Star Ocean: The Divine Force review – boldly going where many JRPGs have gone before-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Star Ocean: The Divine Force – does this look like Star Trek to you? (pic: Square Enix)

Square Enix’s long-running sci-fi series gets a new entry with an elegant new combat system but is it enough to appeal to newcomers?

Square Enix is one of the biggest Japanese publishers in the business but it’s very difficult to understand exactly what their plans and motivations are at the moment. Unlike Ubisoft, they haven’t yet taken the hint about how unpopular NFTs are and their selling off of most of their Western IPs and developers stands at odds with their stated desire to appeal more to Western gamers. If they think they’re going to get anywhere with games like Star Ocean, though, they’ve got another thing coming.

It is difficult to discern, from their typically vague comments on the subject, but it seems Square Enix’s plan is to continue to make Japanese style games but with more Westernised presentation, as exemplified by Forspoken and Final Fantasy 16. That approach has not been applied to this latest Star Ocean entry though, which is so purposefully old school much of its appeal centres around nostalgia for PlayStation 2 era Japanese role-players.

Star Ocean has been around for longer than that – since 1996 on the SNES – but it’s never been popular outside its home country and if it is known for anything in the West it’s for the fact that it was supposedly influenced by Star Trek, including in terms of the visuals. That’s what the creators say anyway, despite the fact that it looks and feels absolutely nothing like any version Star Trek.

Rather than the Star Trek angle, Star Ocean’s best claim to fame is that it was one of the first successful action role-players to come out of Japan, eschewing the normal turn-based battles in favour of real-time combat. In that sense it was truly ahead of its time, but of course turn-based combat is rare nowadays, so that selling point is no longer so distinctive. Although, to be fair, the combat is the best part of this new game.

The Divine Force is the sixth entry in the series (the last one was 2016’s Integrity And Faithlessness), although there’s little connection between any of the sequels, so that shouldn’t put you off anything. The plot revolves around a merchant spaceship crashlanding on the medieval style planet of Aster IV, where protagonist Ray agrees to help out the local princess in return for her locating his missing crewmates. You’re given the choice to follow either character, which adds replayability as neither character is present for every mission.

As is its tradition, and despite the sci-fi angle, Star Ocean usually manages to find an excuse to indulge in common role-playing tropes, including the use of magic, so the whole medieval angle seems eye-rolling unoriginal at first. The plot ends well, and on a much grander scale than initially seems likely, but before that it’s a jumbled mess of seemingly unconnected encounters and missions, much of which seems like padding in hindsight.

The two leads are quite endearing, though, and the script makes good use of the fact that half the cast are scientifically illiterate and the other half live and work in outer space.

Since Star Ocean has never managed to leverage its expertise with real-time battle it’s the Tales sales that is now better known for the feature. As such, the battles in The Divine Force are especially reminiscent of the systems from games like Tales Of Graces and Tales Of Xillia. That means that once a fight breaks out you’re able to manoeuvre around at will, using whatever combat abilities you’ve assigned to the three main face buttons.

Rather than Bayonetta style combos you can set up the order for moves to be used ahead of time, while being careful not to be caught out when you use the action meter bars necessary to activate them. It’s a clever, flexible system that lets the combat feel like an action game, while placing an emphasis on tactics and forward planning that means you don’t need much in the way of arcade skills to do well.

This approach continues with the use of your robot DUMA, who allows you to dash towards an enemy and, if you’re lucky, outflank them and score a special ‘blindside’ attack. DUMA can also act as a shield, reducing the damage the entire party takes, and has a variety of other uses unique to each character – as well as doubling as a jetpack when outside of battle.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force – JRPG in space (pic: Square Enix)

The battle system is good, and could have been the basis for a great game, but unfortunately almost everything else in The Divine Force is below par. For a start it has one of the most boring open world environments we’ve ever seen, which is not only visually dull but almost entirely lacking in interesting areas to explore or suitable rewards for doing so.

There is the occasional semi-attractive vista but the visuals in general are poor, with some really awful character design that makes everyone look like they’re badly articulated action figures – to such a degree that their uncanny valley faces can be quite unsettling.

Apart from some nice 2D art almost everything else in the game is offputtingly ugly, including the menus and an indecipherably small font. The Divine Force is obviously not a big budget game but few of its problems have anything to do with that. The combat is solid, and so is some of the character work, but everything else feels so dialled in and generic it become a chore to get through long before its 35+ hour runtime comes to a close.

To be honest, it’s a surprise Star Ocean has lasted this long, but while this is an improvement on the last game it’s barely enough to keep existing fans engaged, let alone attract any new ones.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £59.99
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: tri-Ace
Release Date: 27th October 2022
Age Rating: 12

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