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A sci-fi JRPG redemption story - Star Ocean: The Divine Force Quick Review
49K View2022-10-31
The Star Ocean series has always been treated as part of the third string of Square Enix’s long list of Japanese roleplaying game behemoth franchises—well behind heavy hitters like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, and even less popular but still beloved franchises like the Mana series. That’s not how I feel, though.
As someone who discovered the series with its first North American release, 1999’s Star Ocean: The Second Story, I fell in love with the mix of JRPG tropes and a blended fantasy/science fiction storyline heavily inspired by Star Trek. That’s why I’ve stuck with the series since then, even playing 2016’s frustratingly disappointing Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, a game so bad that many assumed it would be the end of the series. Out of nowhere, though, Square Enix announced a sixth mainline game this summer, Star Ocean: The Divine Force, and just months after its reveal, it’s here. Is this a return to form for the underdog series, or is it another bad game shoved out the door with little fanfare to avoid bringing too much attention to it?
THE STORY
As in the aforementioned Star Ocean: Second Story, The Divine Force allows players to choose between two protagonists whose stories mostly intersect. The male hero, Raymond Lawrence, is the captain of a merchant vessel that is unexpectedly attacked in space by the supposedly friendly Federation. Ray and crew escape via emergency shuttles and end up on an underdeveloped planet—that is, a planet whose people have not yet discovered space travel and who spacefaring cultures are not supposed to interact with, according to galactic law.
Never one to heed the law too closely, Ray quickly encounters the female hero, Laeticia Aucerius, a crown princess who is far away from her home searching for a mysterious figure. With the aid of Laeticia and her sworn knight, Albaird, Ray begins a journey to track down his stranded crewmates (and Laeticia’s person of interest), figure out a way off this backwoods planet, and uncover the truth behind why they were so unceremoniously attacked.
PLATFORMS
Star Ocean: The Divine Force is available across most last-gen and current gen hardware, including PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S and X. I played on a mid-range PC and experienced a fair bit of framerate slowdown despite choosing the setting to “Prioritize Framerate” setting when starting the game. From what I’ve seen in discussions online, the game runs smoothly on PS5 and Xbox Series X with “Prioritize Framerate” selected, but if you switch to “Prioritize Image Quality” or if you play on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, or many PCs, expect some frame chugging at certain points.
TIME PLAYED
I’m five hours into my time with Star Ocean: The Divine Force, and that’s enough for me to confidently say that I’m going to play through the game in full (reportedly in the range of fifty to sixty hours). I may only be one-tenth into the game, but thus far I’ve already made it a good chunk into the story, explored multiple zones (including a couple dungeons and one village), taken on some sidequests, and leveled up my starting cast of characters into the double digits.
WHAT’S AWESOME
• Campy writing and atmosphere. The opening montage movie for Star Ocean: The Divine Force is backed by an absurdly corny, over-the-top butt rock song. The first line upon starting the game is a robotic female voice talking about “the ocean of stars.” And in his first encounter with a monster, protagonist Ray proclaims, “A’ight, let’s do this!” The Divine Force is an unabashedly corny game, so much so that I couldn’t help but be charmed. It’s clearly going for a specific tone and embracing that, cringe and all. I, for one, welcome that refusal to back down from the embarrassing stuff that I probably would have thought kicked ass as a teenager.
• Combat. Though the Star Ocean series has always featured fast-paced, real-time combat, this system has received a huge overhaul in The Divine Force. Random encounters are gone, and you fight enemies out in whatever area you’re in without transitioning to a separate battlefield. And where past Star Ocean titles (especially Integrity and Faithlessness) had a stiff approach to combat where pressing a button locked your character into the move, The Divine Force lets you cancel out of attacks, dodge at will, and even burst up into the air and zoom towards enemies using your jetpack. It absolutely rules and feels great.
• Exploration. Speaking of the jetpack, one of the best additions to the series here is D.U.M.A., a floating robot companion of sorts that serves as a tool for both exploration and combat. While the additions to your fighting capabilities are great, what I really loved was how D.U.M.A. allows you to aim at otherwise impossible-to-reach ledges and blast towards them, as well as providing a way to safely float down from heights. Add in the still-linear but much larger zone design of this game, and I’ve had a blast bouncing around, shooting myself up onto cliffs to track down out-of-the-way treasure chests, and crashing down onto enemies below. You can even use the jetpack to hop around rooftops in cities!
• Character progression. Star Ocean: The Divine Force uses a simple but effective approach to character development. As your party members level up, they earn skill points, which can in turn be spent to power up specific skills you’ve already earned or to unlock new spaces on a large skill board. Each character has a unique skill board with multiple directions to progress in and a large variety of active skills, talents, and simple stat boosts to spend your skill points on. Add in a separate but similar system for powering up D.U.M.A. and there’s a lot here to keep RPG nuts like myself satisfied for a long time.
WHAT SUCKS
• Graphics and presentation. There’s no nice way to say this: Star Ocean: The Divine Force looks bad. The visuals are on par with a PlayStation 2 game, and not in a campy throwback way. Add in horrendous lip-synching and the aforementioned framerate issues on some platforms/settings—which are especially strange given how low quality the graphics are—and the game’s look really is its one major irredeemable trait.
• Campy writing and atmosphere. Yeah, okay, I’m breaking the rules and double-dipping here, but I’ve got to admit that for as much as I enjoy the tongue-in-cheek goofiness of The Divine Force’s writing, I also understand how some folks could be disappointed. The Star Ocean series has never had the strongest plots in the world, but a lot of good sci-fi drama can be mined from its Star Trek-meets-anime vibes. Unless the later parts of the game really surprise me, I’m not expecting that here, for better and worse.
SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?
With the caveat that I’m an admitted longtime fan of the series, yes, I think Star Ocean: The Divine Force is absolutely worth checking out! This isn’t a groundbreaking game that’s going to lift the franchise up into the A-tier of Square Enix RPGs, but it’s a very strong revival from the presumed death sentence of the previous (and worst) entry. If you can’t stomach JRPG cliches and corny writing, The Divine Force might not work as well for you, but if you have any fondness for the genre and want some sci-fi spice to go with your fantasy, this is a great choice.
💬 What’s your favorite non-Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest series from Square Enix? Leave a comment sharing your thoughts!
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Today I show you all a Glimpse of how great Seat of Stars is and why it will be the most EPIC RPG of 2023! You're not going to want to miss out on this game especially if you're a fan of classic rpgs and turn based combat. Let me know in the comment section down below if you're excited for this game and will be playing it on release!
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2022-11-01
Author likedThank you! Glad you enjoyed it :)
2022-11-01
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2022-11-01
Author likedI totally understand! it's a change for this platform, and it will take some getting used to for folks who have been around for a while. Plus we still have some work to do giving people the tools to see and get notifications for the games/platforms they care about. thank you so much for your kind words about my writing!
2022-11-01
this is for mobile games
2022-11-01
hey there! TapTap is actually officially covering PC and console games as well as continuing our mobile games offerings. I wrote a post about it that you can check out in my profile.
2022-11-01