Is Star Ocean the Divine Force good?

[SpikeSlania]

Is the latest Star Ocean game a worth while game with it currently being on sale on steam for Golden Week. I have beaten the first 3 games in the series, got as fair as the old man in a robe spamming laser beams in 4 before selling my ps4/ps5, and think I may have cleared the first boss in 5. I generally enjoy JRPGs and the Xenoblade series has been a favorite of mine in the modern age with the newest Star Ocean giving off some similar vibes with it's opened world. But with the mixed reviews I'm seeing for it and I never hear anyone talking about it makes me hesitant to even pick it up while it's on sale. So what are your thoughts on the game?

 

[Dakarus]

Yes play it now, I love all star ocean games so I'm biased.

 

[MajesticSiN]

Yeah I had fun with it and I payed full price, so I recommend picking it up especially if it's on sale.

 

[ThePeon]

I would say yes I think so not the best in the series but nonetheless good.

 

[GardeniaSky]

If it's on sale, definitely grab it.

It's not exceptionally special by any means, but the cast, soundtrack, and battle system are pretty damn good. The art direction for the landscape is pretty nice, too.

If you're just expecting a JRPG, you'll be happy with it.

 

[WesternYokai]

I didn't liked but I'm an outlier. I can't really connect with Star Ocean post PS2.

 

[valosagutas]

Without spoiling you: Well it's still a Star Ocean game if you want one. It brings new elements to the table in the context of the series despite they may not be significant enough to play the game for such stuff (an easier and faster way to explore the game map). When I played on Steam months ago, the technical aspect of the game was getting in the way as it prevented the game from showing its true potential. For instance; stutter, crashes and weird graphics that's technically bad due to bad lightning, shadows and blurry vision as far as I remember. Even 3rd game on PS2 looks better lol. I have no idea if they are fixed or there are mods for that.

Graphics and technical aspects put aside, the quality of the game is worse in the series in my opinion. While the story and events are not much different in the context of the series, storytelling mostly consists of people standing in almost t-pose and talking to each other with weird unnatural animations. Compared to the previous game there is a clear sense of downgrade in a way they developed the game with less budget and development time as much as possible and called it a day which may explain why facial animations look so ancient when I was amazed how detailed even facial animations are in SO4. Yet I would rather play this game instead of playing the 3rd game, it's not that bad and annoying in terms of gameplay.

Long story short: I don't think people who don't care to play a Star Ocean game should play this game, but Star Ocean fans would enjoy playing it despite it's not really one of the good game in the series. Just beware of technical problems on PC.

 

[NOTthatHARD]

No, Start Ocean: The divine Force is only good if you compare it to other Start Ocean games (especially Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness because it was crap), bur if you compare Start Ocean: The divine Force to other modern action RPGs it simply doesn't hold up.

 

[Dyne]

I enjoyed it. Its not the best or the worst in the Star Ocean series (Star Ocean 2 is best and 5 is the worst, imo) but if you like this sort of game then its a decently fun action RPG with Star Ocean's signature mix of fantasy and sci-fi.

 

[MetalSharkPlayer]

I didn't liked but I'm an outlier. I can't really connect with Star Ocean post PS2.

In my case i could never connect with any of the Star Ocean games, by the time i tried Star Ocean i already played Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Lunar series and Suikoden, so of course Star Ocean felt like another RPG to me.

 

[SpikeSlania]

Needed a break from Oblivion Remastered so did pick it up. So far been spending most of my opening time trying to fix the blurriness/ghosting of the camera. Definitely is no Xenoblade in terms of in game graphics and that's stuck on the Switch hardware meanwhile I'm getting a small headache trying to get it to not blur with a RX 7700XT and Ryzen 5 7600X

 

[valosagutas]

In my case i could never connect with any of the Star Ocean games, by the time i tried Star Ocean i already played Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Lunar series and Suikoden, so of course Star Ocean felt like another RPG to me.

If Star Ocean: The Last Hope didn't exist I would think the same. My opinion about the game is rather biased that makes me like the game more than I should just because how similar it's to Radiata Stories in terms of what happens to the player character, how the story unfolds and the sense of humor that's not so good as Radiata Stories but still has the similar flavor. Also main story had a personal impact on me because of my past.

For example I can recommend Star Ocean: The Last Hope to everyone; especially if they like Mass Effect, Star Trek or sci-fi in general, or they just care about meaningful character drama that has significant moral of the story that can even impact you because fundamentally it happens to everyone despite you experienced most of fictional stories humanity had to offer, but I can't even recommend first two Star Ocean games to anyone. The series is only good if you somehow like sci-fi meets with primitive magical fantasy world or you like the characters which is why SO3 is so attractive, otherwise I'm surprised this series continued this long despite the key point of the series doesn't progress and always fish baited in every game when most of the fans expected something more about it in Star Ocean: The Last Hope but that game was literally the last hope people had for the series. They really intentionally wasted all the potential the series has.

Needed a break from Oblivion Remastered so did pick it up. So far been spending most of my opening time trying to fix the blurriness/ghosting of the camera. Definitely is no Xenoblade in terms of in game graphics and that's stuck on the Switch hardware meanwhile I'm getting a small headache trying to get it to not blur with a RX 7700XT and Ryzen 5 7600X

Hmm so your GPU is AMD which I don't have any recent experience for as I use Nvidia for years, but if you can find adequate GPU options as what I did when I played the game it may help with graphical issues:

I don't remember ghosting, my main problem with the game was the weird blur anytime like the game's resolution is lower than what I selected, so in Nvidia setting I set these to the highest possible I can: Anisotropic Filtering, Antialiasing, Texture and Maximum pre-rendered frames. I also remember turning on Image Scalling, DSR, VSYNC and tweaked them according to how the game respond. It helped with low quality graphics a little despite it didn't remove the issue completely, it may not also fix or help with ghosting problem as ghosting sometimes because of the monitor's response time if not because of the video game's and/or GPU's own TAA, frame generator method and/or post-processing effect even beyond motion blur and depth of field. Especially badly set image scaling, game's FPS being too low than refresh rate of your monitor and VSYNC option can introduce ghosting further.