Star Ocean: The Divine Force - Review (I REALLY Wanted To Love This!) 

Im addicted to this game 😍

"Double A game released at triple A game asking price" - I'm a Star Ocean fan, but I totally agree with this statement. It's extremely unfair when a good game on a budget (such as this) is forced to compete with triple A titles with near infinite budget at no fault of developers, but a publisher who wants same money for far lesser investment from their side.

I've never played a Star Ocean game before. But The Divine Force is something I'm really liking. Most of why I like it is because of the characters and the environments. Everything apart from the water looks really cool like someone went out there way to present the game in a good light.

Good video! Sorry the game didn’t click for you, but I appreciate your evenhandedness in describing why it didn’t. For my part, as a series fan, I’ve been enjoying my time with the game. Haven’t beaten it yet (trying to be super thorough) but while there is some jank here and there (not least of which base PS4 performance), I’ve found myself enjoying the themes being explored in the story, the additions to the series lore/worldbuilding, and been getting super addicted to figuring out how Item Creation works this time around. Also, regarding that sidequest you mentioned, that one stumped me for a bit as well. It turns out the “flavor text” of the dude getting attacked after eating at the inn was a clue. You need to eat there, then get to the area the quest mentioned while the food buff is still active in order to get the enemies to spawn. Whether you find that kind of thing charming or annoying can definitely depend, but personally I enjoyed it as a bit of slightly cheeky quest design.

Thank you for your review. I will probably pick this up during the Christmas sale once I've finished S&F7 and Guijian 3. Gives me Phantasy Star online vibes.

Great video as always are you considering Evil West, Gungrave GORE or Samurai Maiden?

whoever was working on Nina’s kit was high af😭😭😭😭😭😂😂😂☠️☠️

I'm about 10 hours in, the game is not that bad, it also has a modest budget for a company that don't make much. My favorite JRPGs are Tales of Vesperia, Persona 4 Golden and Dissidia 2. This is not going to come close to the Crisis Core remake, but it's a good game. My biggest complaint is the text is too small, and it's shocking it hasn't been patched yet. I had no FPS drops like you stated, and I picked the favor graphics over FPS option, but I'm on the Series X.

you need to eat something in that village and go to larcasse with an active foodbuff for these enemies to appear... the game does kinda hint at it with what the npc and the quest text are saying. at least that worked for me and the enemies were there on the map

I absolutely love it so far

I’ve bought three star ocean games and never made it past the opening hours. As much as I love the concepts of the sci-fi meets fantasy worlds. The core game itself never feels like it hits where most classic JRPG do.

Not gonna watch this now, since I like to go into games as blind as possible these days. The demo sold me enough to keep this on my "might play eventually" list. I don't want tri-Ace to die... but I'm not exactly playing my part either (I did buy Exist Archive and Resonance of Fate (twice) though 🙈).

Eyy, good see you still kicking bro. Flaws aside, I really enjoyed this. Felt much better then the previous game. And I like the main character. Also the party members are cool too. It has it's issues. But feel it's a step In The right direction. I'll also add, I 100% agree with your dislikes. And that's why, imo. You are so good with reviews. They are rational. I can totally dislike a load of aspects of a game. But still enjoy it for what it is.

Great video. It does sound like a mixed bag but happy its still better than the last Star Ocean (Integrity and Faithlessness). There not being quest markers for side quests is a huge bummer. Thats terrible game design and i'm curious if the will even bother adding that in patch or its intentionally like that.

I only played 2, 3, 4 and that 5 which is most one I regret gettin. So I’m waiting for a sale on this game.

game is awesome

I really like it ❤

I think your criticism on this pretty on point. But when you said you liked that piece of massive garbage Valkirye Elisium way better than this one I thought you are absolutely crazy lol.

