After forty-five hours, a few smiles, and one or two frowns, we walked away from Star Ocean: The Divine Force with a shrug. It’s a middle-tier Japanese role playing game that at no point, ever, threatens to get promoted to top-tier status nor sink so low that it ends up sandwiched between Hyperdimension Neptunia and Unlimited Saga. Mid-table mediocrity. The Crystal Palace of JRPGs.
Given the tumultuous history of the Star Ocean series, The Divine Force being merely okay is probably a step in the right direction. And while this game wouldn’t make our best of 2022 list unless we’re doing 100 games each this year, some of the improvements made here, and some of the systems put in place mean it’s conceivable the next Star Ocean game may genuinely be good. It might even be great.
But we’re in the here and now. The year of our Lord 2022 and we’ve got a job to do. We crammed over forty hours of this game into five days just to get to this point and now that we’re here: yeah, it’s alright. What is there to say? There’s no interesting talking points or incisive critiques we can make. No jokes. No good jokes, anyway. If it was really bad at least we could make snide remarks but as it is we can merely shrug and get on with it.
Star Ocean: The Divine Force allows you to pick one of two characters to play as during your journey throughout space and stuff. There’s Raymond who is a sort of anime Han Solo with one of the worst haircuts we’ve ever seen in a video game, and then there’s Laeticia, a blue haired princess of the realm who fights on the front lines in high heels.
We played as Raymond because we couldn’t take our eyes off his weird, golden space mullet, but for the hour or two that we tried as Laeticia it’s basically the same game, just when the party splits up occasionally throughout the adventure you see what she was doing instead of him. Also you’re wearing high heels. So your choice is between looking fabulous and looking like an idiot. And we picked idiot for some reason. What were we thinking?
Raymond is the captain of a spaceship. It’s like Star Trek, kinda. There’s even an android tapping away on a console like that one in Star Trek, only instead of being designed by Gene Roddenberry this one was designed by Russ Meyer, apparently. If you’re too young for the Russ Meyer reference then he was an auteur who made camp, smutty movies in the sixties and seventies about scantily clad, top heavy ladies. We’re just saying that the android is a sexbot, okay?
Anyway, Raymond crash lands on a pre-spaceflight planet and quickly meets Laeticia and her squire and they soon establish that they both need help getting somewhere and so if they work together it’ll benefit both parties. Raymond wants to find other survivors from the crash and then get off the backwater rock he’s landed on, and Laeticia is trying to stop a war breaking out between her Kingdom and a rival Empire.
Along the way our two heroes meet and join up with a cast of mostly tropey characters, like a cranky old man and the obligatory annoying kooky girl, and they discover that there is a sinister link between their two quests, and the very fate of the universe. We all know where this is going, right? You’ve played a JRPG before. And if you haven’t then this shouldn’t be the one you start with. Persona 5 is right there waiting for you.
The story starts slow but it does get more interesting in the back half. It’s not particularly deep or thought provoking but it at least poses a couple of philosophical and ethical questions about things, like artificial intelligence and the perils of an advanced civilization meeting an underdeveloped one, even if it doesn’t explore them thoroughly. Less food for thought, then, and more of a Tic-Tac for thought.
Cutscenes have some fantastically questionable animations in them and there’s been zero attempt made to lip-sync the characters to the voice acting. Cutscenes are also overnumerous towards the end of the game as all is being revealed, and there’s one stretch of the game in particular in which it seems you do nothing but walk from one room to another so the person telling the story can tell it with a different décor for about two hours.
Combat is fast and flexible. It's fun at times, too. You play as one character in real time while your three party members are controlled by AI. You can set up combos for your party to use in battle by selecting what attacks they’ll do in what order, and as you level up you’ll unlock more attacks. You can also add items to heal or buff into your combos, and later support actions, too.
If you spend a bit of time experimenting with the set up of your squad you’ll find that you can turn them into a well-oiled machine, healing hurt party members or reviving unconscious ones without much supervision from you. This leaves you to concentrate on the D.U.M.A. system which is one of the best things about the game.
D.U.M.A. is an AI floaty ball thing that helps you in battle and it elevates what would otherwise be mostly humdrum encounters. With a tap of R1 you can zip to an enemy, or you can opt to slide around their back and attack from behind. Sometimes, back attacks will stun an enemy leaving them open to massive damage. You can even use D.U.M.A. outside of battle to help you traverse the world, climbing to high ledges or flying across ravines. Thanks, D.U.M.A.
Conclusion
Star Ocean: The Divine Force is like a comfortable pair of JRPG slippers. If you're in the mood for a Japanese role playing game and you've played all of the good ones then you can rest assured that this one is fine. It's okay. It's comfort food. You know that feeling when you just wish Netflix would make another season of Mindhunter and so you end up watching Criminal Minds? That. Only in space.
Comments 44
At least it's an improvement over the last Star Ocean (which is a real low for the series)
You should have shared a picture of that hair.
I'm not really interested in the game but if I see a John McCormick review then it must be read. Glorious.
@haoie
To be honest, that is a really low bar to overcome. lol
Can we lower the difficulty in this game after we started. The last couple of Star Ocean games I played I got stuck to difficulty spike. Then found I couldn’t reduce the difficulty. Without starting again and replaying about 20 hours of game.
@Ryall I have good news, you can change the difficulty at any time. I’m enjoying the game, it’s a big improvement over the last one. The exploration is good fun, zipping around the area and even climbing around on the rooftops in the towns using the floatation device kinda like a jetpack. I like the character designs too, with the only exception being Raymond. I’d say it’s at least as good as Star Ocean: The Last Hope, which I also enjoyed.
Hey, what’s wrong with Hyperdimension Neptunia?! Just finish VII and enjoyed it immensely. And I could name dozens better than P5. P3 and 4 for a start.
It seems this may be the last star ocean game we get, tri ace are in insolvency and are needing this game to sell well to keep them around.
Although I'm not too sure if it's tri ace or square enix that own the IP.
i will say it again — there has only been one or two good star ocean games in this long running franchise. i have been baffled as to why the series has continued for as long as it has, where as A-tier IP such as vagrant story or parasite eve were killed off aeons ago. i feel for tri-ace because they used to be a talented studio back in the enix days — valkyrie profile is a certified classic as is star ocean: the second story. but other than that, they have struggled to remain on their feet. they are in financial trouble and i do not expect the divine force to save them. and to be fair, they have not made a good game in well over a decade.... so, the writing was on the wall? had they treated the divine force as their "fanal fantasy" in the same way sakaguchi did, perhaps we would be having a different conversation.
Much better than a 6
Who the hell is Russ Meyer to get mentioned and why wasn't Benny Hill mentioned? A Brit talking of old school smut and Benny Hill isn't his go to reference? Outrageous! 😆 😁👍
Giz em, reasons to care...
Unlimited Saga I can at least kind of understand since that's also by square but the dig at Neptunia was really out of the blue.
Lol great comparisons and great review
Is it just me or does the description of the plot for this game strongly resemble that of Star Ocean Second Story? Like even down to the two main characters abeing a blonde space-faring guy who gets stranded on a strange backwater planet or a blue haired girl who lives on said planet.
Haven’t played this one yet but even after this review I kind of want to. Loved Star Ocean Second Story, wouldn’t mind if this one tried really hard to harken back to it.
Great review, looks fairly crap but kinda worth it for Space Mullet. Think you’ve annoyed the two people who enjoy Neptunia with a completely straight face and ruminate on their ‘themes’ though.
Enjoying this game, the best star ocean since till the end of time. Love the battle system more than Tales of Arise. The story is so interesting to. The only problem in this game is yeah, Raymond face.
Have you already mentioned Raymond’s hair?
