Star Ocean The Divine Force (PC/PS5/XSX/PS4/XB1) - October 27, 2022

[Gokulo]

[Zealot]

Based on the graphics, this is only available on the Switch and PS3?

[Lucavi]

Which Star Ocean ever looked good?

This ain't a graphical thing; this is a "we cannot make anime and realism blend effectively" problem.

[Cantih]

Which Star Ocean ever looked good?

Star Ocean 1?

[Ayn]

Which Star Ocean ever looked good?

This ain't a graphical thing; this is a "we cannot make anime and realism blend effectively" problem.

...'kay

[AoE]

Which Star Ocean ever looked good?

This ain't a graphical thing; this is a "we cannot make anime and realism blend effectively" problem.

Star Ocean 4, despite the doll looking characters is a beautiful game.

[IceSylph]

SO4 looks fantastic, even the non remastered version.

[Ayn]

Agreed.

Need to buy remastered when it gets a sale.

[BWYuko]

SO4 had gorgeous, colorful worlds and fun party character designs. I can't fucking believe the doll face is still here for SO6 though, considering they partner with SE for this shit and it's not 2009 anymore.

Also really don't like this protag's design. He looks like some unga bunga caveman they forced into a pair of pants. Lol @ the villains being literal dark skinned horned devil people too; I guess we know the story will be lacking.

Combat and exploration look super fun, though. Maybe I'll rent a physical copy for PS5. Do like me some Sakuraba jrpg scores, so that's worth playing alone for me. He's doing the odd One Piece rpg coming this year too. We'll see, I guess.

[arus2001]

Can't unsee big sword guy as someone's FF7 Soldier fanfic OC who's totally not Cloud, but, y'know...

[Ayn]

SO4 had gorgeous, colorful worlds and fun party character designs. I can't fucking believe the doll face is still here for SO6 though, considering they partner with SE for this shit and it's not 2009 anymore.

Also really don't like this protag's design. He looks like some unga bunga caveman they forced into a pair of pants. Lol @ the villains being literal dark skinned horned devil people too; I guess we know the story will be lacking.

Combat and exploration look super fun, though. Maybe I'll rent a physical copy for PS5. Do like me some Sakuraba jrpg scores, so that's worth playing alone for me. He's doing the odd One Piece rpg coming this year too. We'll see, I guess.

Didn't know he was doing the One Piece RPG.

I'm.. hit or miss with Sakuraba. Like him overall, but hard to describe: I know every composer has their particular sound, but a few games felt kind of stale for me? SO: 5, Zestiria (though the Go Shiina tracks were amazing), Bersaria. They weren't bad, just.. not as great as some of the other ones.

[IceSylph]

I feel like Sakuraba has a lot of forgettable tracks in his games, but when a track is good, they're bangers.

[Ayn]

I'm mostly in agreement with you.

For me, see, the weird thing I felt? Berseria was a marked improvement over Zestiria in damn near every way. . except that the sound track, like you said, was mostly forgettable (or straight up bleh; looking at you, second battle theme..). Not enough to sour the experience for me, but just like 'huh, that's what felt missing'.

I actually liked Abyss's sound track for the most part. The game hit most of the right notes for me. So when you posted the Berseria tracks I was like "..Huh, those were..ok" (not a shot at you). But the Abyss ones I distinctly remember (and Meaning of Birth's still on my running play list).

Sometimes I feel bad that I don't love Vesperia as much as everyone seems to. Which is weird.. it's one of my top Tales games. I really enjoyed it, had fun with it, but when I hear some folks rave about it I'm like "Did I miss something here?". Though it could be that (again, for me) most of the main party members felt..mediocre? But I can't quite pin what it was about them.

[6souls]

[Gokulo]

Demo coming 09.20.2022

[Kirin]

Another Kenny with blue hair!

This is actually looking decent.

[Gokulo]

There's some gameplay videos on YT now from TGS

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/gematsu/status/1...kQoq0Nj4E4OMsA

[Insanecyclone]

demo up

[Gokulo]

I played the demo, lasted about 2 hours, I'll say of the three S-E demos (this + Harvestella and Valkyrie), this one was the least disappointing and did not make me scratch the game off my buy list

Starting with the cons:
- UI - I really dislike it, I know it's an S-F game but I prefer when jRPGs go more for style and flair. The font feels too small, I either have to sit a little closer than I usually do when playing my PS5 or squint my eyes to read. Also no 2D character portraits in a jRPG is a crime
- Sometimes there's a weird long pause before you can enter camp menu after battles or cutscenes, very annoying... Also, menu and scan feature is disabled while characters talk story stuff on the field, which is horrible
- Performance - playing on PS5 in performance mode, the FPS drops and overall stuttering were really in the first big open area. I hope this is something they can still iron out before release, because sheesh, your game doesn't look good enough to have such problems on PS5
- Caption font has a really jaggy border, can be really jarring depending on the current background
- This isn't exactly a con for me, but - from the beginning it feels like your tropey and basic jRPG storyline, but that is expected from this series for me at this point

Pros:
- Combat feels really fun, especially when you get DUMA (which is very fast)
- Same for exploration. Even though DUMA controls are a little different than what I expected, it still adds a fun flair to moving around and looking for areas to explore and find items in

Other than that, I must say the skill system feels kinda overwhelming at first, since you use SP both to level up your combat skills and also unlock the skill tree it's hard to say what you should focus on - although I'd wager the skill tree will be more important than leveling up combat skills at first.
Not sure if crafting is in the demo, haven't seen it yet.

While I listed more cons than pros, like I said at the beginning I still feel like buying the game. I wouldn't be surprised if people decided to wait on a price drop with this one though.
Too bad demo save is not transferable too ;/