If I were to name my first true JRPG love, I would not hesitate to list the 2004 PlayStation 2 exclusive Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (Aka. Star Ocean 3). Although divisive within the fanbase, particularly due to its Disc 2 surprise twist that future instalments fail to hint at, it was one of those games I was able to get a couple of hundred hours of playtime in, due to all the different systems and features that kept fans coming back for me. As time has passed, further instalments have been released, including two sequels (as chronological prequels) and a now-defunct mobile game. These have been enjoyable games in their own right, albeit forgettable. Now in 2022, we have received the sixth chapter in this sci-fi JRPG franchise – Star Ocean: The Divine Force. How does it fare? Read on to find out.
Chronologically, Star Ocean: The Divine Force takes place a few decades after the previous games events. However, the narrative is standalone and is a solid starting point to jump into the series. Taking an approach last featured in Star Ocean: The Second Story, the first choice you will make upon starting a new save file is whether you wish your main protagonist to be the space-faring Raymond Lawrence or the princess of a less-technologically advanced planet, Aster IV, Laeticia. The choice may come down to whether you prefer a male or female protagonist. Although narratively, it comes down to whether you wish to see alternating events through the viewpoint of the sci-fi-oriented Raymond or fantasy-oriented, Laeticia. The base narrative is very similar between the two outside of select events, the only difference being a route-exclusive party member later in the game. There is enough to warrant a second playthrough, although you wouldn’t miss out on much if your time can only be stretched to a single run of the main story.
In terms of Star Ocean: The Divine Force’s narrative, rather than building up to all hell breaking loose like in previous games, you are pretty much flung straight into the action following the first cutscene. The characters converge immediately, with Raymond’s craft coming under attack, and the escape pods of his and his crew crash-landing on Aster IV. This is noticed by Princess Laeticia and her companion Albaird, who are near Raymond’s crash site and help save him from the monsters of the forest. The story is slow to get off its feet, and it will take a few good hours to get to the meatier content of the narrative. Once you get there, the story and its diverse cast of planetsiders and offworlders is enjoyable enough to keep you going, although does heavily lean towards the fantasy world elements that many Star Ocean games tend to do. While the focus is more heavily oriented towards Raymond and Laeticia, each character is nicely developed and has a distinct contributing role to the narrative alongside unique personalities/tropes.
Unlike past 3D Star Ocean games, tri-Ace has sought to deliver expansive semi-open world maps that don’t keep players on a singular or defined branching paths. The world map we have received has some beautiful vistas to behold, but ultimately is lacking in diversity. Each of the “open world” environments merely felt like locations to go from one point to the other through, rather than what you would actively wish to explore. I found myself comparing what was on offer to the confined world maps of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, where every area felt properly used and bigger than they were, rather than expansive areas merely for the sake of having them. On the design side, the aesthetic appeal of the characters was good, but the lighting of some areas was either washed out or like stumbling through the darkness, and there were regular dips in frame rates for seemingly no apparent reason.
Motoi Sakuraba returns as the lead composer of Star Ocean: The Divine Force, and while I didn’t feel there were as many headbangers as his previous video game works, there was more than enough Star Ocean-style music to go around. Square Enix and tri-Ace also offered English and Japanese voice acting with the game, as is the standard, and both casts offered pretty good casting. Some big-name voice actors take on lead roles, including but by no means limited to Mark Whitten as Raymond, Danielle Judovits as Laeticia, Erica Lindbeck as Elena, Max Mittelman as Albaird and Suzie Yeung as Nina among many others.
Following the ambitious decision to feature every party member on the field at once in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, tri-Ace has scaled things back and made only four party members available on the battlefield at once. While I described this approach as a “double edged sword” at the time, the approach grew on me and it was something I would have liked tri-Ace to have continued with. But regardless, many innovations from that game – such as the transitionless battles, a diverse range of skills and more – carried across to Star Ocean: The Divine Force, and ultimately the action-RPG combat system is enjoyable. Combat is a wee bit on the easy side, with the occasional spike in difficulty for certain boss battles acting as a prompt to grind up an extra level or two. Although if a battle does serve as too much of a hinderance, it is very easy to drop the difficulty level down a notch.
One of the significant differences to the battle system in Star Ocean: The Divine Force is the inclusion of D.U.M.A., a robotic companion with its own skill tree, which allows your controlled character to hover and propel yourself forward on the field (in and out of battle), perform special attacks, and blindside enemies to dish out additional damage. I wouldn’t say this added too much of a strategic element to the battle system and is more practical for world exploration, but it is damn fun charging at a boss or large group of enemies from the sky, taking a larger chunk of their health out in the process.
A clear focus of Star Ocean: The Divine Force is how players can grow their character through the consumption of Skill Points (SP). To be honest, personally, I would have liked an “auto skill” option based on a few criteria I set. But instead, with the skill points you unlock, you must go through a range of menu screens to determine whether you wish to spend points on stat boosts/skills on the skill grid, upgrade your combat skills, or level one of several auxiliary abilities. Even if it is hard to be left feeling underpowered for your character level, I felt the anxiety of going through the menus thinking that I could do just that.
As a means of bringing together characters from the different Star Ocean games, and even other tri-Ace franchises, throughout Star Ocean: The Divine Force you will encounter many players of the Es’owa board game. Throughout your journey, you will be able to collect pawns that can be used in this tabletop game. In this game, you use your collected pawns to take out opponents’ pieces on a 4×4 to 8×8 grid, whittling down their HP to claim victory. While there are generic pieces you will start with, eventually, you will unlock pawns based on named characters from other games in the series, which make them fun collectables. Unfortunately, if you got one of the special editions, you can end up with some overpowered pawns at the start that will see you pummel your opponents for a good chunk of the game. But ultimately, the minigame is a fun time-waster with a good level of strategy required, and something I would typically stop for if an NPC wanted to challenge me.
In both Star Ocean: Till the End of Time and Star Ocean: The Last Hope, battle trophies were this fun thing where players were tasked with completing all sorts of weird and wonderful in-game tasks for small prizes, actual achievements/trophies for the respective console, and just for the challenge of it. Some of these came down to “Defeat X number of Enemies as a specific character” or “Defeat an enemy using only X type of move”, to weird and wonderful ones such as “Dealing 77,777 Damage” or “Defeat [Final Boss] at Level 1”. They added a lot of replayability to the game, and while I only accomplished a good 100 of them in III and a couple of hundred in IV, they were always fun to unlock. After gimping the system in Integrity and Faithlessness, tri-Ace has unfortunately abandoned the trophy system entirely in Star Ocean: The Divine Force. This is a real shame.
While still not accomplishing the peak experiences offered by the first three Star Ocean games, Star Ocean: The Divine Force is a solid instalment in the long-running JRPG franchise that offers an enjoyable two-protagonist storyline, some great music and voice acting, fun combat, and a boardgame mini-game which is a good time waster. However going against its positives, is a directionless open world that could have used more love and attention, removal of long-time series staples, and as time passes, will to me at least be a forgettable experience. This being said, the development team are clearly passionate about the Star Ocean franchise, and I hope to see more of what made the past games great, if and when a seventh instalment is released.
A PlayStation 5 review code of Star Ocean: The Divine Force was provided by Australian distributor Bandai Namco Entertainment Australia for the purpose of this review.
Star Ocean: The Divine Force is now available on the PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S.
