Star Ocean, I used to love you. Your first few games enthralled me with your then-innovative active combat mechanics, extremely deep item creation system, and spellbinding worldbuilding and music score. Then you hit the same wall a lot of long-running JRPGs did when they crossed the polygonal barrier. Since the days of the Playstation 2, each mainline Star Ocean release has been worse than the one before it. The reviews for the last one, Integrity and Faithlessness, were so bad I returned my copy to the store after one day, without opening it.
The series could have died there, but Square Enix announced they’re giving it one more try next year. Star Ocean: The Divine Force was unveiled during Sony’s State Of Play livestream this afternoon (it will be on other systems besides Playstation). The question is: can they turn this ship around?
Original developer Tri-Ace is back, so that’s one good thing. It’s also bringing back the “double hero” storyline structure from The Second Story...
