Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness / Part 16 / FINALE - Final Thoughts and Review - Let's Play

Star Ocean games playlist: • Star Ocean Super-playlist
Twitter: / inloverumin
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Beat the final boss at my first try with Fidel at level 62 with a role that cut his defense by 80%... All thanks to Death Palm. And ppl be saying Double Slash is the best skill, pffft.
Pros:
-Roles system is great.
-Combat is as good as ever, as per tri-Ace tradition. It's SO3's combat without any restrictions!
-A pretty good cast all things considered. Emmerson and Fidel are stand-outs to me. Miki has the most expressive voice acting of any woman lead yet. The voice acting has the most personality yet with every character having different fluctuations and cadence in their delivery, giving everyone a unique vibe. I also like how everyone's tone changes when talking to Relia during PA's, it gives the voice acting a slight touch of realism. I also got a huge kick out of that one incredibly gruff over the top voice actor who kept voicing different characters.
-You finally keep your bonus after reloading a save (thank God).
-The game is overall faster than the previous installments. Chests no longer stop you in your tracks to play an animation and getting in and out of battles is snappier. Leveling up and stat growth is also faster than ever.
-Nice visuals, I recall a waterfall that looked particularly impressive.
-Having Item Creation take place in the menu is nice and convenient.
-The best battle theme yet. The soundtrack all around is good. Some might say the reuse of SO4 and SO3 music is lazy, but I found it nostalgic and charming. The SO3 music was particularly thematic and played when appropriate.
-I actually like the story. I like the theories it entails, with all the Star Ocean 3 references. So Fidel had Ethereal Blast before Fayt, and it was sorta implied in SO3 that Fayt got Ethereal Blast from the deletion gene (wasn't it?). And with Relia having powers that are reminiscent of Fayt's... Could it be implied that the symbological genetics scientists in SO3 got the information to create the deletion gene by studying the events of this game...? I like to imagine one of the main characters (maybe Fidel or Emmerson... or an older Relia) wrote a book about the adventure they went on, and one of the scientists in SO3 read the book and thought Relia's powers were the key to saving the universe... So they artificially remade her powers in a lab, modified it, and gave it to Fayt, Maria, and Sophia. But that's just a theory.
Cons:
-Needless, inconvenient restrictions on when you can save.
-The most boring unskippable cutscenes I've ever seen. A lot of the dialogue is more drawn out than it needs to be. Even if you do follow along with these cutscenes, a lot of the dialogue is weird and doesn't make much sense, and the characters often come to wild conclusions. Way too many moments where characters talk during battle, making it difficult to pay attention to the dialogue. Different characters often sound similar, making following along even harder. Subtitles are difficult to see at times without any indication on who's talking. Unimportant dialogue is often elongated and boring, but interesting things that should be elaborated on are often discarded shortly after being brought up. A lot of the cutscenes seem pointless as well, just for filler.
-Having run on O. You want that thing held down at all times, but you also want to rotate the camera most of the time.
-The menu is confusing. The communicator is in a particularly cheeky spot in the menu, and turning off magic skills is counterintuitive. I can recall three separate occasions where I had to relearn how to turn off magic, because I could never remember or figure out how I did it previously.
-Dying puts you on Miki, who is arguably the worst character to switch after a death. She's in charge is healing and reviving, so I need to switch to Victor after death so I don't halt her. I guess this isn't that big of a deal since switching characters takes 1 button press, but it really catches me off guard especially considering your rush changes to her as well, and doesn't switch back automatically when you switch back to Fidel. Having rush change independent on who you're controlling is weird design choice imo, I would have much preferred have the rush be who I'm currently controller.
-SO4 had a really nice feature where items you needed were highlighted. So when you were poisoned, the aquaberries in the menu would glow. This incredibly convenient feature was omitted from SO5, I'm assuming due to time restraints.
-The shops are more cumbersome than the previous installments. You can't even buy multiple items at once anymore, which is especially weird for an RPG released in 2017.

[@ZT1ST]

@10:17; From what I recall, the sequence of those cutscenes isn't necessarily fixed - it's one of the few ways the game indicates what ending you're going to get, and the order in which who has the highest PA ratings (From Miki being the highest, Anne's following, and then whoever is behind them is not ordered it seems.) - I kind of found it funny how Anne's is so high considering you kept saying she had "No personality". :p
That said, mid-game, as I understand, the easiest way to try and identify PA rankings is by how their formation sets up when you're not in battle, and just stop walking with the whole party in tow - they kind of sort themselves out in a way that's generally associated with PA ratings.

[@RuminInLove]

Woah, that's a neat detail... so the closer they are to Fidel the higher their affection rating? Interesting.