Star Ocean - The Divine Force Preview: Okay Maybe I Was Wrong About This One
I haven’t been very kind to Star Ocean: The Divine Force in recent months. It seems to be a visually incoherent mess, features painfully generic characters, and isn't interested in fixing the series’ fractured reputation. As someone who grew up loving these space-faring anime adventures, for decades now I’ve been crossing my fingers that Tri-Ace will strike lightning once again and deliver a JRPG worth caring for. To my surprise, that time may be upon us.
Don’t get me wrong, it is little more than passable, but compared to The Last Hope and Integrity and Faithlessness, that is far more than I expected. After playing a couple of different sections at a recent preview event, there is an added sense of dynamic modernism to The Divine Force that manages to free it from mediocrity. While it still has so much left to prove before I can consider myself invested, this is way better than I could have expected.
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Star Ocean has always felt archaic in the modern era, with the series’ refusing to adopt updated conventions from across the genre even as Final Fantasy and Persona broke so much new ground. It has long been left behind, considered old-school in its approach to melodramatic storytelling and epic real-time battles. It still is that game, but a few changes help make it so much more enjoyable to play. Battles are no longer instanced affairs, forcing you to load into a bespoke arena with its own cadence each time you stumble into a scrap.
Now it all unfolds right away, with your entire party transitioning into combat with a welcome smoothness that makes exploration and grinding that much more satisfying. I only had the better part of 30 minutes with the game,
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