the divine force
i *did* say i would buy this game without fear. although that's not really a certainty of believing it'd be good, more like "even if the next game is pretty bad i'll have a good time"
I keep seeing people (and review headlines) saying stuff along the lines of "it's like a PS2 game". I haven't read any of the actual reviews, but I get why people are saying this, because even though the game has multiple audio tracks, a clear quest tracker, fast travel, and battles right on the map (along with various other touches that obviously only really became prominent during the ps3 era and later), it's one of the only post-VP2 tri-ace games to have that distinctive kind of janky ambition. It's great! It's bad! Honestly, even with some of the old SO weirdness existing in 5, it wasn't really either, just an overall ok game, so I'm kind of relieved that even if this is the last tri-Ace game (and there's more than a small chance of that, from the sound of it)...it'll be one that really feels like them, with pretty much everything that entails.
There's an SO2 style protagonist choice, which I take to have major implications on private actions, and smaller ones on which parts of the main story you see (mostly in the midgame, though I'm assuming Raymond has a longer solo intro-he appears in the first scene on Laeticia's playthrough). There's actually only like two scenes from Raymond's story I *really* want to see, but I'll probably play it eventually, since I liked the game, although I would say that I feel basically 100% certain they expected most people to pick him first. But even considering that, DUMA is the main character; it instantly "attaches" to whichever person you choose to control on the field (unless it's occupied with an action on the character you were already controlling) and is the center of the battle mechanics and exploration. And it talks occasionally.
DUMA's mechanics are the core of the game, and they're pretty great. The areas aren't super wide open, they're definitely along the lines of the previous 3D games, and some are on the bland side, but there's fun features and some cool terrain differences on many of them, and at least a couple nice little flying tricks to puzzle out and do on each one. You can also use it to advance on enemies from the air, which they don't see or hear so easily, so it's easier to get sneak attacks; in a sense it's like the "hit the enemies with a sword for initiative" type of thing that, again, got really popularized on the PS2, but it's comically, stupendously powerful. If you get a surprise attack you'll probably kill up to half a dozen enemies in about 10 seconds (on Galaxy difficulty). Some of the battles are way bigger than that and the surprise effect doesn't necessarily propagate across all of them, but either way, I love this element, because the flying is such an integral part of combat as well that being able to take advantage of it beforehand is just a natural extension of that.
Combat has two main resources, one of which is used to attack and the other one for DUMA's actions, but they share a close relationship where using one properly will feed the other (and using DUMA, even to guard, uses up a bit of the attacking resource). Attack to restore the VA bar, successfully guard or hit enemies in the !? (surprise) state with DUMA to get more max AP. Until you get access to those actions the combat has a sort of similar feel to Tales of Arise, but that's only for the first half hour or so, with the first boss fight being when most of the mechanics are added. Against enemies who the blindside works against, it's easy to go really aggressive and attack lots with little downtime; bigger bosses are generally more of a matter of patiently taking turns guarding and counterattacking until you they get knocked down, opening a large window to go in. That's obviously pretty similar to a lot of "break"/"stagger" type mechanics that have shown up in lots of JRPGs lately, but compared to some of the previous solutions SO has gone for (3's "initial hitstun is just random", 4's "hitstun is really reliable but all your true combos have hitcount caps before the enemy breaks out", or 5's constant RPS game because most of the bosses aren't juggle-able) it's a pretty satisfying outcome that feels easy to get decent at despite the fact that I feel like there's still lots more I can learn about how to play. You get little crystals to level up passives for DUMA, so you can kind of tailor your playstyle as you like, getting more VA back from attacking or dodging, or just trying to focus more on the offensive payouts, or the partywide defensive mode (which I haven't played a lot with...the tutorial battle where they add the feature and tell you to use it was honestly just really easy). It's a pretty expressive system that's simple to use and makes all kinds of combos and sequences look really cool, but doesn't just trivialize anything in the game so much as to feel super easy. Which is the kind of balance they've really not pulled off successfully very often!
Also, I just think that the whole concept of having the rocket boost is a pretty solid compromise towards making the game feel a bit more sci-fi even as so much of it takes place on the usual fantasy planet. In that sense I feel like it's one of the freshest ideas the series has had in a long time.