I just appreciate that it's a JRPG where you can go into multiple buildings in each town. A little thing but there's a horrible trend in the genre where towns are now just arrangements of large blocks textured to look like buildings. The towns are also distinct and pretty charming rather than being the same thing over and over again like, say, SO4. Or in Tales of Xilla where there are multiple locations that actually use the exact same town - like if in FFVII there were 5 Kalms that were meant to be different places. I mean, the literal exact same town model.
The combat is the best in the series, though having replayed 4 and 5 recently that might not be saying much. I'd recommend against the American dub though. It's badly acted, characters can sound like twice their age, bad lip syncing and even just the body language doesn't line up with what the VAs are saying.
Anyway, I like it for the exploration, combat, character customisation and that classic JRPG feeling of being on an adventure. It's also nostalgic to see a larger budget (as opposed to, say, an Idea Factory game) JRPG be so unashamedly Japanese (for better or worse).
@MacDingus The choice between two characters is a SO2 thing, yeah. Though every SO is either you're a spacefaring guy that gets marooned on a less developed planet OR you're from a less developed planet and you meet some spacefaring people. But yeah, I think they realised where they went wrong with 5, and even 4, and this entry is showing that.
Like the mind numbing backtracking in 4 and particularly 5 is not only asked of you less here, but they have fast travel from early on. The blindside system is fun and intuitive, unlike SO4 where it was finicky and annoying, especially since any hit you took might entirely empty your bonus board.
Somehow, that was harder to read than a review that straight up pans the game.
Reaffirms what I'd already suspected about this game, though.
I've played this game for about 10 hours so far, 3 hours messing with settings to get it playable because PC launch was horrible, this game is just terribly optimised. But, once I got rid of all the stutters this game is just so much fun to play. Raymond and the entire cast so far (6 characters for me) have all been likeable, combat is exhilarating and fast paced with the DUMA system and is nice that there's absolutely no transition in and out of combat. Movement is AMAZING, the sprint is super fast and you can cover so much ground with DUMA, this is actually the best feeling JRPG movement I've ever experienced now that I think about it, the closest game I could compare it to is Nier Automata but instead Raymond is on crack!
This review also forgot to mention the mini-figure card game that is so addictive. The objective is to place your units on a checker type board to reduce the opponents life to zero, with several minion types and an added layer of strategy because if you corner off the opponents minions with yours, you destroy them, vastly improving your odds to win the game. Not to mention, there is added incentive to do these battles because each opponent you beat gives you a new figure that you can use to further strengthen your deck AND use as super strong accessories for your party in actual fights.
I don't know what game this reviewer is playing, but it seems like I'm playing a completely different game, I'd give it a solid 8/10 and can say that I'm enjoying it far more than last years Tales of Arise. If the game is looking good to anyone reading this, I implore you to try out this game, I could see it becoming a hidden gem in years to come!
Did they add an option for the text size? In the demo, its way too small. I cannot read it without standing right in front of the tv.
Damn shame about the score, I guess I'll be waiting for a $20 sale next year during Black Friday 2023.
@thefourfoldroot1 "Hey, what’s wrong with Hyperdimension Neptunia?!"
Well I've played every single game in the series so far going back to the PS3 games so with confidense I say they are very cheaply produced and are in the lower tier of JRPGs 😅
They recycle absolutely everything across most of the games which is not limited to backgrounds, assets, character models, dialogue, story, moves, menus, animations, etc.
I play them because the gameplay is really fun so I can ignore most of the stuff I mentioned and in the end we just want to have fun even if were nothing playing a goty super contender.
"Look at Raymond's hair
LOOK AT IT"
lmao
I guess I'll pick this up on sale.
If Raymond had a better haircut would this game have a higher score ?? Anyways I like his hair and I will play this game .
This review is a 1/10. It's hardly even a review and is more of a literal joke as in it's actually satire instead of, y'know a review? Also the game is actually really good and it feels like the reviewer didn't even play it and instead relied on it being as bad as its predecessor to slam it, which has backfired since it's one of the better games in the series...
