Game – Star Ocean - The Divine Force

Games May 29, 2023

Time to Complete – 33:20 hr:min
Time to 100% collectables – 47:00

NOTICE: Galaxy difficulty

The Main Game –

With our boi Edge…er, Raymond, not Edge. They look similar, might be related by generations apart. Anyways the game starts out with a selection between either Laeticia or Raymond. Similar to an older Star Ocean game from the series. Depending on the character chosen, the story will unfold from their perspective. Only an optional character is locked behind the person chosen. Neither is necessary. I chose Raymond. Did not enjoy the game as much as expected so will not be playing as Laeticia’s perspective. Might in the future if the urge to play again ever arises. Overview of story will be from Raymonds selection and no contrast comparison between the two.

Taking place in the year 583 SD, Ray is a captain of his families Lawrence Logistics and helms the Ydas. In the opening scenes the Ydas is approached by a Pangalactic Federation battleship, The Astoria. Without warning they are fired upon and forced to flee. They flee to the nearest planet the game primarily resides around, which is in the Aster System [Aster IV]. With a successful escape in escape pods, an unfortunate thing happens where Ray is separated from his crew. The first thing that Ray does when landing is worry about finding the rest of his crew. However, this is where some locals come in. Our girl Laeticia is one of them with her faithful Alberd. Alberd being a bit aggressive towards Ray for a obvious reason. They saw a foreign object fall from the sky and a strange man immerge from it. This world has not developed enough to comprehend the concept of flying globally let alone galactic or above. With the curiosity that Laeticia has towards Ray, she asks for his help and in return will help him find his friends/crew who also crashed onto the planet.

Laeticia asks to find a person called Midas and in finding this person, save her kingdom that is on the brink of war with another nation called The Vey’l Empire. With the agreement had and Alberds skepticism, they are off to find the wizard… which oddly is fairly accurate in this scenario.

Once they reach the ruins, guided by the help of Laeticia and Alberd’s knowledge of the terrain to get to where this escape pod crashed, they are met with a odd fate. It is not a crewmate, however it is a companion, or at least soon to be one. DUMA. DUMA was part of the cargo that the Ydas was carrying and unbeknownst to them is a living thing of sorts. IT clings to Ray and offers support in the form of battle and other services :mrclean:. The small gang heads to the nearest village to discuss things further about the plan of action.

With a plan set on how to hopefully track down this illusive wizard, in the morning they head out and to a town called Derlryk. Delryk is where somebody that was closely connected to Midas resides. In search of Marquis, who hopefully knows of Midas’s whereabouts, appears to be doing some sort of research in the mines. Yet when they leave, a tragic event happens that the mines are under an event of great havoc. Pure coincidence obviously, since how else would such a convenient trail of events be occurring one after another. Anyways, Marquis’s assistant who claims to only be 15, heads with them down into the mines. ~~she don’t look no 15, yet the loading screen info cards displayed such info, unbeknownst to me until about several hours into game lol.~~ With a short merrily skip through the mines and back with Marquis in tow, things are settled with some interesting wormies curved back to their holes. Yet even after this definite struggle to bring Marquis back safe, he still refuses to tell us where the Magic man is hiding. Keep your secrets we say as Nina then says, lets do a bamboozling to this old man and pull a fast one on him… and by that I mean lets all tell him we are leaving on this adventure to the port town Rythal.

Oddly when we make it to the city, things are off. Everything is dull, gloomy and quite sad. This is when Nina explains that the state of a disease called The Rot is happening and is spreading fast. It is a disease without a cure and would like to research and find a way to make the incurable, curable. Alongside this, Alberd decides to play a game as well and collapses so he is sent off the local nurse clinic. The doctor here tells us that he is not able to cure Alberds problems and to report this back to Marquis. Due to this, we head back over to Marquis. Only for marquis to tell us that the man he refuses to disclose the location of is the only one that is going to be able to fix Alberd. This time Marquis caves and discloses the wizards secret location. And with such information at hand, the gang and Nina head off to officially find the wizard, no more detours for little girls on this trip hehe.

With the arrival at the village Midas resides in, at the gates, many a plethora enemies attack only to be felled by our blade. Midas, a bit unamused at such actions reluctantly allows us passage into the village for a meeting. Inside his home, he informs us that Alberds arm has 6 months to live, with the ability to fix it improbable. Laeticia is unsatisfied with such a response is interrupted by a distress call to Ray from Elena about her emergency pod entering orbit in line for a inevitable crash. Ray at once starts to rush out, but not before being stopped by the others, telling him that they will join along. Midas included as he exposes the route that can be taken for efficient travel to the pod. With Midas only really agreeing to join along due to the curiosity akin to Laeticias where they just love them some foreigners.