IC is most of the rest of the game, like it has been since 3, since there still aren't really weird out of battle trinkets to play with like the first couple games. The gacha system is back as the primary method, so it's easier to get stuff that it feels like you're "not supposed to have" than 4 or 5. That's fun. I made a gun before the last two dungeons that was like 5x more powerful than my other weapons, but it had wind element, which a bunch of the later bosses resisted, so it didn't trivialize things as much as I hoped. Although it did make me realize a bunch of other stuff I did wrong...also, cooking is canceled, probably relatedly, you just eat at Inns while sleeping like ToA (again...) and the buffs don't last very long since they reduce every battle. Still, as far as those two parts of the game go, this game is kind of maybe even better than 3, except that obviously I still played 3 when I was 16 years old and now I'm twice that, so obviously 3 is still better. Most other elements of the game are similar to but a bit less "AAA styled" than 5; sidequests come from NPCs instead of a bulletin board again, PAs aren't just trivially marked on the map to make sure you go do them (although I suspect that most aren't missable), stuff like that. Overall wandering the towns for those things isn't super rewarding, but it's comfy since it feels more like older games and there's some fun spots where you can run around on rooftops for chests/items and DUMA crystals. There's also a bunch of sidequests involving cats, which reminds me that in VP2 a bunch of houses have cats on the stairs to block you from climbing up them. I think Gotanda likes cats.
Those are the high points. The rest I found basically tolerable at worst, though probably the worst feature in the entire game is that the game unequips passives and accessories of party members whenever they "leave the party", which happens for most characters a bunch of times, and sometimes only for about 10 minutes or less. I hear people saying the text is really small, which sounds like a console thing; I don't have a PS5 so I got the Steam version and felt it was fairly normal. I don't love the first-layer character building system, which is a bit sphere grid-ish (or maybe arguably closest to the DDS2 hex thing), for the sole reason that it's too many inputs to mash out like 80 slots of for 8 different characters, although I guess it does let you beeline for some move you want to use, which is probably much more hilarious on a replay when you know what's good to get. And after you've gotten the moves you want you get the usual skill leveling menus like from 4 and 5, which I'm fine with. As usual, the story raises some interesting themes and sci-fi concepts that are vaguely interesting right before having to swerve in a weird direction so that there's a final boss to kill, although this time it seems to be specifically echoing the TNG episode "Conspiracy", some of the TNG Borg stuff, and just a little bit of Mass Effect, so that part was pretty fun, though first half of the game is the usual Star Ocean stuff everyone mostly rolls their eyes at and the last few hours are just as a whole not as good as the rest (I didn't feel they made the game a letdown, but it's definitely the point where the game making it to the finish line on fumes becomes clear). Incidentally, around the same point is where the most obvious editor/stylistic switch I've ever seen in a localization suddenly happens, which is very strange and another part I liked less. Although in retrospect I kind of get what whoever did it was going for and I think they could've make it work if the whole game had been like that...
It's pretty straight, which is par for the course for tri-Ace games, but I was kind of surprised that despite some of the main story scenes pushing a relationship between the two leads only their actual affinity ending enforces such a thing (I watched all of them for Laeticia on youtube. I only got Elena's, although that *really* surprised me because I was assuming it'd be more like 4 and 5 where you can get all of the endings at once and I definitely wasn't focusing on her in particular). There's a board game minigame that is really easy (it's somewhere between Go and autochess, but the computer sucks at playing Go on a tiny board and you always have a huge advantage by getting the first turn) but all of the good pieces are characters from other tri-ace games. Which you can also equip as accessories, and leads to getting strange messages sometimes like "Jack obtained", so it's pretty funny on balance.
