Square Enix and Tri-Ace have announced that Star Ocean: The Divine Force will launch on October 27 globally for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. We also got two new trailers for the game.
Star Ocean: The Divine Force follows two protagonists, Raymond Lawrence and Laeticia Aucerius Raymond’s merchant transport vessel, the Ydas, gets gunned down by a Federation battleship and he crashlands on an underdeveloped planet. Laeticia is the crown princess of the Kingdom of Aucerius on the planet.
Players will have the choice to pick between the two characters and gain unique perspectives from both. Raymond is on the search for his lost crew while Laeticia is trying to save her homeland from an unknown threat.
The battle system seems to have gone through an overhaul. Instead of the long-range and short-range attack assignments seen in the previous three Star Ocean games, characters now expend AP to perform special attacks. The transition from the field into a battle is seamless. Four characters can participate in battle at any time, which is actually a decrease from seven in the previous entry, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness.
The game now utilizes a Chain Combo system where players can assign different battle skills in any specific order to the controller’s face buttons. Certain actions during battle can temporarily increase max AP in order to execute more battle skills in a row.
Star Ocean: The Divine Force also has a more open-world structure and characters will be able to glide across landscapes and jump between roofs of buildings. More details about the game will be revealed later.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey