Star Ocean The Divine Force reviews coming in - 7 from IGN

[Mr. House 3,371]

14 minutes ago, Remij said:

@Twinblade I noticed you bought this game.  Have you tried it out yet?

 

A positive note is that the game pre-compiles shaders after initial launch.  Developers are waking up regarding this issue.  Uncharted LoT Collection pre-compiles shaders as well and runs butter smooth.

I'm dling it, the game is pretty big, 44GB. 

[Twinblade★ 3,892]

27 minutes ago, Remij said:

@Twinblade I noticed you bought this game.  Have you tried it out yet?

 

A positive note is that the game pre-compiles shaders after initial launch.  Developers are waking up regarding this issue.  Uncharted LoT Collection pre-compiles shaders as well and runs butter smooth.

 

I bought it but Im focusing on Signalis at the moment, so I haven't tried it yet. I briefly browsed the steam forums and hermits are just complaining incessantly about it using Denuvo, but it sounds like a decent port in general.

[Twinblade★ 3,892]

Im about 6 hours in give or take.

 

The game is a mess  There's no denying that. But its an enjoyable mess so far. Anyway some quick thoughts

 

- The traversal using the DUMA boost thing is pretty fun, but also janky. Using it to reach elevated spots like cliffs or buildings is not always consistent and sometimes you'll get hung up on geometry and your character will basically become stuck for a few seconds before the game decides to 'reset' you. When you see it in action it honestly looks like something from an early pre-alpha build.

- The combat is fun. There's a lot to the skill system. Each character has their own skill tree with unique Active and Passive skills. Unlike in the typical RPG, passive skills aren't automatically activated. You actually have to equip them and each character has limited slots, so I imagine you'll have to change out your skills from time to time to make sure you're better equipped for a particular situation. You can also upgrade each of the skills to improve their effects.

- The main minigame here, Esowa, is actually surprisingly fun and probably one of the better of these kinds of games. You use pawns which are basically figurines of characters from the entirety of the series to build a deck, and then you can challenge various NPCs throughout the world to increase your rank and gain new, better pawns for your deck. The loop has been somewhat addicting and the first thing i've been doing when visiting a town is seeking out Esowa NPC.

- Speaking of towns, there's actually been a surprising number of them so far and they each have their own distinct vibe. The only downside is that you can only speak to Esowa NPCs or quest givers. Pretty much nobody else can be interacted with, and while they do have their own lines of dialogues and ambient conversations with one another, the sound mixing is actually pretty bad and you can't hear them at all unless you angle the camera right up on their faces.

- The story and voice acting is....ok so far. Its nothing bad, and the characters are somewhat interesting. The lip syncing is really bad for pretty much everyone, even for the main character. Cutscenes look pretty cheap as a result.

- And cheap is also how i'd describe the graphics. At its best the game looks no better than 'decent' and thats with the art style doing most of the heavy lifting, but the graphics are all over the place and it often looks incredibly dated. Flat lighting and simplistic textures being the biggest culprits. Here's 2 pics of scenes I actually thought looked good, and then another one that is less than impressive

 

Spoiler

 

 

No, that last one is not from a long lost dreamcast version they were working on at some point. That is very much the same game. And I shit you not, I actually re-launched the game because I thought it bugged out and the water shaders weren't loading. But nope, thats what it looks like  

 

 

 

 

[kaz 2,439]

^ lmfao that last pic  

[Mr. House 3,371]

24 minutes ago, Twinblade said:

Im about 6 hours in give or take.

 

The game is a mess  There's no denying that. But its an enjoyable mess so far. Anyway some quick thoughts

 

- The traversal using the DUMA boost thing is pretty fun, but also janky. Using it to reach elevated spots like cliffs or buildings is not always consistent and sometimes you'll get hung up on geometry and your character will basically become stuck for a few seconds before the game decides to 'reset' you. When you see it in action it honestly looks like something from an early pre-alpha build.

- The combat is fun. There's a lot to the skill system. Each character has their own skill tree with unique Active and Passive skills. Unlike in the typical RPG, passive skills aren't automatically activated. You actually have to equip them and each character has limited slots, so I imagine you'll have to change out your skills from time to time to make sure you're better equipped for a particular situation. You can also upgrade each of the skills to improve their effects.

- The main minigame here, Esowa, is actually surprisingly fun and probably one of the better of these kinds of games. You use pawns which are basically figurines of characters from the entirety of the series to build a deck, and then you can challenge various NPCs throughout the world to increase your rank and gain new, better pawns for your deck. The loop has been somewhat addicting and the first thing i've been doing when visiting a town is seeking out Esowa NPC.

- Speaking of towns, there's actually been a surprising number of them so far and they each have their own distinct vibe. The only downside is that you can only speak to Esowa NPCs or quest givers. Pretty much nobody else can be interacted with, and while they do have their own lines of dialogues and ambient conversations with one another, the sound mixing is actually pretty bad and you can't hear them at all unless you angle the camera right up on their faces.

- The story and voice acting is....ok so far. Its nothing bad, and the characters are somewhat interesting. The lip syncing is really bad for pretty much everyone, even for the main character. Cutscenes look pretty cheap as a result.

