With Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness releasing at the end of the month for PS4 in Japan, Square Enix put together a couple videos demonstrating the basics of battle.
The first video is about the very basics. It starts out with enemy encounters, and how you can get an “Advantage Attack” by hitting them before getting noticed in order to increase the party’s physical and magic attacks. Physical defense and magic defense gets lowered if the enemy gets you first.
If things get too rough, you can fill up your escape meter to escape from battle; however, when there’s a red line, it means you won’t be able to escape, so you’ll need to do your best.
Weaker light attacks are faster while powerful heavy attacks take longer to perform. The blue aura indicates a heavy attack, so it’ll indicate when enemies are going to hit, and you’ll get to parry with a quick light attack. The target varies on the distance between you and the enemy, but this can be switched manually. Guarding can be used to block damage from light attacks. You can move and perform steps while guarding. Again, you can use heavy attacks to break enemy guards.
You’ll get to switch characters in the midst of battle. You can use the battle menu to select Signeturgy and items. While this menu is opened, time will stop so you’ll get to take your time figuring things out. When the battle ends, you’ll go back to controlling Fidel, but when you enter battle again it’ll go back to the character you previously controlled.
The next video puts the basics into use with another look at light and heavy attacks, guarding, and using battle skills. Heavy attack battle skills use more MP but they do much more damage. Signeturgy uses magic, and similar to battle skills, you can hold down buttons for different abilities.
The Reserve Rush gauge increases by connecting combos or by properly pulling off an action from the “light attack, heavy attack, guard” triangle in your favor. If you lose the triangle battle, it’ll destroy the gauge. By ending the battle with a filled up gauge, you’ll get various bonuses. You can also use the gauge to perform a “Reserve Rush” ability, and they’re different for each member. Characters can also be given various roles such as attacker, guardian, and more. The roles can be leveled for various bonuses, too.
Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness will release in Japan on March 31 for PlayStation 4 and April 28, 2016 for PlayStation 3. The game is headed Westward in 2016.