Quickly making their way to Elena, they find her in critical condition. Elena, as bae as she is insists that they leave her to die and is having a bit of a emo phase, death gloom and all. Ray of course, has enough of this and slaps some sense into her by informing her that she will not die on his watch and he personally will see to it that she is fixed back up and operational. They go back to his pod to collect the necessary parts to repair Elena.

At the pod there are a great many people surrounding the invisible pod that should be undetectable to any on this planet, given their current technology. Yet here they were, scoping it out and trying to pry their eyes into eh abyss of future tech. Quickly dealing with such pests, grabs the parts and heads back to Elena where repairs can be under way. Once they are, Laeticia splits with Alberd and Nina to find out any possible information regarding these strange people that were investigating the downed invisible pod. Shortly after a not so green eyed or people eater purple man attempts to stop both Midas and Ray. This purple man spews some mumbo jumbo that doesn’t make too much sense as he is getting knocked up, then retreats. Shortly after, the repairs are complete, Laeticia and others are back and Midas officially declares himself part of the gang gang gang. Leading to a return to Rythal so they could get to the Capitol. Yet Rythal is now in even worse shape then they first saw it in.

Rythal has been struck by The Rot, the uncurable disease. Midas is inflicted by the disease too, which means it is a necessity to deal with it now. Without him Alberds arm cannot be fixed afterall. Some investigating and use of future technology, a cure is made and a massive dilemma is brought up to Ray of saving or not to save the locals from the disease. Giving them access to tech they don’t know can and almost certainly will lead to unexpected consequences later on. Ray does not care and insists on making the cure through the use of future tech the planet cannot comprehend. Although it is using ingredients found on this planet so it isn’t all doom.

With Midas back to full health, everybody heads off to a port town called Cotto for procurement of supplies for remedies for The Rot. At Cotto, Laeticia is reunited with a long lost Theo, her cousin. Rumors spark of a foregner being the cause of the disease spreading. With Ray being a foreigner, he is prime suspect. He is in complete denial that the one spreading it could be his crewmate. So they investigate for both closure on this subject and the ability to gather the remedies to put an end to the Rot. Off to the mountains next.

Once at the mountains of Cottorinth, it is in desperate needs of help too. Things are not looking good with more of them wormies, and worse, a futuristic research facility that could not have been built by the locals. As they rummage through this facility and mountain, the foreigner appears. Luckily not being Rays crewmate and rather another one of them purple people. They fight, she escapes, the remedy for the disease is found. Happy ending for all, alongside the information that these purple people are helping the Vey’l Empire, are from another planet and are the reason for this disease. Hmm, more questions it seems and the pltot grows everso thicker.

Once back to the port, Theo sees us off and to the Royal Capitol we go. Bad news though, once at the Capitol, Neyan informs Laeticia that Chloe, who is the last remaining crewmate unfound, has been captured by them. She is currently being held in the Baldaar Citadel. A place that is the frontline base of operations for the soon to be war with the Vey’l Empire.

Once there, we meet the king, chloe gets released, some wholesome moments with best girl Laeticia happen and in the morning things get nasty. War at last, Vey’l is attacking. They are attacking with tech that is too advanced and makes it a completely one sided war. Them purple people really are helping them out it would appear. With such a disadvantage, retreat is imminent and the desire to complete a device called Fulga is brought up. Fulga being an idea that the three wise men were trying to produce 14 years ago, before the… incident. To be able to achieve such a feat, a special resource is needed. One that can only be found on the continent to the south. Off to Cotto for a boat ride down south.

As they arrive at Nihlbeth, Malkia, the leader of these lands makes herself known. A deal is struck to kill off some attackers in exchange for her helping gather the resource requested to complete these flying ships. And now a purple person stands in our way, not for long though. Before obtaining the resource here, since Malkia is around and Midas has to keep up a good impression, Alberds arm comes first. They repair is underway as more danger approaches the shores of the Kingdom. Ray stays while Laeticia takes her leave to check on things back home as the resource is obtained by our main man Ray. After finishing up, Ray learns a bad secret and coms are cut between Elena and him. Malkya is forced to use her secret technique and within a blink they are standing side by side Alberd. After a brisk walk here, door open there type thing, we make it in time to stop a unspeakable fate that was nearly forced upon Laeticia.

One thing leads to another, and Laeticia ends up hook line and sinker, becomes a bride to be. complete 180, yet she is smart enough to not ball and chain just yet so completes the 360 alongside the completion of the fulga. Cancel the wedding and cancel the kings life, or so it seemed. Marielle who is other best girl, is forced to break the laws and do them illegals tactic to save him.

With everything settled, its time to take the war to the homeland and Kingdom of Vey’l. Unsurprisingly, things are dealt with relatively easily with more questions to boot. Such as Scorpium, DUMAs exposed lil secret, and how the Emperor even got involved in the first place with these foreigners.

Anyway, with the old king gone and taken away… A new king was appointed, peace talks ensues and the war is officially over between these nations. Ray believes his journey to be at an end now and bids farewell to the people of this world. Yet we all know that couldn’t have been it. A Scorpium ship attacks Marielles The Akizuki and they are forced to escape back to Aster IV.

Twas Bohld’or, the emperor. He is not done yet. So, our journey ramps back up and we go to the crashed Vyr ship, where Bohld;or is hiding out. Yet again he escapes our grasp and instead is transported away on a Scorpium ship. Ray is not having this though and decides that they will pursue him this time and put an official end to it all.

After they all say their goodbyes to the appropriate persons, its finally time to take to the ocean of stars. This time aboard Ray’s brothers The Aldous. He finally made it lol, only took 80+% of the game. While in the stars, they meet a Federation ship that bleeds a bit more info and insight into Scorpium and how they are connected to the Federation. Mainly how there is amass corruption amongst the higher ups and they are called the centralists. A change of course happens, a battleship gets disabled and boarded, more information learned. JJ is Scorpium but the good kind, not the centralist kind. With a save of people here and an escape there, next thing we know its time to meet up at the Scorpium colony to get more information of the centralists. Since the Scorpium are a hybrid organic inorganic that share a collective cognitive network that can be accessed by organics. Information about the Scorpiums inner workings and how and what they are, is exposed. Alongside the centralists is an extremist ideology that may stay true to Scorpiums core objective is not reflective of the whole objective.

Centralists attack, they die, Antonia informs Ray that it is not over and they need to get to their homeworld. Rays homeworld Vergald is being attacked by Scorpium Centralists. Briskley as the gang can, they head to Vergald in hopes of stopping such war crimes from getting too bad.

On the way, the objective and true reason centralists are trying to attack Vergald becomes clear. Its for their technology of how Elena was created. The Symbo Drive. Making our way to where it is, inside Provenience Caverm, Bohld’or and Remington are once again to be faced off against. Of course losing the battle that is, yet this ending cant be right. Especially with the passing words of a should have been dead man not sinking in or making proper sense.

However, it all makes sense once they return to Aster IV to say their official goodbyes to Laeticia and the others. There is a huge Scorpium Spire above Nihlbeth. Well, goodbyes are not in order yet as that needs to be dealt with first. Rushing into the Royal Capitol we get a report on what is happening. With properly informed knowledge in an unexpected way, its time for the Spire to come down. Quickly heading over to the spire and making the way to the top, they are faced with the necessity to have to fight Bohld’or in the virtual network of the Scorpium. DUMA comes in handy when knowing the secret ways of being able to do so, while still keeping their bodies from becoming Scorpium fused. After a short struggle it is finally over and Bohld’or is defeated with a proper closure to the story and a heartfelt goodbye amongst eachother.

Gameplay & Optionals –

Similar to other Star Ocean games it is a realtime action arena style combat. Unlike the others though there is no dedicated fight arena. There is instead a zone that gets put around the local map area. This red zone that is indicated on the map is the fighting zone of the current encounter. To escape battle, a player needs to run outside the red zone, with some that are not able to be escaped from… yknow them being a boss of sorts lol.

In battle, a player is able to use AP. AP is what is used to activate skills and abilities. There is no basic attack or mp, it is all AP bar based. The AP bar starts out as 5 bars, doing blindsides and surprise battles. Very annoying that this is the design choice. Not terrible and does force a player to play more proactive in learning the mechanics. Although not necessary to really get in depth learning on them since the lowest amount 5 is enough to do any type of skill at least one time. A max amount of 15 AP can be acquired. These AP gains are not permanent. Anytime the player is killed or knocked back/down while controlling said character, will result in a AP reduction. So that does mean a quick swap of unavoidable situation that would otherwise lead to AP loss will avoid the negative impact. Oddly this is how the game wants to be played. Swapping through the characters and chaining combos one to the next. Honestly I did not feel that strongly about it and refused to constantly swap characters. Played as my main man Ray from start to finish with little time between each of the others. Not able to properly gauge their abilities since I did not spend a lot of time on them to learn their playstyle. Skills are learned through SP and upgraded via the same SP. Each skill learned will need to be equipped on the battle chain combo screen.

Shotgunning some generic carryover combat related gameplay is, status buffs and ailments ranging from confusion, frozen, burn ect, they are here, certain targets have weak zones, target and destroy them for a benefit in the fight ~~or brute force it to death, either works.~~ Vatting, or ultimate moves are here, there is a vatting gauge instead of various other names this skill has been called in games. Dodge, like its dark souls to avoid damage… or knockback and AP loss. Even if a passive equipable skill for ray is to basically never have him knocked back lol. Target lock and selection is present, self explanatory, can lock onto a certain target, or targets weak point to have auto attack rush directed at that area. There is healing abilities, with certain passives equipped, never going to need a healer as it is inefficient means to an end. Some enemies cant be blindsided, be it worms with no eyes or stronger enemies with enhanced perception.

Alright with those out the way, there is a DUMA mode that can be altered between. Once is focused on defense of everybody and the other attacking for the selected current character. Each has their advantages. Defense mode being that vatting cannot be used in exchange for the other buffs. No limit to the number of times that can be swapped between. Swaps in an instant. With DUMA the well timed dodges will result in a increase of VA guage. VA gauge being the secondary bar under AP. This bar determines a few DUMA related stuff such as blindside length and is straightforward to learn in combat. Last thing is AP gauge will recharge when not attacking. When dodging the AP gauge does not charge to encourage smart uses of dodge instead of rapid dodge spam since there is an invincibility frame that can be boosted through factors.

Well before stating what factors are, lets start with levels. A player can level up to a max of level 255. Each level is the usual boost of stats by a tad each time a level up happens. Levels grant SP too. With the SP, it can be spent on the skill tree or spent on upgrading the abilities gained from said tree and IC, which is item crafting. There is an item called SP seeds and it will grant selected character used on 50 SP. A character can only max everything out if they get level 255 and only spend SP on everything but IC skills. Spending any SP on IC skills will result in the need to farm SP seeds to compensate the difference.

Items follow suit with the norm, there are healing ones, and status affecting ones such as active items that are bombs to be used on an enemy. Alongside items there is equipment. Equipment is as it sounds and is as follows on each character, Weapon, Armor and 2 Accessories. Each character has their own specific weapon type while armor can be somewhat mixed around and accessories are freely used between any of the party. Item creation is something that is unlocked through completing Welches demands. Each quest completed unlocks more and more of the possible crafting capabilities. Early use and abuse of crafting will break the game, so be forewarned. Crafting covers things from upgrading mined type ores to higher tiers, crafting any item ect. Even crafting of Es’owa pieces.

Es’owa is a side mini game. There are tons of people that when interacted with will want to match up and fight. The game is fun and worth the effort. As every piece obtained is an accessory. With some of the most powerful factors being obtained through these pieces. A nice lil nod to the other games is how each piece is a character from the verse. Good memory tester for the previous star ocean games that’s for sure. In Es’owa there is a deck that is put together with these pieces. A max of 4 pieces that are the same can be included in the deck. Each piece varies in abilities related to the game itself and is fun to see what the strongest deck can be created from pieces available is. In each game, there is a chess board style and the goal is to summon your pieces onto the field and have them deal enough damage to 0 the opponents health bar. Once opponent hits 0 health, then that player wins. There are some quirks such as surrounding a opponents piece will send it to the graveyard, or pro status blockade a large group of pieces to wipe them all off the board. Careful as the enemy can counter such moves at times as easily as the play is set up.

Sometimes these opponents are found in inns. There is something else that can be done in inns though and that is resting. There is an option to eat or regular sleep. Regular sleep offers no bonus, sleeping offers a bonus listed for the selected food. In combat these boosts can be very useful. Health persists battle to battle so it is wise to make use of inns when needed since items used to heal can go quick… alternatively set a certain 2 passives and never worry about healing heh.

Outside the inn, well that’s towns and what towns have to offer is quests. Quests are usually fetch or basic types that are very straightforward. Some offer good items, others are more of completionist reasons to want to finish them out. Scattered throughout a town will be DUMA points. These points are used to boost DUMA skills. These skills are useful in combat or on the main out of combat field depending on whats selected. They can only be upgraded by finding a certain amount of the DUMA crystals. Also in towns is where secret private actions occur. Each character has their own private actions that are needed to be seeked out to see. These are the only missable things in here. Make sure to visit everywhere and everything.. often or look a guide up to not miss them. These interactions will lead to an increase connection with whatever characters they take place with. Once the relationship is at a certain point there is a bonus near the end of the game for each that has obtained the certain tier. Err, there is an item to artificially boost this too. Although doing so misses out on their convos and scenes that the private action provides. To each their own depending on the means to an end lol. Oh, do not fast travel since there are a lot of events that only happen once and if fast travel it will skip them depending on the location traveling to. Again a guide will walkthrough the times its safe or not safe to avoid missing anything like that. Not forgetting about factors, factors are bonuses that weapons can be found, bought or crafted with. A mac up 4 per weapon. Each factor can be mixed onto any piece of gear and is how the game can go from average dif to abysmally easy blink and enemies poof in a matter of minutes ~~via save scumming since every part of crafting is rng on rng with rng on the rng. Without save scumming, expect the artificially inflate time spent on game to double its that bad.~~

There are also these wee ittle bunnies. Find, capture and take them to the big bunny on top a certain hill and be awarded with various items and things. Some of which awarded are passive global boosts. I think that is about it for gameplay. There is a packed amount as expected for a JRPG… even if its more leaning towards a action based as time goes on.

One last piece is post game content. Gabriel and Ethereal Queen make their return. Each having their own dungeon and Santa shop. These 2 shops are crucial at the end for crafting. Gabriel has a trial of rooms to beat before being able to access him and da queen has 24 floors of *challenge*. With both they start with 2 wings and go up to 6. Must beat them both 3 times to fully complete the dungeons and must fight them 4 times total to gain enough of their drops to complete santa shops quests. There is one other end game dungeon that is found near the shrine. A quest alongside that is asking to kill some enemies in there. This place is called Den’mohr Delve. This is also the place that is where gold farming can occur. Wont spoil the secrets and discovery for that portion though hehe.

Sound and Visuals –

The sounds are good and keep a player immersed. None are out of place or seem wrong. Audio had no problem from start to finish. Which is something that the visuals cannot say the same of. This is simply put a poor port in that regard. It is playable just not polished. The remaster port of TLH that debatably has better graphics tends to run leagues better than this one, which makes no sense. Not much else to say since none of these points was very standout at all. They are average and do the job. The art direction however is something that is nice, its mainly the poor port quality that hinders it down a notch. Chests and such are hard to see on the world map. Items and enemies do not stick out, it sort of blends together without a proper outline or consideration for these factors. Quite a shame since a bit of polish would have excelled the visuals from good enough to a proper tier above their previous iterations. Make sure to change to visual quality over fps as this will lead to greater 1% lows and nearly eliminate all stutters. A high fps with stutters is marginally worse than a lower 40-70fps fluctuations with constant 1 and even 0.1% fps dips that cause stutter. Without enabling visual priority in settings, the combat and game was nearly unplayable. That comes down to the poor quality port and optimization. These should not be problems at all given the graphical fidelity of the game.

Main noteworthy thing that makes the sounds memorable is the intro song done by HYDE. The song Pandora is excellent and instantly went onto a playlist. It really sets the mood of the game and tagged alongside the traditional grand type of music star ocean has, very well done in that regard.

Overall and Final Thoughts –

This star ocean game I would recommend to others. Although it’s a iffy one at that since the overall time to complete through to the ethereal queen is low. At 50 hours that should not even have completed the base game story and yet it completed the base game and all post game content. For a JRPG and a star ocean game that’s unacceptable. Was not speed running it either to make matters worse.

Anyways, it is fun, the characters have enjoyable interactions. Although the cast is a lot weaker than past games, they do the job and are not bad characters. Ray has the same VA as Edge which is a plus and might sway over some to play it just for that reason.

I probably will not play this game again in any near future. If or when I eventually do it will be done through Laeticia point of view. There are various events that play out different from her perspective, just don’t have the will to bumrush through it for that though. If it was the last hope or other star ocean game… things would be speaking differently.

Also this is star ocean, yet not much star in this one. Only 4 different star locations. No dlc planned afaik either to flesh out space a but more. A shame on that part.

Wish the game was longer with more content and a hell of a lot more polish. Sadly, that is not what was given and what we got is left with a taste of meh instead of what the other SO games leave the player with.

Characters (main) – 3/5

Characters (sub) – 4/5

Enjoyment - 3/5

Gameplay – 3/5

Visuals/Art Direction – 3/5

Music – 4/5

Story – 4/5