Overall, it's better than I expected. I thought it was really fun and while I suspect only people who really liked 3 (or...maybe 4, god help them) will feel it's worth $60 it's maybe not a terrible thing to check out once it goes on sale. I definitely hope this isn't tri-Ace's (or at least Gotanda's) last game...but if it is, at least I'll have happy memories, knowing they went out their way.
i *did* say i would buy this game without fear. although that's not really a certainty of believing it'd be good, more like "even if the next game is pretty bad i'll have a good time"
I keep seeing people (and review headlines) saying stuff along the lines of "it's like a PS2 game". I haven't read any of the actual reviews, but I get why people are saying this, because even though the game has multiple audio tracks, a clear quest tracker, fast travel, and battles right on the map (along with various other touches that obviously only really became prominent during the ps3 era and later), it's one of the only post-VP2 tri-ace games to have that distinctive kind of janky ambition. It's great! It's bad! Honestly, even with some of the old SO weirdness existing in 5, it wasn't really either, just an overall ok game, so I'm kind of relieved that even if this is the last tri-Ace game (and there's more than a small chance of that, from the sound of it)...it'll be one that really feels like them, with pretty much everything that entails.
There's an SO2 style protagonist choice, which I take to have major implications on private actions, and smaller ones on which parts of the main story you see (mostly in the midgame, though I'm assuming Raymond has a longer solo intro-he appears in the first scene on Laeticia's playthrough). There's actually only like two scenes from Raymond's story I *really* want to see, but I'll probably play it eventually, since I liked the game, although I would say that I feel basically 100% certain they expected most people to pick him first. But even considering that, DUMA is the main character; it instantly "attaches" to whichever person you choose to control on the field (unless it's occupied with an action on the character you were already controlling) and is the center of the battle mechanics and exploration. And it talks occasionally.
DUMA's mechanics are the core of the game, and they're pretty great. The areas aren't super wide open, they're definitely along the lines of the previous 3D games, and some are on the bland side, but there's fun features and some cool terrain differences on many of them, and at least a couple nice little flying tricks to puzzle out and do on each one. You can also use it to advance on enemies from the air, which they don't see or hear so easily, so it's easier to get sneak attacks; in a sense it's like the "hit the enemies with a sword for initiative" type of thing that, again, got really popularized on the PS2, but it's comically, stupendously powerful. If you get a surprise attack you'll probably kill up to half a dozen enemies in about 10 seconds (on Galaxy difficulty). Some of the battles are way bigger than that and the surprise effect doesn't necessarily propagate across all of them, but either way, I love this element, because the flying is such an integral part of combat as well that being able to take advantage of it beforehand is just a natural extension of that.
Combat has two main resources, one of which is used to attack and the other one for DUMA's actions, but they share a close relationship where using one properly will feed the other (and using DUMA, even to guard, uses up a bit of the attacking resource). Attack to restore the VA bar, successfully guard or hit enemies in the !? (surprise) state with DUMA to get more max AP. Until you get access to those actions the combat has a sort of similar feel to Tales of Arise, but that's only for the first half hour or so, with the first boss fight being when most of the mechanics are added. Against enemies who the blindside works against, it's easy to go really aggressive and attack lots with little downtime; bigger bosses are generally more of a matter of patiently taking turns guarding and counterattacking until you they get knocked down, opening a large window to go in. That's obviously pretty similar to a lot of "break"/"stagger" type mechanics that have shown up in lots of JRPGs lately, but compared to some of the previous solutions SO has gone for (3's "initial hitstun is just random", 4's "hitstun is really reliable but all your true combos have hitcount caps before the enemy breaks out", or 5's constant RPS game because most of the bosses aren't juggle-able) it's a pretty satisfying outcome that feels easy to get decent at despite the fact that I feel like there's still lots more I can learn about how to play. You get little crystals to level up passives for DUMA, so you can kind of tailor your playstyle as you like, getting more VA back from attacking or dodging, or just trying to focus more on the offensive payouts, or the partywide defensive mode (which I haven't played a lot with...the tutorial battle where they add the feature and tell you to use it was honestly just really easy). It's a pretty expressive system that's simple to use and makes all kinds of combos and sequences look really cool, but doesn't just trivialize anything in the game so much as to feel super easy. Which is the kind of balance they've really not pulled off successfully very often!
Also, I just think that the whole concept of having the rocket boost is a pretty solid compromise towards making the game feel a bit more sci-fi even as so much of it takes place on the usual fantasy planet. In that sense I feel like it's one of the freshest ideas the series has had in a long time.
