Star Trek is continuing to live out its comeback in a big way, with a new film due out this month and the first television version since 2005 scheduled to premiere next year. This could have been the perfect time for the Star Trek-inspired Star Ocean video game series to propel itself back into relevance. But while the series continues to look to humanity’s bright future, Integrity And Faithlessness shows the developers have learned very little from Star Ocean’s past.
This latest entry starts off by fully embracing the most worn of Japanese role-playing-game tropes. Fidel Camuze, a spiky-haired swordsman living in the shadow of his legendary father, sets off with childhood friend and healer Miki in search of help protecting his village from raiders. To that end, they enlist the gallant knight Victor and the sorceress Fiore, who’s apparently such a respected magical researcher that she’s allowed to trade out her traditional robes and dresses for a skintight patchwork costume accessorized with a cat tail and black angel wings. Along with fighting against a common enemy, the group also swears to protect Relia, an amnesiac little girl with amazing magical power that the crew rescues from a crashed spaceship.
The collision of science-fiction and fantasy is nothing new for the Star Ocean series—the main character of Star Ocean: The Second Story is an Earth Federation ensign stuck on a medieval planet—but telling the usual first-contact story from the other direction gives Integrity And Faithlessness a fun twist. Emerson, the game’s Captain Kirk stand-in, is a true bright spot, doing a laughable job at blending in as he constantly irritates his reluctant subordinate Anne with lines like “Look, another beautiful woman. I guess coming to this planet—er—town was worth it.” Soon Fidel and his crew are in the center of a proxy war between space-faring organizations, and by 12 hours in, they’re beaming into towns to turn in quests and doing their shopping aboard a Pangalactic Federation spaceship, which for some reason will accept the same currency used to buy blueberries in Fidel’s home village.
An insane plot isn’t enough to carry a game, and Integrity And Faithlessness has made several changes to how the series plays but somehow failed to actually improve on it. In a bid to further push the seamless experience it creates by having fights happen on the world map or in the dungeon, rather than on a more traditional battle screen, Integrity And Faithlessness has largely ditched cutscenes in favor of having key dialogue delivered through “private actions.” The result is even more painful, trapping you in little zones of the world until some prescribed amount of dialogue plays out, showing off the game’s mediocre dubbing and thesaurus-heavy translation. Characters don’t turn to look at whoever’s speaking, meaning Fidel is often wandering around aimlessly even when he’s got lines to deliver. It makes the optional “private actions” you undertake to get to know your party and shape the game’s ending feel like an extra chore, particularly since these inane attempts at character building are dedicated to showcasing “hidden depths,” like the fact that Anne might be a tough brawler but she also loves kitties.