73 on metacritic with a user score of 8.5, looks like it's not as bad as this review makes out.
Removed - trolling/baiting
@Juanalf
Fair enough, it wasn’t clear to me they were talking about only production values. I wasn’t really that indignant, just wouldn’t want people to overlook the games due to what came across as a bit of a snide remark (and on that subject, Criminal Minds is also a great show)
The game sounds great by the way, but these games are often a chore to 100%, which I’m always compelled to attempt, so will have to look into that and the trophy campaign (and maybe the aforementioned sexbot, lol) before committing.
@admeister Really? I absolutely hate the jetpack... drives me nuts at the uncontrollable inability to judge how far or near you can reach.
Halo was easier than this!
Battle gameplay I like, but stacking AP is a cheap MMO rub unless it gets better (about 14 hours in and I grind so probably 3 😅)
Nice to see Welch's original VA is still the same (Japanese with subs only, only major games have good English VAs, yes I'm very bias - just dont mention Laura Baliey)
Last thing I don't like is and its all pure SE and nothing to do with SO it's either.
Performance based optimisation or graphics based optimisation, no middle ground, just like strangers of paradise, wtf Enix? Where's balanced? Have you not heard of balanced graphics and performance optimisation? No, apparently not, it's 30fps or 60fps or feff yous.
Pretty and laggy or smooth and playable Urgh.
-grumbles- >: (
@Ryall You can lower or raise the difficulty to your heart's content.
@nessisonett I've only been insulted once on Twitter so far and only upset a couple in here so all in all this is one of my better reviews.
@TowaHerschel7 I didn't slam the game. I said it was not bad. You can tell because where the 6/10 is at the end of the review it says "not bad" next to it. Not bad. It's pretty alright!
Can't believe they put David Lee Roth in this game.
@Choppaz I said it was alright explicitly in the second paragraph. And I said it implicitly in the first sentence. And the score has "Not bad" written next to it.
The problem, as always, is that if a game gets less than an 8 people get sad. Like we can't enjoy sixes. I'm playing a six right now and enjoying it. It's fine.
And I didn't really recommend playing a six year old game. I said that if you liked JRPGs and played a lot of them then this would be a fine one to try but if you don't you should try something else like Persona 5. That's just good advice.
It's like if you had never, ever seen an action movie, I'd say watch Die Hard. It's a banger. A classic. A winner. If you've seen loads of action movies and you love action movies and then Out For Justice starring Steven Seagal comes on the telly I'd say sure, give it a go. It's fine.
Now I want to look at the hair.
Read an article about the state of Tri-Ace. Sadden me to read about the situation, and how the state of gaming currently is, with the rise of development cost and live service games ecc.
Bought it just now from the PS store. I grew up loving these games and would be sad to see a developer that contributed to them cease to exist. I wish the developers well and I hope the game does good for them to keep going forward.
@ApostateMage My thoughts exactly. John could review Tetris and make it a must-read. In fact, I vote that he gets the call for God of War Ragnarok.
And for those who think John thinks all games are mediocre, you should mosey on over to the forums and see what he writes about games like 13 Sentinels. He can gush with praise (in his own way) when he wants to. 😄
No mention of the Es'owa minigame/sidequest is surprising. Its a super fun and addictive side activity. Also this game feels like a collectathon platformer at times with DUMA having to be used to find crystals and bunnies. I'm completely hooked in this game
While I did enjoy the game a bit, this game is going in the right direction with its story and gameplay. Only thing is will it be enough to save the franchise to get another entry?
A Push Square 6/10 for a JRPG might as well be an 8/10.
*Edit, I was wrong but not by much 7/10.
@HeeHo Agreed. For me the game was a solid 7/10. It’s much better than the previous entry. I’d love to see them build on Divine Force in a next game. Lots of potential.
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