Game Mechanics

Difficulty Levels

Difficulty levels affect basic attributes for all the game’s enemies, as well as a few system trophies.

Difficulty Level Multipliers

At Earth difficulty, everything is slightly gentler than normal, with mildly reduced max health and offensive power. The game can be very challenging even on “normal” Galaxy difficulty, so this setting is encouraged for players who want to experience the sweeping story and charming characters with minimal frustration along the way. It isn’t vastly easier, but a little bit of the edge is taken off the enemy blade.

Galaxy is the standard Star Ocean V: Integrity and Faithlessness experience—adversaries have the parameters listed throughout this guide. Aside from trophies

acquired through repeat playthroughs or higher difficulties, most console system trophies are available on Galaxy difficulty, along with all of the in-game battle trophies, which are user-wide unlockables. (Acquired battle trophies are shared between all characters and save files for a given PlayStation user account.)

Universe, unlocked after an initial successful playthrough, is about as much a step up from Galaxy difficulty as the Earth setting is a step down. Foes have 150% their normal listed HP, while dealing out 20% extra damage to Fidel and friends. A system trophy unlocks for game completion on Universe. For completionists and passionate Star Ocean fans, this is also a good set of training wheels before taking on Chaos mode.

The Chaos setting is the game at its most brutal. Attackers deal 150% their normal output, while having twice as much HP as usual. Success in Universe and Chaos difficulties requires game familiarity, mastery of combat pace and positioning, and thoughtful assignment of battle roles. A system trophy unlocks for game completion on Chaos.

Battles

Of course, as an action-RPG, much of Star Ocean V: Integrity and Faithlessness takes place locked in combat against lots of aggressive, vile creatures. In the spirit of previous tri-Ace/Square-Enix spiritual antecedents Infinite Undiscovery and previous Star Ocean adventures, the action is grounded in RPG stat-driven mechanics, but with combat that is a mix of turn-based and real time. Characters (besides Relia) can each be controlled individually and made to act with action-oriented commands (dodge, weak/strong attack, guard, counterattack, etc.). However, you can also pause the action, and more calculated, turn-based actions can be queued up (using items or signeturgy to restore allies, using offensive signeturgy against monster groups, targeting a particular character’s battle skill against a particular enemy, and so on).

Tapping attack buttons during combat initiates normal attacks, whether weak or strong; holding the attack buttons initiates battle skills or signeturgy, as assigned in each character’s skill menus off the Main Menu. You learn new battle skills and signeturgy spells by finding new spell books. These abilities expend MP for powerful attacks that add up lots of hits and often inflict negative effects on foes, launch them into the air, or knock them down. Normal attacks and guarding work with a rock-paper-scissors-like system, with weak attacks interrupting strong attacks, strong attacks breaking guard, and guard defending against weak attacks. Successfully playing with this system, guarding against weak attacks (enabling potent counterattack moves), strong attacking through the enemy’s shields, and jabbing them out of slow attack windup with weak strikes, builds up Reserve Gauge, which allows access to Reserve Rushes, each character’s ultimate attack.

Often, in combat afield, the preferred character can be controlled and battle treated as an action-adventure game, with allies being taken over by AI. From the same temporary battle pause screen where you can queue up actions, you can also toggle the AI on or off so that characters won’t act on their own if total micromanagement is preferred. This is great (or even necessary) on nasty bosses that have expansive, lethal area attacks that AI-controlled party members won’t necessarily be wise about dodging. The harder the battle, the more micromanagement is usually required. Don’t be afraid to pause and think things through.

Character AI is determined mostly by battle roles, equippable combat assignments. At first, only a few battle roles are accessible, but through story progress and optional content completion, many more battle roles are eventually unlocked, over 100 in all. You can assign up to four battle roles on each character. These determine whether computer-controlled allies will be aggressive or reserved; whether they’ll go after beefy, full-health enemies or attempt to pick off low-HP, weak ones; whether they’ll cut loose with MP consumption or be parsimonious with resources; and on and on. The combination of assigning skills and signeturgy along with battle roles and accessories lends a huge amount of flexibility to party purpose in fights. There’s no restriction on what you try to do; just because Fidel, Victor, and Anne are the competent melee fighters, nothing’s stopping you from attempting to make Fiore and Miki charge in close. (It just might not work out as planned!)

This chapter contains a full list of each character’s battle skills, as well as each signeturgical spell available for Miki and Fiore, the signet-imbued among the party. Initially, each skill caps out at a skill level of 5, once the skill has been used enough in battle (and/or enough spell books applicable to that skill have been expended on it, which greatly speeds up the skill mastery process). With the ultimate specialty skill, though, this limit can be transcended and skills leveled all the way up to 9, unlocking vastly stronger power levels and sometimes new skill effects.

Specialty skills are like skills for the party at large. They involve things like more ways to gather resources in the field, new features for the minimap, the ability to increase resell prices to merchants, and so on.

Battle skills and specialties must be unlocked first (the discovery method differs for each skill), but then also purchased with skill points, or SP, from the Skills portion of the Main Menu. Only then will the skill become usable. A complete list of specialty skills accompanies the battle skill and battle role lists in this chapter.

Attributes

Attributes determine the combat prowess of a given character or enemy.

Elements

Among magic attacks and signeturgy, there are three pairs of opposed elements that power the spiritual forces in the land. These are fire, ice, earth, wind, light, and darkness. Each pair represents opposing poles of that force. Each enemy has different resistance levels to each element. This guide’s bestiary contains these ratings to help optimize party makeup for challenging fights. Positive values for elemental resistance mean that that a target will take reduced damage from that elemental damage source. Negative values for elemental resistance mean you should fire away. That monster won’t be able to withstand that element for long and will take extra damage.

Remember that it’s not just signeturgical skills that bear elements. Many martial arts have an elemental portion to their damage, as do some weapons.

Status Ailments

Some attacks have certain noxious or debilitating properties aside from elemental damage. Victims may be inflicted with certain debuffing effects that range from annoying to crippling until they’re removed via certain curative items or the Cure Condition signeturgy. Temporary percentage-based reductions to base attributes are possible; some allied battle skills also have a chance to inflict attribute-reducing effects to enemies (for example, ATK or DEF -10% for 30 seconds). Beyond momentary alterations to base stats, more specific enfeebles are also possible: