Star Ocean: The Divine Force

I don’t want to take anything away from this game, though. I have enjoyed Star Ocean: The Divine Force more than any game in the series since the third one. The developers have calibrated just about everything about this game perfectly, from the classically entertaining JRPG plot and characters, to the incredible aesthetics and superb pacing. The Divine Force is by no means a short game, but it has a way of making the hours fly past so that it never feels like it’s dragging on your time. Yes, the combat is a little unrefined and too pacey for its own good, but it’s still very playable, and totally worth dealing with to enjoy the most exotic JRPG of 2022.

There’s still a layer of jankiness the series can’t escape in terms of visuals and tropey writing. But the compelling characters and gameplay mechanics overshadow the rough edges. If this is the last Star Ocean game, Tri-Ace has gone out with a bang.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force is yet another Tri-ace jrpg, beautiful in the combat system, while poor in the aesthetic realization of the game world.

I admittedly haven’t played any of the older Star Ocean games from back at the peak of its popularity, so I can’t say for certain whether Divine Force is a return to form. But for fans disappointed with the previous entry, there’s plenty here to make a dive back into the franchise worthwhile. Here’s hoping tri-Ace gets another shot with a bigger budget next time, because I believe they’re on an upswing.

The Divine Force isn’t necessarily a standout in this long-running series, but it is a much more successful effort to bring Star Ocean into the modern age than its predecessor. The revamped battle mechanics do wonders for its previously limited combat system, offering more freedom and flexibility than ever before. The main cast of characters is also charming, even if the world they are exploring and the animations that accompany them are far less captivating. I wish its interface issues were less obnoxious, but even so, The Divine Force at least proves that Square Enix’s sci-fi JRPG certainly deserved another shot.

Star Ocean struggles to keep its interest over the hours, due to an outdated style, a gameplay below the competition, and a nice story, but anecdotal.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force presents us with a game that may have once been a stellar JRPG title 20 years ago, but those standards just don't hold up in 2022. When compared to its contemporaries, it's just not on the same level, in any way. It's always been a B-Tier Square Enix franchise, but once upon a time, Star Ocean was an essential title. It's a shame that more effort has not gone into modernizing and revitalizing a beloved franchise.

This is The Best Star Ocean Game In The Series, They got everything right, item creation from 2, best battle system, best cast of characters, fantastic story and soundtrack, what more do you want? Play it right now!!!

Star Ocean Divine force was a pretty good installment of the star ocean series I would say. The game has an incredibly slow burn at the start, it took me some time to get into it but once you get into mid to endgame the story, cutscenes, etc all take off immensely. The story and the world design has to be the best parts of the game, the voice acting as well as writing in the story is really engaging from start to finish and it helps that you can look at a beautifully designed universe to go with it. Combat is kind of hit or miss, I don't like the action points system that much, it made early game combat super slow and a lot less unenjoyable. Combat skills look nice but the limitations of action points leaves much to be desired. Also I don't know if it's intended but it's possible to level up your character skills mid-combat which can be super cheesy to increase DPS. A really BAD design with the combat is the enemy's detection radius, you will constantly have enemies detecting you through walls and the detection sound will constantly go off if you're on the other side of a wall of an enemy. The detection somehow works through line of sight but it doesn't trigger combat because of the line of sight, however going through groups of enemies causes the detection sound to play over and over again. It's a really bad design that needs to be fixed. Exploration is decent, there's lots of loot and goodies to find in very obscure locations, though IMO early game exploration is not fun because you can't use DUMA's flying to the best of it's ability right from the beginning so traveling is super slow considering how massive the world is. This issue is non existent in late game when the flying is upgraded but I think it's a bad choice locking it until later in the story, as it makes exploration a lot longer than it should be. The last I want to talk about is the dungeons, for most of the game it's pretty fine but the endgame dungeons, specifically Parapoeium integration center, and Scorpium network are absolutely horrendous dungeons. I get that they are endgame but they are dreadful to navigate and go through. The integration center quite literally has about 8 rooms designed the EXACT same and when I was progressing I was going crazy thinking I wasn't making any progress at all because they're designed the same. The Scorpium network is beautiful to look at but a nightmare to navigate and explore. Both of those dungeons are TOO long and filled with needless fluff. I get you want to go out big but overstimulation is not a good thing. It's way to easy to get lost and waste time in them. That being said, I think Star Ocean Divine force is a pretty good new edition to the franchise, did a lot of things right but still has many things to touch up on.

