REVIEW STAR OCEAN: INTEGRITY AND FAITHLESSNESS
Take the fantasy-meets-sci-fi premise: It's one I admire greatly, being a fan of writers like Gene Wolfe, Mark Lawrence, and Joe Abercrombie. There was fertile ground for a great story here, and it even had the advantage of being filled with likable characters like Fidel, a young swordsman who gets caught up in an interstellar war after seeking aid for his besieged village; or Emmerson, a captain from space who roleplays a crossbowman out of honor for his government's Prime Directive of sorts. I'll even admit a fondness for Fiore, the supercilious sorceress whose greatest magical feat appears to be her ability to keep her porous getup from ever slipping out of place.
Ocean's Seven
Other signs of trouble reveal themselves early on, such as the relative absence of many traditional cutscenes in favor of voiced dialogue between characters as they stand around looking at each other in the normal gameplay perspective. Seeing expressions thus requires that Fidel moves around to look at their faces, and the approach lacks the emotional punch traditional Star Ocean cutscenes sometimes deliver. The design also fosters awkward silences when a character performs an action I may not initially see on my screen, thus leading me to realize the "cutscene" is still in play only when a red line pops up to bar my path. Integrity and Faithlessness employs this tactic relentlessly and excessively, and it did much to drain my interest in bothering with optional events in towns that flesh out the backstories of my companions.
No comments:
Post a Comment