I stay solely a 15-minute drive from the home the place I grew up. My mother and father moved after I was in school, at which level the bodily embodiment of each reminiscence from my early life was turned over to strangers, solely to be revisited in my goals. On the few events I’ve gone again to that avenue the recollections come flooding again, however they’re a nasty match for the yards that now appear smaller and the homes that don’t look fairly as freshly painted and saved up. Taking part in Star Ocean: The Divine Drive may be equally jarring: a monument to previous comforts that often delights, however whose cracked basis and flaking paint remind you that it’s not your private home anymore.
As soon as upon a time, Star Ocean was a stable JRPG collection that supplied followers a meaty different to Closing Fantasy and Dragon Quest. It lets gamers embark on a Dungeons & Dragons model marketing campaign inside a bigger Star Trek-inspired universe. It punched above its weight with frenetic fight, deep crafting techniques, and an abundance of facet content material. There have been a number of endings and roster tradeoffs relying on who you tried to recruit throughout your journey. Star Ocean: Second Story on the unique PlayStation was good. The following sport on the PS2 was even higher. It’s been downhill ever since. Till now.
Star Ocean: The Divine Drive, the sixth sport within the collection and the primary one on PS5 and Xbox Collection X/S, is a transparent enchancment during the last sport. 2016’s Integrity and Faithlessness was unremarkable, incomplete, and had a third-person digital camera that made you need to throw-up. A low bar to clear for positive, however Divine Drive does extra than simply keep away from the pitfalls of its predecessor. It additionally gives an modern overhaul of the fight system that’s finicky however compelling, with the prettiest environments the collection has ever achieved. I’ve been enjoying on PS5 in graphics mode, and whereas nowhere close to the perfect trying JRPG on the console, the plush fields, detailed structure, and colourful interstellar skies added an additional spark to in any other case barebones questlines stuffed with a tedious degree of backtracking.
Does this imply Divine Drive is an efficient sport? No. I’m about six hours in, and to this point, I haven’t seen something that will make me advocate it to anybody who isn’t already among the many quickly shrinking group of diehard Star Ocean followers. For all the sport’s enhancements and trendy sensibilities, it’s nowhere close to as targeted, polished, or refined as Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and even final 12 months’s Tales of Come up. For all of its stunning virtues, Divine Drive simply isn’t in the identical league.
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The English voice performing is satisfactory and sometimes endearing in its eccentricity, however largely simply appears stilted, due partly to a script that feels trapped, for higher and undoubtedly for worse, in a kind of PS2-era JRPG mad libs. Raymond, the captain of a service provider ship, crashlands on a medieval-era planet the place he runs right into a princess named Laeticia who’s making an attempt to stave off an invasion of her kingdom by a neighboring empire. Regardless of the menacing threats looming within the background, a lot of the early sport is about getting combined up in mundane parochial affairs whereas Raymond tries to regroup along with his crewmates and mutters stuff like, “Who the hell are the folks on this rock with horns growin’ outta their heads?” It’s fairly boring stuff.
The sport involves life extra in-between these contrived story beats and laborious fetch quests. Conversations with NPCs are hardly ever fascinating, however they often open up facet missions that unlock particular objects for profiting from the sport’s crafting techniques. Whereas hardly any of that is signposted, the sport’s extra esoteric facet is there for gamers keen to go off the crushed path and attempt to puzzle collectively what the sport is making an attempt to inform you to do.
Exploration and fight are augmented by a mechanical companion known as the D.U.M.A.S. that allows you to fly quick distances or sprint into enemies and stun them. A stamina rely, in the meantime, regulates how typically and quickly you possibly can unleash combos in fights. There’s additionally a roll-dodge you could time to completely evade an incoming assault and counter with a robust follow-up. Whereas concentrating on generally is a nightmare, and it’s typically unimaginable to know when you’re about to be hit by one thing off display, it makes fight really feel extra pure and responsive than previous video games.
The transition between exploration and fight can also be seamless, and helps hold Divine Drive transferring alongside in order that even when one thing leaves a nasty style in your mouth it doesn’t linger for lengthy. That stated, the environments you’re exploring, whereas often huge and fairly to take a look at, are mainly empty aside from a couple of treasure chests and bread crumb trails of crystals you possibly can acquire to improve the D.U.M.A.S. Enemies all the time seem in the identical teams on the identical spot, whether or not it’s your first time visiting the situation or your fifth. And regardless of the addition of quick bursts of flight and a gliding capacity, the platforming has been too imprecise for me to ever need to attempt to attain hard-to-get-to treasure chests.
So why am I nonetheless enjoying Divine Drive? As a result of I’m a kind of followers who was Star Ocean-pilled way back, excitedly pouring by way of technique guides making an attempt to resolve which character I might recruit and the way to not miss them. I’m hardly the primary individual to comment on simply how a lot the most recent sport looks like enjoying an HD tribute to Second Story and Until The Finish of Time. The sound results are all nonetheless the identical. You eat blueberries to heal and nonetheless can’t carry greater than 20 at a time. And far of the early sport a minimum of revolves round operating errands for kings and mages in an more and more nonsensical collection of nesting subplots. It’s been a pleasant stroke down reminiscence lane however none of it’s pretty much as good as I keep in mind.
Developer Tri-Ace is in an enormous monetary gap, and followers are frightened that Divine Drive may be the collection’ final probability to show it nonetheless deserves to exist. Some are even shopping for a number of copies of the sport to attempt to hold the dream alive. However the preliminary gross sales information isn’t reassuring. In Japan a minimum of, the sport’s launch is shaping as much as be the second worst within the collection historical past. It’s exhausting responsible anybody, each due to the sport’s flaws and the inherent limitations and area of interest enchantment of the many years previous components, but additionally as a result of there are simply so many different JRPGs to select from. I’m disenchanted that Divine Drive isn’t the triumphant comeback followers have begged for, however I’m not stunned. I’m simply glad it’s not horrible, and that I bought to go to yet another time earlier than the entire thing will get knocked down.