Just played all 5 previous games this past year and at about midway or beyond for 6 for my first (Ray) run (just got the 8th party member) and will say it is easily the best in the series imo when it comes to combat and more or less on par or better than the series best story which was either 2 or 4 depending on the person...2 has the more interesting story but also has some issues with execution due to all but Claude and Rena being optional characters thus the dialogue seems to randomly choose or has a specific queue of choices from a preset of dialogue depending on which characters you recruit which leaves some severed character building issues in the main story or little to no involvement as well at times...on top of that the second half of 2 felt a bit rushed with how they handled villains (at the same time this was SNES era story writing which while solid is, imo, weaker than nowadays in regards to character development for all characters (playable and villains...especially villains who were mostly one-note villains tbh). As for 4 while the story itself is a bit weaker it was able to develop it's main characters better in the main story due to them ALL being mandatory and not optional so each had some limelight in the story...granted 2's characters were a bit more likable (granted imo 1 had the best characters before 6 which imo has better characters than ALL past games so far with only maybe Cliff from SO3 and Illia from SO1 being as good or better than 6's characters)...though the actual story subject matter was bland in comparison to 2's even though the premise (exploring multiple planets in an effort to find one to colonize as Earth was more or less becoming inhabitable) was better than 2's. Some people may say SO3 was the best story in the series but imo it's the worse....the series defining twist imo was horrible and ruined the series and all that happened before and after was no better if not worse than that in SO 1 and 2 tbh...hell I even consider SO5 to be a better written story (actual subject matter (what goes on in the story just in case someone has no clue what that means) of the plot may suck worse though but the actual events had actual better logic in how they connect than SO3 imo and like 4 the entire party was mandatory so they incorporated all playable characters into the main story better). Biggest issue I'd say 6 had was how boring the side quests were (basically hunt or fetch quests only with little lore/character building quests) however I can't even use that as a criticism for just SO6 as jrpgs seemed to have been handled this way more and more over the last decade or so to the detriment of the genre. Now as for one comment you made I can't agree with: the idea it's a AA game for one, it's not...at best it's an A game, worse a B or B+ tier game and as for a AAA price point: no it's not, that's just the industry standard period for any game outside of Indie games or remasters (not remakes which are fully re-creations from the ground up of a game). Outside of maybe a very small hand full of a few dozen or so games at most over the last few decades almost every single game (95%) releases at the $60 price point regardless of if they're B or AAA tier games...oh and if there was a AAA price point it'd be $70 as that's what EA, SE, Activision, etc are trying to/are selling some of their own games for and trying to push it as the series standard now.

its a amazing game, like all the other SO games

when you see how awesome the cover/box art for this game is and then see how the game actually looks its...upsetting :( the main male character in the art shows him with a lot more muscle and definition with veins and such and the characters didn't look like dolls but in the game he's skinny and flat with no emotions booooring the cover art was definitely a way to trick kids

For me, I feel like "Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time" killed any enthusiasm for any Star Ocean game ever again. It even managed to retroactively make Star Ocean 1 and 2 worse, by trivializing the plots. "Star Ocean" has never lived up to its potential by relegating the sci-fi element to the most minimal possible. Although "Star Ocean: The Divine Force" seems to attempt to correct that, it's way too late for me to get on board. Considering that "tri-Ace" as a studio was named after the self-proclaimed 3 Aces of Namco's"Wolf Team," I believe the REAL talent stayed with "Namco" and has outdone "tri-Ace" in every way possible.

sadly every sience - Last Hope ST O - most of the story are - we have crashed on a back yard world - gameplay on a budget - and a odd story were we must stop the other from doing something

Tri-Ace needs to go back to basics. Don’t try making a AA game on a shoestring budget. Prioritize gameplay/story and downgrade graphics. I’d rather have So2 style graphics.

I owned the first five main entries in the Star Ocean franchise. Star Ocean 4 and 5 were so underwhelming that I lost interest in the franchise and seeing this game does nothing to renew that interest.

most of these jrp's are so outdated it feels like the only franchise that has progressed is final fantasy everything else is just stuck in time....

I liked the break away combat from the previous games, much more up-close and immersive. This looks mediocre at best!

To be honest, I think Star Ocean is full of ambition but ultimately fails because Tri-Ace has been in a state of fluctuation since the 2000s. SO3 was where the problems started with its divisive gameplay & infamous ending. Then came SO4 which is where a lot of people dropped off with its problems. Lastly there was SO5 which was a rushed mess that made the series into joke. Now we're at a point where fans are willing to accept something below the bar, especially for this game's price tag.

I'd rather have this than the cash grab and brain dead games we have now. I totally appreciate the effort they put with the limited budget they had.