Forty-five hours, a few laughs, and a few frowns later, we shrugged off Star Ocean: The Divine Force. It’s a middle-tier Japanese RPG that never threatens to rise to the top or fall so far that it’s crammed between Hyperdimension Neptunia and Unlimited Saga. Failure to even crack the top half. The most opulent building in the JRPG genre.
Considering the series’ troubled past, The Divine Force’s middling quality is likely an improvement. Some of the changes and systems implemented here make it possible that the next Star Ocean game may be genuinely good, even if this game wouldn’t make our best of 2022 list unless we’re doing 100 games each this year. It’s possible it’ll turn out to be really good.
But the present is all that matters. It is the year 2022, and we must complete our mission. Over the course of five days, we played for over forty hours of this game, and now that we’ve made it this far, we can say, “Yeah, it’s alright.” What else can I say? There’s nothing we can say that’s particularly insightful or interesting. There will be no laughter here. The jokes were terrible anyway. We could make snide comments if it were truly terrible, but as it stands, we can just shrug and move on.
Star Ocean: The Divine Force gives players a choice between two protagonists to control on their galactic adventure. You’ve got Raymond, who’s like an anime Han Solo but has the worst haircut we’ve ever seen in a video game, and Princess Laeticia, who has blue hair and fights in the front lines while wearing high heels.
Although we spent most of the game focusing on Raymond and his peculiar golden space mullet, we did try out Laeticia for a couple of hours and found that it was essentially the same game, with the exception that when the party splits up at various points in the story, you get to see what she was up to instead of Raymond. You look great, especially in those heels. Therefore, you have a choice between looking amazing and looking like a complete moron. Idiot was the one we chose for some reason. Why did we even bother?
Raymond pilots an intergalactic ship. You could say it has a Star Trek vibe. An android can be seen tapping away at what appears to be a console similar to the one in Star Trek, though this one was apparently created by Russ Meyer rather than Gene Roddenberry. For those too young to recognize the name, Russ Meyer was a director known for his racy, campy films.
At any rate, after Raymond’s crash landing on a pre-spaceflight planet, he meets Laeticia and her squire and they quickly determine that they need assistance getting somewhere and, therefore, that working together will benefit both parties. While Laeticia is attempting to prevent war from breaking out between her Kingdom and a rival Empire, Raymond’s primary concern is locating other survivors of the crash and subsequently evacuating the outlying rock on which he currently finds himself.
In the course of their adventures, our two heroes meet and team up with a cast of mostly tropey characters, such as a grumpy old man and the obligatory annoying kooky girl, and they learn that there is a dark connection between their respective quests and the fate of the universe. Where this is going, I think we can all guess. Previously, you’ve engaged in the medium of Japanese role-playing games. And if you haven’t, you probably shouldn’t start with this one. You can immediately start playing Persona 5 now.
The second half of the story is much more engaging than the first. Though it lacks depth and complexity, it does raise some interesting ethical and philosophical questions about AI and the potential dangers of an advanced civilization encountering a less developed one.
There is no attempt at lip-syncing the characters in the cutscenes to the voice acting, and the animations are often wildly inconsistent. Even as the game’s secrets are finally revealed, the number of cutscenes becomes excessive, and there is a stretch of about two hours where it seems all you do is walk from room to room so the narrator can tell the story in a different setting.
Battles move quickly and can be adapted to. It can be entertaining as well. In this real-time role-playing game, you take control of a single avatar while three other party members are managed by computer bots. As you progress through the game, you’ll gain access to new attack types, allowing you to create more elaborate combos for your party to use in combat. Healing and buffing items, as well as later support actions, can be incorporated into your combos.
It’s possible to turn your team into a well-oiled machine that can heal injured party members and revive the unconscious with minimal oversight if you put in the time to try out different configurations. This frees your mind to focus on the game’s best feature, the D.U.M.A. system.
D.U.M.A. is a sphere-shaped artificial intelligence that aids you in combat and spices up what would otherwise be rather mundane encounters. Rapidly approach an adversary with a tap of R1, or take the low road and sneak up behind them for a surprise attack. When an opponent is stunned, they are wide open to a devastating back attack. Outside of combat, you can use D.U.M.A. to help you explore the world by letting you climb to great heights or fly across deep valleys. All credit to D.U.M.A.
Conclusion
Like a cozy pair of JRPG slippers, Star Ocean: The Divine Force is easy to sink into. In case you’re craving a Japanese RPG but have already exhausted the good options, this one should satisfy your cravings. That’s fine. It’s the kind of food that makes you feel better. You know how it is to be watching Criminal Minds when you really want to be watching Mindhunter and you can only watch one episode because Netflix hasn’t renewed Mindhunter yet? That. It’s a cosmic first.
Pro:
- Combat is fun, fast, and flexible
- Some banging music
- Ticks all of the traditional JRPG boxes
Cons:
- Rough animations
- Occasional slowdown in parts
- Story takes ages to get going
- Look at Raymond’s hair
- LOOK AT IT
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