"Faith will lead you to what you seek."
Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is the fifth console installment in the Star Ocean series. An interquel, it's set between the events of Star Ocean: The Second Story and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.
Two hundred years after the events of The Second Story, the Galactic Federation has grown and prospered, spreading farther into space. After meeting multitudes of aliens and growing, it seems as though true peace is finally within reach. But on the planet Faycreed, a new conflict has begun brewing between kingdoms. Fidel Camuze, a young swordsman guarding his home village, and his childhood friend, Miki Sauvester, soon find themselves caught up in this conflict, which inevitably begins into an adventure spanning worlds.
The most notable change to this game is a more open-world feel in terms of battles. With no Fight Woosh or separate area for combat, all fights take place on the field. Arbitrary Headcount Limit and Lazy Backup is also out of the question as all party members participate in fights instead of being tagged in. The change has been compared to Infinite Undiscovery.
It was released for the PlayStation 4 in Japan on March 31, 2016; followed by American and European releases on June 28 and July 1, respectively.
This game provides examples of:
- Amnesiac Hero: Relia. Naturally, her goal is to get those memories back.
- Animal Motifs: Aside from the Cute Witch look, Fiore's appearance also incorporates cats into its design, more than likely referencing the usual correlation of witches and black cats.
- Anachronic Order: Latest entry in the series but the fourth game in the series' internal chronology.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Averted. One of the game's features is allowing your entire party to fight in battle at the same time.
- Black Magician Girl: Fiore, who comes complete with a witch's hat to sell the imagery.
- Bonus Dungeon: The Cave of Ordeals.
- Call-Forward: Some of the technologies seen in the third game are seen in their experimental stages in this one. Gravitic warp is successfully used for the first time and the experiment that created Relia is the basis for Symbological Genetics, which Fiore is responsible for developing into a real field of research.
- Cast of Expies: Much of the core cast and some NPCs will remind fans of the first few games of their characters. For example: Fidel, Miki, Emmerson and Anne are very similar to Roddick, Millie, Ronyx and Illia from first Star Ocean:
- Much like Roddick and Millie, Fidel and Miki are, respectively, a blue haired swordsman living on a quiet village, and his pink-haired childhood friend who learned healing spells to follow in the footsteps of one of her parents. Fidel also has traits of Claude and Fayt.
- Like Ronyx and Illia, Emmerson and Anne are Earthlings who come to an undeveloped planet to stop the villain's plan. Emmerson is the bow-wielding captain of a spaceship, and Anne is a female science officer who prefers to fight with her fists.
- Fiore is the intelligent Hot Witch symbologist of the party, much like Mavelle, Celine and Myuria. Like Mavelle, she also fights by trowing her magic orb around.
- Design-wise, General Alma is an evil, hammier version of Cliff from SO3.
- Color-Coded Characters: Each character has a dominant color, bordering on a Rainbow Motif note .
- Declaration of Protection: Both Fidel and Miki make one towards Relia at separate points.
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted with Anne and Emmerson. Anne is the martial artist beating up enemies while Emmerson shoots from afar with his crossbow.
- The Load: Relia is an active party member, but doesn't actually do any fighting, has no skills and no magic and you can't assume direct control of her. She's essential to the story, but in terms of gameplay she exists only to cast the occasional Status Buff and to act as a repository for accessories and roles that benefit the party but not the individual character. She's not as bad as most examples, but the fact that you can't direct her status buffs to anyone in particular (she tends to buff whoever you're controlling first, then whoever is being attacked) hurts her effectiveness.
- Mistaken for Gay: In the Private Actions, depending on your responses to her questions, Fiore becomes convinced that Fidel is gay. She also suspects Victor as this, due to how he acts in a few Private Actions (such as really admiring Fidel's physique, and asking him to take a bath with Victor).
- Ms. Fanservice: Out of the player characters, there's Fiore, who would have been this just due to her clothing alone, but she also has a cat's tail, small black wings, and a witch's hat (which has cat ears on it) as part of the ensemble
◊, while sporting some massive twintails to top it all off. - Mysterious Waif: Relia, a young girl with amnesia who exhibits some rather strange powers, including freezing time. Part of the campaign involves finding more about her and her abilities.
- Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: Chapter 6 features Emmerson in an epic space battle with Kronos, but the scene never leaves the command room, so all you get is a whole lot of technobabble describing what's going on while hearing the impacts of the attacks.
- Player Character Calculus: One of the unusual JRPGs that not only has your whole party fight without needing to switch them around during combatnote , but your party size also exceeds the usual limit of around 3 or 4 heroes, allowing 7 combatants at one time.
- Stripperific: Fiore's outfit can best be described as "a sexy checkerboard suit": the black diamond squares are the only actual clothing, while the other squares are just various windows that leave little to the imagination. While there are other female spellcaster NPCs who wearing similar diamond-motif clothing, due to coming from the same magic-researching country as Fiore, they still end up appearing more conservatively dressed thanks to wearing a strapless bustier along with the diamond leggings. A few characters, including Fiore herself, lampshade the absurdity of her outfit on occasion.
- Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Effectively how the magic of the game is treated, to the point that the traditional depiction of magic is considered the stuff of fairy tales. One mage NPC has trouble convincing another civilian that what they practice isn't called "magic" and shouldn't be referred to as such. On top of this, the research institute that studies magic is almost jarringly technologically advanced compared to almost every other place visited prior (which kept pretty close to the typical medieval fantasy setting), a fact that is lampshaded by two of the game's party members how hail from a technologically advanced Earth.
- Visible Invisibility: Not characters, but invisible high-tech ships and buildings are rendered as vague distortions of the background.
- White Magician Girl: Miki fills this role.
