Thank you for the write up. I agree with most of that. I like the game a lot. Curious what you feel when you finish it.
So, I finished Star Ocean : The Divine Force.
I have something to say about the character endings but first, I felt something during the credits :
While the credits theme is clearly not as good as We Form in Crystals from SO 2, it is pretty good and a good version of the main theme of the series. I also thought : "Wow,
It felt so good to enjoy a new Star Ocean" and listening to the theme song reminded that the franchise isn't dead with the upcoming remake of SO 2. I never thought the franchise and tri-Ace would be able to come back after the last games. I talk about Turrican & Factor 5 a lot but tri-Ace is pretty much my third favorite studio (the second was Quintet and Terranigma, obviously).
The PS2 Era : The End of Talent
I played
Star Ocean : Till The End of Time for around 8 hours and I gave up not because I've been told of the infamous twist, but just because the camera & view distance are atrocious, the controls are terrible, dying for having 0 mana is ass, the first hours are not only awful in term of level design but its writing takes the cake by having
clowns and comedians mocking the main character -who just escaped with them by the way- for having his parents probably being eaten alive by aliens. Like... what the hell where they thinking with this load of (insert AVGN rant) ?! Also, while I love mapping zones in games like all the Xenoblade or some other RPGs especially since it unlocks bonuses, it makes me wonder who programmed the one for this game because it doesn't work. Like, you have to step on specific pixels and sometime even try to get stuck in the scenery just to be able to add a 0.01% completion because else it won't count.
And you know what's fun ? This happens on the VERY FIRST ZONE where you start mapping. THE FIRST ONE. I guess that nobody at tri-Ace gave a damn about this because it shows right at the start. It discouraged me so much of exploring areas, finding secrets & chests... add the camera programmed by elon musk's ass and you get a big pile of "
I don't want to play this game anymore".
PlayStar 360 : Writer's Integrity and Stupidlessness
Concerning The Last Hope, I've talked quite a lot of this game already on famiboards so I'll pass, because I still want to write something about this game (and yes, I added it to my PS Plus account because I once had the original on Xbox 360). I've been burned so much by TLH and Till The End of Time that I never played the fitth game,
Integrity and Faithlessness (the title alone is already a red flag to me, almost feel like Tetsuya Nomura was visiting tri-Ace that day and forced the team to write the title). It sucks because there's some things I think I'd like, like having the entire party all the time with you in towns and battles, like some of the dungeons in
Infinite Undiscovery. But I heard so much things about the writing and the characters that I haven't played it yet (but it is also in my PS Plus catalog account now).
I felt a great disturbance in The Divine Force
So when I say that it feels so good to enjoy a new Star Ocean, it comes right from the bottom of my heart. Yes the game is flawed, yes there's glitches, yes the animations aren't great, yes the English dub isn't synced to the lips, yes there's massive framerate drops in a few areas that shouldn't drop, yes it feels very cheap with a lot of cutscenes looking like this :
Translation : "Wow, so this is what a citizen from Atlantis looks like ?! That's crazy !"
But if you decide to give it a chance despite all this, then you'll find a game with a heart. Lots of the "Star Ocean" touch like the Private Actions with the character you choose at the start of the game and your team in each town, side quests, the Item Creation Sidequests, the insane ways to destroy the game just to prepare yourself for the two postgame dungeons, and also, seeing the story from the point of view of your main character. Like in Star Ocean 2, you have so parts of the story where Laeticia and Ray are separated so you follow the story from their PoV. But unlike SO 2, this happens quite often at one point and it helps to develop some of the side characters and even the ennemy. A good example of this is Prince Gerr'rard if you play as Laeticia (which I did, just like I chose Rena in SO 2 for my first save), I really enjoyed the fact that he is fully aware of what you are planning and yet isn't written like a terrible saturday morning cartoon or like and obvious bad guy who's evil because he's evil or a stupid pervert. He have actual depth and it is more than welcome.
When I played the demo, I started with Ray and I thought "Oh no, they're doing the 'Is the Pangalactic Federation really evil now ?!- thing that will obviously turn out ot be a trap or someone impersonating a Federation officer" but no, turns out that bad people exist everywhere and just like some episodes in Star Trek TNG (notably the few good ones in the very first season), not everything is a-ok with the Federation despite having heroes linked to it since the very first game (it also reminded me of
Metroid Fusion).
So, I liked the characters, the setting, the lore, the themes of the second half of the game, the battle system is pretty good... what did I disliked ?
Well when you get D.U.M.A. in your team, the game dumps A TON of info at the same time to explain how she can help you in battle and... I would recommand you to forget it all and just try it yourself for a bit and THEN look at the info in the tutorial menu.
I wasn't a fan of the Character Endings (that comes AFTER the game's ending and credits like in all Star Ocean games and depends on your characters affinity between each other) this time because... I only got to watch Laeticia's and it wasn't a good one, despite having done quite a lot of private actions especially with Ray and Albeird. I got the one where
Laeti complains that she can't visit her friends and have too much work. Lola comes to says that her father demands her presence and Laeti then screams that she have too much work and... "FIN". Wait, that's it ?! Where's the others ? What happened to them ? I guess I'll try to get as much Private Actions as I can do now that I am in the post game.
I had something very similar in Star Ocean 2 and Rena but it was because back then I cheated like crazy with the Super Speciality & Counterfeit skills and stole items from almost every NPCs without seperating from my team, so obviously my affinity with the team was abysmal ^o^; (it was my first save, sorry Rena !).
I wish the Item Creation system was a bit more complex ; there's a lot to do already but compared to the previous game, it's very limited. The synthesis system is a good addition tho, especially since you can make +540% XP x2 +60% efficiency to ease the leveling for the post game. It takes time, lots of ressources and patience but that's the magic sauce of Star Ocean' Item Creation madness. The balance isn't broken, it's asking you to break it.
My final complain is about the true bad guy of the game. You get some hints that
he never really mourned the death of his wife to illness quite soon and you see his sanity gradually getting worst and worst but then he became the "I'm going to become a God" thing and yeah, I didn't really cared for him at this point. Also
him, Gaston and Valanj doing the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 thing of "Ah ah, you've beaten us but we're going to escape easily despite our injuries !" twice or even thrice, it was getting a bit old at one point.
So, that's my time with Star Ocean : The Divine Force. I enjoyed it quite a lot and I'm gonna pay my respects to Gabriel Celeste and the Ethereal Queen in the post game dungeons after levelling quite a lot.
Verdict :
Flawed hidden gem in plain sight, like it's just in front of you, LOOK ! It's in the PS Plus catalog now ! / 10
www.square-enix-games.com
