Star Ocean: The Divine Force (PlayStation 4) review "I knew this would happen, but I was helpless to prevent it. "

After the lousy letdown in the Star Ocean series that was titled Integrity and Faithlessness, it is my pleasure to let you all know that the next game in that JRPG series, The Divine Force was more in line with what I expect from a game in tri-Ace’s series. I”m not sure this is much of a complement as the only one I considered truly great was the PlayStation’s The Second Story, but it’s at least an improvement on whatever the hell Integrity… was!

Taking a cue from The Second Story, you can pick one of two main characters to be your protagonist in this 2022 game. Raymond is the captain of a merchant ship. Laeticia is the princess of a kingdom on the planet Raymond winds up landing on by accident. From what I gleaned from reading — I wasn’t actually going to play both stories! — one eventual party member will be different based on which character you select and the story will be altered a bit. This is because Raymond and Laeticia split up a couple times, so you’ll spend those moments with your pick while the other does his or her thing.

Since I controlled Raymond, here’s what I experienced. He is flying his ship around the galaxy along with tagalong kid Chloe, whose main contribution to the plot is “person who Raymond has to find” and amazingly competent do-everything android sidekick Elena, who probably isn’t also a sex-bot even if the programmers designed her to look like one with curves all but busting out of tight clothing. As the game starts, they’re making a delivery. And then a much larger Federation ship shows up and shoots them down, leading that trio to hop into escape pods and eject.

Since this is a Star Ocean game, anyone with any experience with the series knows just what is going to happen. The series’ universe takes place in futuristic outer space with all sorts of inhabited planets containing all sorts of civilizations. And every damn time, these games conspire to place you on one where said civilization operates on about the same level as the medieval places present in the vast majority of RPGs and keeps you there as long as possible.



And that’s where Raymond lands. His first mission, find where the pods containing Elena and Chloe are. He quickly gains the assistance of Laeticia and her overly-proper retainer Albaird and they start exploring the land. Of course things won’t be a simple as the “Ray helps Laeticia complete her journey; she helps him find his friends” task that’s given to you. There are threats of war between Laeticia’s kingdom and a rival land and you’ll eventually find out those rivals are being aided by a trio from a different advanced civilization. And those three are working along with a strange alien species seeking to assimilate other forms of life into its community. And that species is far more widespread than anyone expected — even having influence in the Federation.

So, why was Raymond shot down in the first place? Perhaps it has something to do with the weird mechanical device he had on his ship known as D.U.M.A. In short, this thing has all sorts of information, although it might not necessarily be willing to divulge what it knows. And it also does wonders to augment the party’s powers and maneuverability, which goes a long way towards making combat in this game a lot of fun.

When you encounter enemies, you can use D.U.M.A. to float in the air and then fly towards an enemy for a damaging attack. While in flight, you can switch direction in air to potentially blindside that foe and stun it for a bit. Later on, that device will allow you access to this game’s version of limit breaks, or you can eschew all of its offensive capabilities to acquire a defense-boosting shield.

There also is a really big reason to use D.U.M.A. as often as possible in fights. Each character can set up to three attacks to any of three buttons to perform combos, with each attack costing a certain number of points. Whenever you start up a session with The Divine Force, you’ll have a total of five points to use before you’ll need to step back a bit to let them recharge. However, by successfully getting blindsides or surprise attacks, you’ll add to that number, allowing you to attack without pause for extended periods of time. As long as you don’t take too much damage, though, as that sort of thing takes points away.

That sort of thing made the action-oriented battles in this game very entertaining. If I was playing well, I could steamroll anything in my path, but a few mistakes and I’d have to be more tactical in a bid to rebuild my point allotment. And combat wasn’t the only good thing about this game. There were some fun diversions, such as a pretty addictive board game where you can challenge a ton of NPCs in attempts to win superior pieces to add to your stash and use against more skilled opponents. Also, the plot was pretty entertaining, with a lot of moving pieces revolving around the sort of big conspiracy that can wind up threatening how things are run in the galaxy.



Sadly, the way that plot is delivered to the player does leave something to be desired at times. When controlling Raymond, there is this really lengthy mid-game section where Laeticia leaves your party in a last-ditch effort to prevent war long enough for her kingdom to develop some tech that can offset the empire’s fancy toys. During this entire time, what will you be doing with Raymond? A whole lot of nothing, that’s what! He’ll go from the kingdom’s castle to the town to the magic institute, back to the castle, on a brief scouting mission and back again and so on for what feels like an eternity. All that nonsense and busywork can go a long ways towards taking a person out of a game, as I was just waiting and waiting to actually start doing fun stuff again.

There also is this one really weird aspect to how this game’s story unfolds. Mainly that all adversity you face essentially is dialogue-only where the plot makes something happen and your characters have to scramble to overcome it. When it comes to combat, you kick ass every damn time you step up to the plate, regardless of who is challenging you. At the end of the game, there I was fighting the final boss in what should have been a climactic confrontation. And all I could think was that I’d pounded this guy into the dust four or five times previously. Dude might have posed a serious threat to the galaxy, but to me, it felt like I was finally putting some deluded fool out of his misery. When the plot starts to really kick in, it’s just this never-ending series of, “We defeated these guys, but they got away, so we’ll have to track them and try to finish the job next time” moments, which does not help in making things truly feel high-stakes.

And there are other problems, although some of them at least are common to this genre. Like many JRPGs, The Divine Force tries to ape western RPGs and how those games are loaded with all sorts of side-quests. And like many JRPGs, these things aren’t remotely interesting, tending to have you either collect or craft various items or equipment or simply killing so many of a certain monster. Really, this sort of stuff comes off more like game-padding for gamers who want to do everything than something a person would actually want to do. Maybe use the energy that went into creating this busywork and apply it to adding to the limited number of monster designs or crafting dungeons that are a bit less linear.

But that’s Star Ocean in a nutshell. After loving The Second Story, I’ve eagerly awaited every game in this series and have wound up disappointed to some degree. It’s a shame, really. You have a really fun battle system and a wide variety of characters you can control ranging from warriors to mages and even a pure healing/support specialist. But those positives get balanced out to some degree by a number of annoyances and something that should have been great winds up merely good. If I’m talking about The Divine Force or the older Till the End of Time and The Last Hope, I’m discussing something that was able to grab my attention and make me want to love it. Instead, I wound up enjoying the battle system and just sort of tolerating the rest while waiting for someone to put all the pieces together and make something that truly lives up to what I feel this series could be.

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (September 12, 2024) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.