RatedRPG's video: Star Ocean: The Divine Force - Hands On First Impressions

It will be released for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on October 27, 2022 Like and Subscribe ya scrubs! Twitter: https://twitter.com/RpgRated Business Email: Raytedrpg@gmail.com New Trailers https://youtu.be/OJR_wsCFn1c https://youtu.be/5SaddxEixiI https://youtu.be/i1JL-4o5I1Q https://youtu.be/SrDpslVrl6s The story seems to be a classic star ocean sci fi story with a small twist. We are used to the Star ocean premise of advanced technology colliding with less advanced civilizations at this point. The thing I got from the TGS trailer is that they are shaking up the formula in terms of who is good and who is baked. I don't have a clear idea of where the game falls in the Star Ocean timeline but there were several mentions of Claude Kenny from Star Ocean 2 and how his actions affect the in-game world but I don't want to speculate too much since even speculation can lead to some hefty spoilers. Putting guesswork and supposition, let's talk about the demo. Playing the Divine Force demo was a very average experience at first which quickly turned into a very fun time. The demo opens up with the Raymond Lawrence side of the story letting you experience the opening scenes of the space epic. I don't know if there were some jump cuts in the demo which will be connected by gameplay in the full title or if the jump cuts will be present in the final product but the story moved along at a very brisk pace. Either way it does not take long before you are exploring the hub based open areas which are not too big and thankfully unlike previous star ocean entries the maps are fully filled out ahead of time so you are not having to pray that you didn't miss something because of a dark spot. When it comes to quality of life features like maps I want either all or nothing like elden ring where you can see crap but once you do find a map everything is clear as day as opposed to some of the older star ocean games where you had to fill in the map by running around and around filling in all the dark spots. Combat in Divine force is similar to what I thought it would be but not quite. I assumed they were fully ripping off the Final Fantasy 7 remake since they were adding a time slowdown button and an action point bar but I was wrong. Actions are tied to the circle, triangle and square face button and each action in combat uses a certain number of action points. I thought you'd have to make a basic attack to recover ap but instead there does not seem to be a basic attack and ap just recovers over time. This seems really limiting at first but shortly into the game that changes. After making your way through the first “dungeon” and boss battle of sorts you are able to unlock the duma mechanic which allows you to zip and zoop across the battlefield. Outside of combat it allows for a massive improvement in exploration as well; going from just running across the map to air dashes and vertical exploration for out of the way items. This is what I meant earlier when I said the experience quickly went from average to fun. The duma air dash mechanic gives you a feeling of freedom. You can either spend time exploring and battling enemies or you can choose to simply blast your way through at your own pace. After checking out a dungeon, a forest zone, a grassland zone and a couple of towns the demo came to an end. All in all mechanically it is a vast improvement over the last star ocean game and just felt fun to play. I felt like I was in a star ocean world again, fighting familiar enemies but not getting bogged down if I did not want to. Presentation wise the world is very impressive looking. It could be a late ps4 title but given its stylized nature I'm not too worried about that. Sure some of the character models look a bit stiff and doll-like sometimes but hey after the travesty that was Star ocean 5 this is amazing. The only thing that bugged me in the demo was the obvious lack of english voice sync and I mean it is atrocious which is a real shame because thus far I think the english voice cast is phenomenal. If they just used the japanese sync with english vo for the demo and intend to swap in voice sync later for the full release then great, if not and the demo is representative as far as the final product then I'm disappointed but it's not like it's going to ruin the game. I'm just grateful Square and tri-ace learned from the mistake that was Star Ocean 5. I don't think Dvine Force is going to be a game of the year contender but I do think it's going to be a pretty fun time.