Star Ocean: The Divine Force Announced For 2022
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, in which you can play from the perspective of the visiting outsider (giving the story more of a sci-fi bent) or the longtime resident of the undeveloped planet he visits (telling more of a fantasy story). Square hasn’t told us which members of the cast will be those two, but the four characters revealed so far are Raymond, captain of an interstellar merchant vessel, Laeticia, princess from the planet of Aster IV, Elena, Raymond’s first mate on the starship Ydas, and Albaird, Leiticia’s childhood friend and protector.
- A story that changes based on the choices made, where heroes intersect between the two worlds of sci-fi and fantasy
- A rich lineup of playable characters
- Freedom to fly around the environment
- Three-dimensional traversal and exploration where everything in-sight is a field for adventure
- The Star Ocean game with the fastest and mightiest action in the series
Star Ocean: The Divine Force will be released in 2022 for Playstation 5, Playstation 4, XBox Series, XBox One and PC. Here’s hoping for the best!