gameplay.
BAD STORIES
The title puts you in control of Fidel Camuze, young and talented soldier from the village of Stahl as well as son of the local fencing master, with a glorious reputation. Initially sent to the capital of central Résulie to ask for reinforcements against the criminal organization Eithalon, the latter will find himself, with a troop of merry men freshly constituted, in the heart of an intergalactic conflict. At the heart of his wanderings is Relia, a mysterious little girl with exceptional powers, who of course attracts the greed of all kinds of malicious people. As you will have understood, we prefer to keep the majority of the plot in the shadows. But it is still necessary to specify that there is not much to expect from it. In truth, the entire narrative aspect of this fifth opus is a failure, from the slapdash script to the useless and poorly written dialogues through a non-existent staging. On this subject, one wonders how tri-Ace could boast of “fluidifying” the narration, with cut-scenes directly integrated into the adventure. The break with the thread of the game is still there, since your hero is suddenly limited in his movements while he chatters with his comrades. However, unlike a classic cinematic, the camera remains in its initial position. No change of shot, no editing. As a result, these dialogues are boring to death and it is sometimes even difficult to know who is speaking. Worse, empathy with the characters goes completely out the window.
OLD WITH OLD
We're not going to lie to each other, an RPG that picks up in terms of writing and narrative issues, it's already a lame game. The structure of the experience also suffers indirectly and we find ourselves faced with an ultra-linear title, which takes us from one objective to another via particularly tedious walks, forcing us to cross empty sets. and inert. Yes, because from a purely technical point of view, Star Ocean 5 does not shine either. Certainly the character design is sometimes relevant and effective, certain textures turn out to be pleasant surprises, the lighting is often quite nice and the whole remains fluid, even with the seven characters of your group displayed on the screen. But overall, the new tri-Ace game smacks of lack of budget and dated technology. In 2016, proposing “cities” with at best fifteen inhabitants, it looks bad. And this is just one example among others, we could also mention the level of detail of the characters, their archaic animations or the fact that we constantly pass through NPCs... In any case, faced with this monotonous scenario and these environments to die of boredom, your only "distraction" is in the mission panels present in the heart of each village, stuffed full of side quests stamped Fedex with minimal interest. THE LAST HOPE...
You can feel it, it's starting to get loaded for one and the same title. We then turn to the fights, the last hope (ahah) of this Star Ocean V which is definitely gray. At first glance, this is one of the strengths of the game. Like the last Tales of, each confrontation takes place in a delimited area. You control the actions of your hero live and can switch between your team members at any time. Nothing too exotic, unlike the rather well done combat system based on the chifumi. A heavy attack breaks the opponent's guard, a light attack breaks the charge of a heavy attack, and the guard resists a light attack (opening the door to a counter). On paper, such a structure requires observation, a certain sense of timing and above all good planning of the roles of each hero. The latter actually serve as a combat instruction and at the same time as an evolution tree. By unlocking roles thanks to the CP collected in combat, you obtain new fighter profiles, with well-defined behavior and bonuses. It's up to you to combine the different roles as best you can (knowing that you can assign four to each fighter) and get the best out of each role. ...AND THE LAST ROPE
Only then, nothing is going as planned in reality. We told you a little earlier that this fifth Star Ocean managed to remain fluid despite a certain number of characters on the screen. This observation is valid during the fights, but it does not correct the enormous problem of readability of the game, which multiplies the pyrotechnic effects too much with each attack. Multiply that by the number of active characters, add to it the very limited space of the fights and the completely crazy camera as long as you are indoors: you get a happy mess through which it is very difficult to decipher anything other than the opponent's life bar. It is suddenly all the subtlety of the combat system that flies away, since in the absence of seeing clearly and being able to use all the options available, we start to bugger to eliminate the enemies as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the roles ultimately prove to be quite limited in their use in combat: too little explicit, they are above all annihilated by a picking up artificial intelligence which does a little what it wants. Often overwhelmed by the weight of numbers, weighed down by stupendous teammates, you will come to tear your hair out on these missions which pass very close to the infeasible.
From all this comes a completely insane difficulty curve. We easily burst from the lambda monster by hammering the powerful attack button and we find ourselves struggling against bosses, in fights that require a little more finesse, but in which we often find ourselves lonely after a few minutes because the little buddies do anything. The icing on the cake of annoyance: these few clashes where the objective is to defend a character in the process of fiddling with any computer support, and who ends up being knocked out in a few seconds. Often overwhelmed by the weight of numbers, weighed down by stupendous teammates, you will come to tear your hair out on these missions which pass very close to the infeasible, sometimes imposing cutscenes on you that are impossible to skip. Fortunately, there is the Speed Reserves, a special attack gauge with several notches that fills according to your actions in combat and whose use is simply inevitable if you want to pass these ubiquitous obstacles.
