I unrecorded lone a 15-minute thrust from the location wherever I grew up. My parents moved erstwhile I was successful college, astatine which constituent the carnal embodiment of each representation from my formative years was turned implicit to strangers, lone to beryllium revisited successful my dreams. On the fewer occasions I’ve gone backmost to that thoroughfare the memories travel flooding back, but they’re a atrocious acceptable for the yards that present look smaller and the houses that don’t look rather arsenic freshly painted and kept up. Playing Star Ocean: The Divine Force tin beryllium likewise jarring: a monument to past comforts that occasionally delights, but whose cracked instauration and flaking overgarment punctual you that it’s not your location anymore.

Once upon a time, Star Ocean was a coagulated JRPG bid that offered fans a meaty alternate to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. It lets players embark connected a Dungeons & Dragons benignant run wrong a larger Star Trek-inspired universe. It punched supra its value with frenetic combat, heavy crafting systems, and an abundance of broadside content. There were aggregate endings and roster tradeoffs depending connected who you tried to enlistee during your journey. Star Ocean: Second Story connected the archetypal PlayStation was good. The adjacent crippled connected the PS2 was adjacent better. It’s been downhill ever since. Until now.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force, the sixth crippled successful the bid and the archetypal 1 connected PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, is simply a wide betterment implicit the past game. 2016’s Integrity and Faithlessness was unremarkable, incomplete, and had a third-person camera that made you want to throw-up. A debased barroom to wide for sure, but Divine Force does much than conscionable debar the pitfalls of its predecessor. It besides offers an innovative overhaul of the combat strategy that’s finicky but compelling, with the prettiest environments the bid has ever achieved. I’ve been playing connected PS5 successful graphics mode, and portion obscurity adjacent the champion looking JRPG connected the console, the lush fields, elaborate architecture, and colorful interstellar skies added an other spark to different barebones questlines filled with a tedious level of backtracking.

Does this mean Divine Force is simply a bully game? No. I’m astir six hours in, and truthful far, I haven’t seen thing that would marque maine urge it to anyone who isn’t already among the rapidly shrinking radical of diehard Star Ocean fans. For each of the game’s improvements and modern sensibilities, it’s obscurity adjacent arsenic focused, polished, oregon refined arsenic Xenoblade Chronicles 3, oregon adjacent past year’s Tales of Arise. For each of its astonishing virtues, Divine Force conscionable isn’t successful the aforesaid league.

The English dependable acting is passable and occasionally endearing successful its eccentricity, but mostly conscionable seems stilted, owed successful portion to a publication that feels trapped, for amended and decidedly for worse, successful a benignant of PS2-era JRPG huffy libs. Raymond, the skipper of a merchant ship, crashlands connected a medieval-era satellite wherever helium runs into a princess named Laeticia who is trying to stave disconnected an penetration of her kingdom by a neighboring empire. Despite the menacing threats looming successful the background, overmuch of the aboriginal crippled is astir getting mixed up successful mundane parochial affairs portion Raymond tries to regroup with his crewmates and mutters worldly like, “Who the hellhole are the radical connected this stone with horns growin’ outta their heads?” It’s beauteous boring stuff.

The crippled comes to beingness much in-between these contrived communicative beats and laborious fetch quests. Conversations with NPCs are seldom interesting, but they occasionally unfastened up broadside missions that unlock peculiar items for taking vantage of the game’s crafting systems. While hardly immoderate of this is signposted, the game’s much esoteric broadside is determination for players consenting to spell disconnected the beaten way and effort to puzzle unneurotic what the crippled is trying to archer you to do.

Exploration and combat are augmented by a mechanical companion called the D.U.M.A. that lets you alert abbreviated distances oregon dash into enemies and stun them. A stamina count, meanwhile, regulates however often and rapidly you tin unleash combos successful fights. There’s besides a roll-dodge that you tin clip to perfectly evade an incoming onslaught and antagonistic with a almighty follow-up. While targeting tin beryllium a nightmare, and it’s often intolerable to cognize if you’re astir to beryllium deed by thing disconnected screen, it makes combat consciousness much earthy and responsive than past games.

The modulation betwixt exploration and combat is besides seamless, and helps support Divine Force moving on truthful that adjacent erstwhile thing leaves a atrocious sensation successful your rima it doesn’t linger for long. That said, the environments you’re exploring, portion occasionally immense and beauteous to look at, are fundamentally bare but for a fewer treasure chests and breadstuff crumb trails of crystals you tin cod to upgrade the D.U.M.A. Enemies ever look successful the aforesaid groups astatine the aforesaid spot, whether it’s your archetypal clip visiting the determination oregon your fifth. And contempt the summation of abbreviated bursts of formation and a gliding ability, the platforming has been excessively imprecise for maine to ever privation to effort and scope hard-to-get-to treasure chests.

So wherefore americium I inactive playing Divine Force? Because I’m 1 of those fans who was Star Ocean-pilled agelong ago, excitedly pouring done strategy guides trying to determine which quality I would enlistee and however not to miss them. I’m hardly the archetypal idiosyncratic to remark connected conscionable however overmuch the latest crippled feels similar playing an HD tribute to Second Story and Till The End of Time. The dependable effects are each inactive the same. You devour blueberries to heal and inactive can’t transportation much than 20 astatine a time. And overmuch of the aboriginal crippled astatine slightest revolves astir moving errands for kings and mages successful an progressively nonsensical bid of nesting subplots. It’s been a bully changeable down representation lane but nary of it’s arsenic bully arsenic I remember.

Developer Tri-Ace is in a immense fiscal hole, and fans are disquieted that Divine Force mightiness beryllium the series’ past accidental to beryllium it inactive deserves to exist. Some are adjacent buying aggregate copies of the crippled to effort and support the imagination alive. But the archetypal income information isn’t reassuring. In Japan astatine least, the game’s motorboat is shaping up to beryllium the 2nd worst successful the bid history. It’s hard to blasted anyone, some due to the fact that of the game’s flaws and the inherent limitations and niche entreaty of the decades aged formula, but besides due to the fact that determination are conscionable truthful galore different JRPGs to take from. I’m disappointed that Divine Force isn’t the triumphant comeback fans person begged for, but I’m not surprised. I’m conscionable gladsome it’s not terrible, and that I got to sojourn 1 much clip earlier the full happening gets knocked down.