- And cheap is also how i'd describe the graphics. At its best the game looks no better than 'decent' and thats with the art style doing most of the heavy lifting, but the graphics are all over the place and it often looks incredibly dated. Flat lighting and simplistic textures being the biggest culprits. Here's 2 pics of scenes I actually thought looked good, and then another one that is less than impressive

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

No, that last one is not from a long lost dreamcast version they were working on at some point. That is very much the same game. And I shit you not, I actually re-launched the game because I thought it bugged out and the water shaders weren't loading. But nope, thats what it looks like  

 

 

 

 

I barely played it but it's better than I expected so far. I liked the voice acting and the fast combat encounters that happens on the map. The combat felt sloppy, but we'll see.

 

And geez, how fast does the gam throw you in gameplay. 15 minutes in and I'm already upgrade skills trees. The pacing seems incredible. 

[Twinblade★ 3,892]

3 hours ago, Ramza said:

I barely played it but it's better than I expected so far. I liked the voice acting and the fast combat encounters that happens on the map. The combat felt sloppy, but we'll see.

 

And geez, how fast does the gam throw you in gameplay. 15 minutes in and I'm already upgrade skills trees. The pacing seems incredible. 

 

The pacing is quite good so far, you're constantly moving between different environments, seeing new story moments/characters, and the few dungeons have been brief and haven't come close to overstaying their welcome. Im not sure it'll be able to maintain this pace for 38+ hours (apparently thats how long the main story is on average) but its an impressive start.

[Twinblade★ 3,892]

@Ramza did you pick Ray or Laeticia?

[Mr. House 3,371]

3 hours ago, Twinblade said:

@Ramza did you pick Ray or Laeticia?

Raymond.

[Twinblade★ 3,892]

8 minutes ago, Ramza said:

Raymond.

 

I went with him as well. BTW if you're playing on PC then I recommend turning off Bloom. It makes the image way blurrier, and makes the game look like its running at a low resolution.

[kaz 2,439]

would be cool if you can choose the girl and get rid of this jon bon jovi-looking ass gaymond for ever. game looks so bad lol

[Mr. House 3,371]

16 minutes ago, kaz said:

would be cool if you can choose the girl and get rid of this jon bon jovi-looking ass gaymond for ever. game looks so bad lol

Haha, the character art design is pretty bad.

[Twinblade★ 3,892]

The leveling speed is nuts. Im less than 11 hours in and most of my characters are about to hit lvl 30. It feels like every 20 seconds you're hearing the level up sound from one of the characters  

[Mr. House 3,371]

55 minutes ago, Twinblade said:

The leveling speed is nuts. Im less than 11 hours in and most of my characters are about to hit lvl 30. It feels like every 20 seconds you're hearing the level up sound from one of the characters  

The level cap in SO is usually 200. lol

[Twinblade★ 3,892]

12 minutes ago, Ramza said:

The level cap in SO is usually 200. lol

 

Did not know, its been too long. But this game is definitely going to be in my top 10 this year at this rate. Definitely a return to form for the series.

[Mr. House 3,371]

1 hour ago, Twinblade said:

 

Did not know, its been too long. But this game is definitely going to be in my top 10 this year at this rate. Definitely a return to form for the series.

Awesome, yeah it seems really cool. Unfortunately, it runs like shit on my PC so I'm putting this on the back burner. 

[Twinblade★ 3,892]

3 minutes ago, Ramza said:

Awesome, yeah it seems really cool. Unfortunately, it runs like shit on my PC so I'm putting this on the back burner. 

 

thats unfortunate. There's some weird micro stuttering that happens sometimes but outside of that it consistently runs at 60FPS for me.

[Remij 4,670]

5 minutes ago, Ramza said:

Awesome, yeah it seems really cool. Unfortunately, it runs like shit on my PC so I'm putting this on the back burner. 

What's it doing that it runs like shit?  Just a low framerate, or are there big stutters as well?

 

The game has the option to pre-compile shaders.  If you don't do it, or skip pre-caching them, you'll get stutters.

 

If that's the issue, select the option to pre-compile shaders and allow it time to finish.  It could take a while depending on the CPU in your laptop, but that should fix it.  If it's just shitty framerate in general, then yeah, will have to wait I suppose.

[Mr. House 3,371]

9 minutes ago, Remij said:

What's it doing that it runs like shit?  Just a low framerate, or are there big stutters as well?

 

The game has the option to pre-compile shaders.  If you don't do it, or skip pre-caching them, you'll get stutters.

 

If that's the issue, select the option to pre-compile shaders and allow it time to finish.  It could take a while depending on the CPU in your laptop, but that should fix it.  If it's just shitty framerate in general, then yeah, will have to wait I suppose.

It's stutter but I didn't skip the compile shaders so that's not the issue. It's okay, I'm keeping a few more graphics intensive games for later. I just didn't expect Star Ocean to be one of them. lol 

[Twinblade★ 3,892]

Im 17 hours into the game and it still owns  too bad im the only one on here playing it now  

[Mr. House 3,371]

42 minutes ago, Twinblade said:

Im 17 hours into the game and it still owns  too bad im the only one on here playing it now  

That's good to hear. I'll get back to you in a year when I can finally get back to working full time and buy a decent PC.