Star Ocean: The Divine Pressure is the sixth main entry in tri-Ace’s and Sq. Enix’s JRPG franchise. It’s additionally celebrating its twenty fifth anniversary, which is becoming, since that is the primary time I’ve performed a Star Ocean recreation since 1999’s The Second Story. I nonetheless keep in mind that title vividly, from attempting to see all Personal Actions as Claude to pondering if I ought to decide Bowman or Summary, in addition to questioning how I might recruit Chisato.
I digress. The purpose is, that recreation holds a particular place in my reminiscence, as I genuinely beloved it. And so, right here I’m, taking a look at whether or not The Divine Pressure can recapture that magic, and if it might stand tall amongst giants of this style.
Fantasy meets futuristic
A reasonably widespread narrative hook within the Star Ocean titles is the assembly between a extremely superior starfaring civilization and the inhabitants of an underdeveloped planet. This happens proper initially of the marketing campaign. Raymond, a captain of a service provider starship, crash lands on a planet referred to as Aster IV. There, he encounters Laeticia, a princess of a close-by kingdom. This Twin Protagonist system enables you to see the plot unfold by the eyes of your chosen essential character. Whereas many of the narrative arc has overlaps, there are segments the place you’d discover how key occasions transpire based mostly on that character’s perspective.
Alongside the best way, you’ll meet the remainder of the social gathering, equivalent to Albaird, Laeticia’s over-protective knight, the android Elena, a gifted and pragmatic engineer named Midas, and a ship lieutenant named Marielle Kenny (a descendant of Claude Kenny from The Second Story). Every character leans towards their background, so you’ll be able to anticipate a couple of chuckles each time the Aster natives consult with high-tech contraptions relative to on a regular basis objects of their world or each time the futuristic people are clueless about fantasy and magic.
Drained tropes and stiff postures
Nonetheless, Star Ocean: The Divine Pressure‘s marketing campaign does have some obtrusive flaws. The primary of those is the sluggish and considerably redundant pacing of the story. For the primary few hours, you’ll backtrack to and from the identical areas, oftentimes to finish a secular activity or have a dialogue dialog. A lot of these situations happen in a while as effectively, even when issues are beginning to decide up. Furthermore, you’ll be able to anticipate some drained tropes and predictable sequences all through (although there is likely to be a few surprises a lot later).
One other apparent drawback is how character animations and fashions seem wood and stiff. Within the overwhelming majority of cutscenes, you’ll discover how everybody tends to have their arms at their sides. There are exceptions, after all, such because the picture seen under. Sadly, it’s as if the developer simply determined to stay to the idle pose. In supposedly epic moments, I couldn’t assist however really feel the utter lifelessness, to the purpose that it turned immersion-breaking.
Wind beneath my wings
Early within the marketing campaign, your social gathering recovers D.U.M.A., an AI-powered drone that permits your lively character to carry off and glide. This is without doubt one of the finest options in Star Ocean: The Divine Pressure, because it provides verticality to basic exploration.
This isn’t an open-world title, thoughts you, however sure areas are huge. Likewise, there are collectible factors and chests that may solely be discovered in case you look arduous sufficient. One other deal with is the way it virtually replaces common on-foot motion. Why accept sprinting, when you’ll be able to briefly fly or zip throughout fields with ease?
C-c-combo breaker
Maybe essentially the most noteworthy consider The Divine Pressure is how D.U.M.A., or the Vanguard Assault (V.A.), makes for extremely dynamic fight engagements. The true-time battle system is one thing I beloved from The Second Story, and, this time round, I used to be impressed by the speedy assaults and fast-paced combos that may very well be unleashed.
As an example, you’ll be able to glide round and blindside enemies, beautiful them and gaining a lift. Consequently, your different social gathering members might need assigned expertise that may trigger them to obliterate the goal. Moreover, you’ll be able to freely swap between characters to make use of their very own skills or pause the sport in case you want to problem orders manually. There’s additionally the “Vatting” choice, which is akin to a restrict break or final, with a gauge that everybody shares.
And, after all, character development itself is essentially player-friendly. You possibly can construct somebody to tailor-fit your wants by way of a Sphere Grid/License Board-esque panel, including the lively expertise, passives, and stat boosts that you just favor. You may additionally degree up these skills, together with those used for crafting.
Maybe my solely gripe, combat-wise, is how one teammate, Nina, tends to be very inconsistent because the devoted healer. There have been occasions when her AI would do its finest to maintain your group alive, and moments after I desperately needed to babysit her or manually management her simply to be on the protected aspect. I can’t inform if that’s attributable to her wonky AI or if I must tweak my setup additional.
Stuff on the aspect
Star Ocean: The Divine Pressure has its personal minigame referred to as Es’owa. You’ll use your collected pawns, pitting them in opposition to one other NPC’s choice. The motion takes place on a board, whereby every pawn or piece has its personal impact. To be trustworthy, I didn’t actually get the hold of this. I solely tried a few matches, nevertheless it didn’t pique my curiosity.
I ought to point out, although, that you just’re going to run into Welch. A recurring character within the collection, Welch will name upon you to fetch particular gadgets for her. Every time you full a activity, it’ll unlock a brand new crafting operate. These vary from creating potions and bombs to new equipment and stat mixtures. RNG is a given, naturally, so that you’ll depend on luck if you need the most effective rolls. In my case, I stacked a bunch of XP boosters and a bonus modifier to shortly degree up the social gathering member that had these gadgets geared up.
Lastly, Personal Actions (PAs) might be carried out by your essential character. Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be any indicator as to when a brand new PA might be initiated in a metropolis. There are circumstances when your hero could be left on their very own, and also you’d haven’t any clue if a brand new PA awaits you or in case you’re simply operating round aimlessly solely to obtain a generic reply.
Stuttering succotash
No matter what Star Ocean: The Divine Pressure brings to the desk, the largest draw back is the atrocious efficiency that I skilled. With an Nvidia RTX 3080 and an Intel i9-10900K, I had anticipated top-of-the-line outcomes. Sadly, I’ve been plagued with stuttering woes proper from the second I began my run. It didn’t actually matter that some landscapes within the background have been lovely to behold, or that I might chain a number of assault strings in battle. In some circumstances, my character was simply operating down a slim hall in a really small space, and I’d discover frequent dips.
Within the e mail that we acquired together with the evaluate code, we have been instructed that the sport performs the “pre-shader cache compilation processing” the primary time it launches. Little did I do know that the entire thing didn’t work and it needed to be carried out manually. That information got here from a Steam discussion board submit that I solely noticed a few days in the past. As such, regardless that it alleviated the problems considerably, it got here slightly too late in my playthrough to have any significant affect.
This was additionally barely compounded by the truth that this port doesn’t have a hard and fast fullscreen or viable borderless choice. Selecting fullscreen would immediately swap to windowed mode the second I alt-tabbed, and selecting borderless prevented me from alt-tabbing utterly. All in all, Star Ocean: The Divine Pressure didn’t measure as much as what I had anticipated it to be. If its predecessor from twenty years in the past was one thing that I bear in mind fondly to this present day, then that is extra of a forgettable foray.
