Welcome to our review of Star Ocean: The Divine Force, the latest in a classic RPG franchise that has been around for decades now.
On a routine transport mission, Raymond Lawrence’s spaceship is attacked by the Pangalactic Federation and he crash-lands on an underdeveloped planet. He meets Princess Laeticia, who is fighting to protect her homeland from an invading empire. Together, they set off on an adventure that will shake the foundations of the entire universe.
In Star Ocean: The Divine Force, characters can freely move in 360° degrees and roam the skies. Move and explore freely in three dimensions: everything you see can be explored! You can move in three dimensions whilst flying around the largest environment ever. Whether you’re flying around and exploring rockfaces and roofs of buildings in the city, or leaping off cliffs to seamlessly enter battles, you’ll have more freedom in terms of both adventuring and battling.
The Fastest and Strongest Action of any in the Series. While the game will give you space to play as you please, the scope of its battles has also evolved. Characters can subdue a large number of enemies with super high-speed movement attacks, special abilities where you can vanish for a brief moment from right in front of your enemies’ eyes, and a skill which could kill in one hit!
This game will feature a challenging yet thrilling battle experience to enjoy while freely soaring in the skies. A system that is more fun than you’d expect at first and once you truly master it, no more falling off ledges or into the ocean. Much like most RPG games, once you really get the hang of things, it sure gets a lot easier. Even the battle system, which is a weird approach, limited moves in a limited time span. Unlocking the skill tree to get more powers, … It all feels overwhelming at first and even my own playthrough so far (full disclosure, not completed the game at the time of writing) has been a double-edged sword so far.
From the demo, where there was no transfer of data, which was kind of disappointing, to the full game, it is mostly just the added surplus of several mechanics. Upgrading your skills and armor and weapons is a big part of the game, which is possibly the most confusing part but at the same time the most rewarding when you get it right.
In short, weapons upgrade to better type weapons, armor same thing. The skill tree itself literally has hundreds of options spread over your characters and while you do start out with just 3, you pretty much get a bigger band of friends within hours into the game and each with their own backstory and personal skills. Ranging from ranged attacks to healing allies, … all very basic in your everyday RPG, right?
The combat system, with its stamina bar, while it feels like a hindrance at first, it is something you get used to. Not a deal breaker, but an additional level of intense action. Many other games do this, not way of basic attacks work this way too, but it kinda just works for me.
In Star Ocean: The Divine Force, I did like the guidance a lot, at pretty much all time, you have a pointer on screen to direct you towards the next point of interest. And even though you can not enter the map during battle or cut scenes, same with how some menus do not work when you are performing certain tasks, like you can not use a healing in the middle of an attack or when you are getting hit. This is more inconvenient than it may sound, you will see when you hit that giant worm enemy and being unable to heal at your whim… Really destructive for your health bar. Not even mentioning how disturbingly hard that enemy was even on the easiest of modes.
Now I should mention there are probably so many things I should still talk about, I feel like this game has still so many things left for me to discover, which is always nice. Storywise the game does hold a nice pace and when I think about the towns I have visited, I have not even bothered with any of the other townsfolk, I just keep pushing through the main storyline. I wonder how many more hours it will take me to finish the game and where it leads.
In conclusion, Star Ocean: The Divine Force is quite the entry in the franchise. Aside from maybe a few minor annoyances, I have just been completely into this game. A game that comes in the best month of the year with like more than a handful worth of top titles and while I did plan to play it after finishing all the others first, I am rearranging plans to prioritize this one first. Star Ocean: The Divine Force is just a good RPG and I have missed playing those lately. I am really happy to have a great story ahead of me.