IC is most of the rest of the game, like it has been since 3, since there still aren't really weird out of battle trinkets to play with like the first couple games. The gacha system is back as the primary method, so it's easier to get stuff that it feels like you're "not supposed to have" than 4 or 5. That's fun. I made a gun before the last two dungeons that was like 5x more powerful than my other weapons, but it had wind element, which a bunch of the later bosses resisted, so it didn't trivialize things as much as I hoped. Although it did make me realize a bunch of other stuff I did wrong...also, cooking is canceled, probably relatedly, you just eat at Inns while sleeping like ToA (again...) and the buffs don't last very long since they reduce every battle. Still, as far as those two parts of the game go, this game is kind of maybe even better than 3, except that obviously I still played 3 when I was 16 years old and now I'm twice that, so obviously 3 is still better. Most other elements of the game are similar to but a bit less "AAA styled" than 5; sidequests come from NPCs instead of a bulletin board again, PAs aren't just trivially marked on the map to make sure you go do them (although I suspect that most aren't missable), stuff like that. Overall wandering the towns for those things isn't super rewarding, but it's comfy since it feels more like older games and there's some fun spots where you can run around on rooftops for chests/items and DUMA crystals. There's also a bunch of sidequests involving cats, which reminds me that in VP2 a bunch of houses have cats on the stairs to block you from climbing up them. I think Gotanda likes cats.
Those are the high points. The rest I found basically tolerable at worst, though probably the worst feature in the entire game is that the game unequips passives and accessories of party members whenever they "leave the party", which happens for most characters a bunch of times, and sometimes only for about 10 minutes or less. I hear people saying the text is really small, which sounds like a console thing; I don't have a PS5 so I got the Steam version and felt it was fairly normal. I don't love the first-layer character building system, which is a bit sphere grid-ish (or maybe arguably closest to the DDS2 hex thing), for the sole reason that it's too many inputs to mash out like 80 slots of for 8 different characters, although I guess it does let you beeline for some move you want to use, which is probably much more hilarious on a replay when you know what's good to get. And after you've gotten the moves you want you get the usual skill leveling menus like from 4 and 5, which I'm fine with. As usual, the story raises some interesting themes and sci-fi concepts that are vaguely interesting right before having to swerve in a weird direction so that there's a final boss to kill, although this time it seems to be specifically echoing the TNG episode "Conspiracy", some of the TNG Borg stuff, and just a little bit of Mass Effect, so that part was pretty fun, though first half of the game is the usual Star Ocean stuff everyone mostly rolls their eyes at and the last few hours are just as a whole not as good as the rest (I didn't feel they made the game a letdown, but it's definitely the point where the game making it to the finish line on fumes becomes clear). Incidentally, around the same point is where the most obvious editor/stylistic switch I've ever seen in a localization suddenly happens, which is very strange and another part I liked less. Although in retrospect I kind of get what whoever did it was going for and I think they could've make it work if the whole game had been like that...
It's pretty straight, which is par for the course for tri-Ace games, but I was kind of surprised that despite some of the main story scenes pushing a relationship between the two leads only their actual affinity ending enforces such a thing (I watched all of them for Laeticia on youtube. I only got Elena's, although that *really* surprised me because I was assuming it'd be more like 4 and 5 where you can get all of the endings at once and I definitely wasn't focusing on her in particular). There's a board game minigame that is really easy (it's somewhere between Go and autochess, but the computer sucks at playing Go on a tiny board and you always have a huge advantage by getting the first turn) but all of the good pieces are characters from other tri-ace games. Which you can also equip as accessories, and leads to getting strange messages sometimes like "Jack obtained", so it's pretty funny on balance.
Overall, it's better than I expected. I thought it was really fun and while I suspect only people who really liked 3 (or...maybe 4, god help them) will feel it's worth $60 it's maybe not a terrible thing to check out once it goes on sale. I definitely hope this isn't tri-Ace's (or at least Gotanda's) last game...but if it is, at least I'll have happy memories, knowing they went out their way.
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