Star Ocean The Divine Force
Star Ocean is a series somewhat near and dear to me. I played Till the End of Time extensively as an early PS2 game for me and my brother back in 2010 and have played through The First Departure. In addition, I have played parts of Second Story (or is it Evolution?) but have not touched my copies of Integrity and Faithlessness or the last Hope International. I was super excited for this game though and started playing it extensively last year about August. Unfortunately, stuff happens, I get distracted, we move on.
Anyway, since I played this game over the course of two separate bouts separated by about a year, I won't be able to give a very complete summary of my thoughts, but I'll put this down for my sakes anyway.
So, first off, on One X and especially Series X this game looks very good but always stops short of looking great. That said, the character designs are some of my favorite in the series. Raymond kind of just barely avoids totally looking like a hero but he does look suitably cool as well as everyone else in the party. The characters were all good as well with no one being egregious or obnoxious. They all were suitably unique as well as largely well acted and written. My favorites included Elena and Marielle but Laeticia is also very good as well as Nina and Albaird having a fair few good moments.
Acting was very good across the board, bearing in mind I played with Japanese audio (although I slightly regret that only because Todd Haberkorn plays the emperor).
Gameplay is also pretty excellent this time around. The only true annoyance comes in the battles with the AP gauge. It just is slightly convoluted to fill up (the only way I managed to do it was with blind siding with DUMA). I guess I should clarify: the AP gauge is your Action Points, all actions in battle consume an action point except using items. You start battles with like five and can increase it to at least a dozen or twenty. DUMA is also a character who in gameplay mainly is used as a kind of thrust jet pack. You can dash to an enemy's side and hopefully land a blind side on it, that usually gets you a few points. Other actions can too but this was the only one that seemed to work consistently for me. Once you have acquired the AP gauge up to a point (it refills to that limit if you rest a little in battle) you can pretty much use all of your attacks with relative impunity. However, if you get hit with a devastating attack (Anything that knocks you back or anything that comes with multiple hits like getting hit with a laser beam, fire breath, or a rock slide) then you start losing AP gauge points and have to reacquire them. It can be tedious when you are fighting some big mech and he gets you with a laser cannon and cancels out several of your AP points leaving you to try and outflank the machine that is not only bigger than you but also is faster than you. That said, I would not call this a hard game, just one with a few frustrating moments. I want to say that someone described this as an easy game with hard bosses. The game is not easy per se and not all of the bosses are hard, but that is pretty close to the mark.
Exploring the environment with the jet pack DUMA is pretty fun and gives a sense of verticality to the game that is often missing from JRPGs. Resultantly, exploring the environments and towns is often rewarding with certain items or upgrade points and gives you reasons to look up every here and again. It also makes traversing the environment easier than if they gave you a lackluster climbing mechanic. That said, the environs are not the most open that a game like this could have and even though you go to a few worlds only one of them has all that diverse of biomes or is particularly well developed in its design.
One thing I should point out are the ways in which the game feels rushed. The story largely is functional until it reaches about the fourth chapter (the game is divided into four and is roughly about 25-33% of the game depending. It added about thirty hours to my playthrough, bringing me to about 80). However, the story takes a nose dive in the sense making department after the primary crux of the conflict is brought to the fore. It is a spoiler but I will just say, is it a hive mind or isn't it? The story covers its butt by saying "it makes sense when you're in it but not before" but this barely is a real cover. And at that they go to great lengths to talk about the concept but fail to really enlighten too much about it. In the end, it's just a fairly standard Star Ocean/JRPG story and there is nothing wrong with that especially since the characters are all pretty good still. The pacing also takes an odd nose dive at that point, slowing down what was feeling like a race to the climax. The rest of the game is good, I assure you, but it just did not feel quite right with the pace building so much to be told, "Hold it, we still got a ways to go." It will do this to a lesser extent one more time also.
Speaking of characters, I don't know why but I saw like five or six private actions before I got to a point in the story where I was like "They've warned me enough, let's see if there is anything I should see first." This took me somewhere between 5-10 hours. Now, I like private actions so it was not a problem I just thought it was strange how the game only put a handful in your path naturally but the rest were things that I think you'd only get if you were wanting them.
Speaking of the things that made the game feel rushed, the game does look good but the visuals are occasionally rough. The Unreal Engine of today I think is a bigger cancer than UE3 ever was, with companies like Namco and Square throwing it into every game imaginable. It does some things well and then others horribly. Reflections continue to look like vague, dotted trash, fabrics are a little odd when moving dynamically, and lighting effects are a mixed bag: occasionally looking amazing and occasionally looking below par for an Xbox 360 title.