It's good, not AAA good but still solid. The Good: • Combat Can be fun, if you mix the right skills into your combo chains. It's simplified over previous titles in terms of things to track in battle, its more reactionary action orientated. • Exploration and moving around the zone is good, you don't need to rely on fast travel, your sprint is fast enough combined with some shortcuts via the DUMA bot you get makes moving around and exploring the zones fun. • Plenty of character interaction on-field to keep you on track from point A to B while giving you some additional insights without stopping your progress, they even continue into combat. After coming from Scarlet Nexus and Tales this is such a welcome change, it gets tiring when your continually stopping every 5mins through a zone for a "Skit" to play out or having combat stop the skit in its track. • Story is good overall, Graphics are good, not like AAA FF16 or Tales of Arise but still solid considering PS4 Limitations (which will carry through PS5) Had it been a strict PS5/Xbox Series title than I'd expect a bit more. Star Ocean has always been a budget game so my expectations are tempered to that. The Bad: • Combat can be frustrating if you don't find the right combo chains and it pigeon holes you into ideal chains instead of free-flow do as you will combat which kinda defeats the purpose of having the ability to set the skills in the chain in the first place, this is more exaggerated with some characters over others. It's still fun and overall good just... could be better. • Crafting can be a chore and VERY VERY Repetitive. • Drop Rates are abysmal for monster based items. For Instance your asked to get 4 "Axe beak feathers" for a side quest because apparently despite disease spreading through the town like a wildfire through California NPC needs to have fluffy pillows... I digress ... target mob is in the field outside town... theirs like 6 of them on the map, you will go from one end of the map to the other 4-5 times, maybe more before you get a single feather.... this means 20+ trips through a massive field just for one side quest. • Speaking of sidequests... Their abysmal. Their often obscure like fail a specific craft 10 times to get desired item to Eat a specific food at the inn then go to a specific spot to get an enemy to spawn... and theirs no menu or tracking. You get a quest update notification in with your battle drops if applicable and that's it so it's inefficient at one point I spent 45+Mins trying to get some old lady's purse to drop in some ruins... only to find out I already had it in my inventory... when did I get it? who TF knows because the notification was buried in the drops from the battle. • Glaring Plot holes. Yes I said I liked the story overall but hot-damn there are some major plot holes and reaches in the game. For instance your android companion falls to the planet, she calls you before hand to say her pod can no longer maintain altitude... then you run out to her pod to find out she's missing an arm and leg and is gonna run outta juice in 56 **** run to your hidden pod and get the materials so you and the middle aged bro from the backwaters planet your stuck on that has no idea what an android is but hey he's gonna fix her right **** apparently you have a spare pair of her futuristic low cut leather pants laying around...shhh.... don't ask questions just go with it. • New Game +... this one loses big points. Holy Balls... why make a dual pov storyline and NOT give players a bonus through the second play-through? I know it sounds like more bad than good but overall its a fun game to play. Star Ocean has always been a budget game so it's never been as good as say Final Fantasy so you have to temper your expectations going in. TLDR: Got it on sale, worth what I paid, probably wont play again and wouldn't be worth full price unless your a huge Star Ocean fan. Overall though not a disappointment.

Poor gameplay. You have to pause the game to heal yourself. The animation of using an item tooks 3 or 4 seconds. In this time the enemy can attack you. The world is boring. I don't like the menu. Only fee attack skills. After 16 hours I quit playing it.

I have never played a Star Ocean series but after finishing this episode I will never come back to this license more