Back to the stars.

Star Ocean is a series with a troubled past.

It Began its life in the SNES era with “Star Ocean”, a title that didn’t make its way to the west until over a decade later. The 2nd title, aptly named, “Star Ocean: The Second Story” would be our first introduction to the series during the golden age of the PSX JRPG boom and this is where I got into the series and it remains my favorite of the bunch.

Since then, the sequels released have received divisive reception until “Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness”, which was widely accepted as the worst of the bunch.

Many believed the series to be dead at this point with no news of a sequel for many years but I held out hope that things would not end there and the series would make a triumphant return to form. So, when “Star Ocean: The Divine Force” was officially announced, I crossed my fingers and hoped that it would be the savior for the series that I was looking for.

I always appreciate a good skybox.

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PS, Xbox, PC
Played on: PC (i7 9700K 4.9GHZ/RTX3080)
Played: 30~ hours

When his space ship is attacked while hauling an unknown cargo, Captain Raymond is forced to abandon ship and take his escape pod to the nearest planet. When he lands, he is quickly attacked by hostile wildlife and is saved by the traveling Royal Laeticia and her trusted knight Albaird and they decide to team up in a mutually beneficial relationship.

As far as a setup goes, I’m personally fond of fish out of water stories as it applies to Ray who is in an unfamiliar world and others local to the planet being faced with the existence of much more advanced civilizations that have conquered the stars. While I wouldn’t go as far to say that the characters are fascinating, I found their interactions enjoyable and the way the story expands from being about this conflict between two kingdoms to something of an intergalactic scale was interesting to watch unfold.

It’s a shame that I ended up missing many interactions between the characters due to my use of fast travel as after a certain point, I grew tired of dashing from one location to another over and over again just to hear some dialog. It’s an odd thing to be constantly reminded that I’m missing out everytime I choose to fast travel even though it’s a system that exists to cut out the tedium of having to travel through the same locations over and over.

Also, there is a dual protag system in SO6 that made me choose my view point and during certain points of the game, Ray and Laeticia would go about doing their own things and while I understand that this is to add replay value, I would have much preferred getting the full story in one playthrough as from what I could see, there really wasn’t that much of a difference in terms of story when it came to choosing one or the other.

When watching the reveal trailer of the game, the thing that stood out to me the most was the world exploration as the character was flying around the map which gave me Xenoblade vibes but in reality, the maps are very limited with invisible walls everywhere which was more than a little disappointing as flying around the map with D.U.M.A. could have been one of the main draws for the title otherwise.

D.U.M.A. is a great addition to the game, I just wish the world was not so limited in terms of exploration.

From a visual standpoint, SO6 is a bit of a mixed bag.

The detailed environments and the impressive skybox are a sight to behold. Where it falters for me is in their 3D character models that look like emotionless dolls, lacking the artistic direction to match the interesting character designs. There is also the issue with the aggressive use of depth of field where it’s applied in a way that is either distracting to look at or plainly being used incorrectly. Unfortunately, there was no way to turn the feature off in the settings without the use of a 3rd party software. I also saw many stutters in performance and had to go through the shaders compilation over and over again just to remedy it for a time for it to come back later again.

On that note, the PC port of SO6 is very barebones, offering little in customizing visuals and performance. No advanced options like Ultrawide, DLSS or FSR support is one thing but to have the game capped at a maximum of 60FPS on PC in 2022 is frankly, just lazy.

Combat encounters usually only last a few seconds but they’re action packed.

All is not doom and gloom however, as Tri-Ace is best known for their excellent combat mechanics in their RPGs and they do not disappoint here.

The transition between exploration to combat is seamless with the ability to catch the enemy off guard to deal a ton of uncontested damage. Each attack/skill costs a certain amount of AP to use which regenerates quickly and the VA gauge is used to initiate various maneuvers using the D.U.M.A. which can be used both defensively and offensively. I could also switch between the four characters on the field at any time with a press of a button and pause the action to take stock of the situation and use items if needed.

Enemies often had breakable parts that I could focus down for various effects like taking out the weapon of a giant enemy so their attacks will become significantly weaker or attacking the eye of a cyclops to stun them for a time.

There were some great customization options as using skill points, I could focus characters down paths to unlock skills/stats suited for the role that I wanted them to fill. After skills were unlocked, I could create a chain of skills that would cancel one skill into another for various benefits.

Overall, the combat and the systems surrounding it are the best parts of SO6 by far and where I spent the most time experimenting. There is also a focus on crafting but I didn’t find it too useful until much later in the game.

Tri-Ace is one of the industry’s best when it comes to combat engines!

Due to a myriad of issues both big and small, Star Ocean: The Divine Force feels less like a step in the right direction but instead, a stumble towards the goal. Still, the excellent combat and a more enjoyable story shows that there is still life amongst the stars and I sincerely hope that the series will continue and improve even further.

Fun Tidbit: There was even an anime for Star Ocean: The Second Story which I watched back in the day because I liked the game so much. I wonder if it still holds up?

Review copy of game provided by publisher.