That said, the game is a very, very good RPG. I think it is probably the best Star Ocean I have played (not a long list) with the least harmful plot twist between it and 3 and being a better fulfillment of the concept than First Departure. If you like this kind of game then get it and play it. It is easily worth the reduced price it can be had for today and was well worth full price when it launched (at least for me).
(I may as well say a few words about the Doom games I played lately)
Doom (2016)*
Firstly, I wish they called this something other than pretentiously just calling it Doom. This trend is annoying and feels like they are trying to over pander to older gamers or they are ashamed of following in the footsteps of a prior game. Wolfenstein (2009) should not have done this either.
I have surprisingly few thoughts on this game. I think it is okay, maybe even good. I enjoyed Doom 3 appreciably more. I guess just to clarify how well I got into this game: I played this game for the first time around when I got and started paying Samurai Warriors 5 and it was not long before Samurai Warriors occupied more of my time. It's not bad but it has a few of the problems of the new Wolf games. That said, it is a lot better than New Order or Old blood. I don't think it is better than, say, Shadow Warrior (2013, you see why this trend is annoying?). I mean, it is a similar enough design philosophy to Shadow Warrior: go to room/arena, bad guys spawn, you kill them, do some light exploration or paint in the lines puzzle, rinse and repeat. I have heard people adulate about this game before and I think it is fun and good but it is not as sophisticated as a Metroid Prime, it is not the immediately satisfying fun of an RTCW or the original Doom, it is not as moody and atmospheric as Doom 3 or a Dead Space, the soundtrack is not as good as Quake or Quake II (I really will stand by this point, some of the tracks by the end sounded like the musicians discovered how to make a synthesizer fart), and while the game is leagues better in visuals than the new Wolf games it was not better looking per se than Titanfall 2. That said, for the year it came out, it is similarly enjoyable to Titanfall 2 for me (Titanfall 2 had better gameplay variety and was better for me) and is better than either Battlefield 1 or Infinite Warfare as well as being less tedious than Shadow Warrior 2 (that one hurts). But in the end for me the game does become tedious after a bit and was not brilliantly paced. The glory kills in particular were something that I thought were fun for a little bit but eventually were about as tedious to me as QTEs are in so many titles. There are lots of people who think this game is a modern classic akin to the old Quakes or Doom titles and many of them are old enough to remember those titles when they came out but I just do not see it. I like it but I am far from loving it. Also, the edgy, try hard tough guy stunts like punching everything like a caveman got old really, really fast. I also never get too into the "You are so badass and scary that the demons are scare of YOU, bro!" thing.
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil (BFG Edition)
I played the BFG edition of this because the Enhanced Edition mod kind of broke the ex pack on my base version and I figured I may as well since I already had it easily accessible. This game (as well as Doom 2016) is not a hard game, I should mention. It can be very satisfying, all the same. This game being an ex pack is also short. In the BFG edition, which makes things easier with more plentiful ammo and a shoulder lamp, I beat this game in about four hours on standard difficulty and I hesitate to say I am good at games. It ought to take a person who is good at them a little less time since I had to redo a few sections because of derp. This ex pack adds a really, really good double barrel shotgun that almost breaks the game in your favor. It was super fun to use though. The other addition was that relic which I was able to pretty easily ignore, actually. in fact, I question if the game glitched on me or if the BFG edition just eliminated any challenge from a few sections (the sewer in particular). Oh well, this ex pack also kept up a decent atmosphere throughout although there were fewer audio logs by a lot. Still a few emails, many of which were hilarious.
In all, I really liked this ex pack and it is a really good way to kill an afternoon, better than Old Blood at any rate.
*In fairness to Doom (2016) I did play it on an Xbox One X so the following is worth keeping in mind. The game looks better than it did on an Xbox One from 2016, I am not sure by how much but it does. I even think it still looks pretty good for a new release. The controls also were an impediment to enjoyment. This game felt very aimed at a PC audience with gameplay decisions, like jumping and shooting at the same time as aiming being difficult on an Xbox but no problemo on a PC. I think I would have liked the game more on PC from a gameplay perspective but I don't think it would have fundamentally altered the fact I think it is similarly good to Shadow Warrior (2013) which is another good to very good but not strictly speaking excellent game.
Post edited September 16, 2024 by AnimalMother117