#Bitardia ocean of games series#

Terrible character development and one of the worst depictions of depression in gaming hold The Last Hope's narrative back, but the actual gameplay is some of the series' absolute best.

What few ambitious moments the game does have are handled so poorly in execution, it's hard not to want to skip every cutscene after a certain point.

The Last Hope is far safer with its plot, has a fairly generic cast to go along with it, and features some of the most aggressively bland storytelling in the franchise. Star Ocean: The Last Hope's story is very clearly a response to Till the End of Time's ultimately controversial narrative. Quite frankly, the Star Ocean franchise was better off on a silent hiatus after The Last Hope. Complete with a painfully dry story, and Integrity and Faithlessness has almost nothing going for it. If anything, all this insistence on real time does is prevent the core combat from living up to previous entries. It's an ambitious project for sure, but Integrity and Faithlessness does not use its gimmick well. This philosophy is also applied to cutscene direction, with Integrity and Faithlessness opting to make everything happen in real-time. Everyone fights at once, and battles no longer take place in dedicated arenas but in the overworld– so as to keep the gameplay constantly flowing. No longer to players even need to think about their party.

#Bitardia ocean of games series#

For starters, Integrity and Faithlessness continues The Last Hope's trend of a static party (something that flies in the face of how the series approaches party composition,) but with one big change: everyone fights. The fifth mainline entry in the series, Star Ocean: I&F makes a number of notable changes that end up depriving it of Star Ocean's charm. Until Integrity and Faithlessness, that is. Even at its absolute worst, Star Ocean managed to pull through thanks to incredibly tight gameplay.