Star Ocean Is Back And It Looks Kinda Like Monster Hunter

At long last, Square Enix’s interstellar JRPG series Star Ocean is back. Star Ocean The Divine Force is set to launch on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X/S, and PC in 2022, the company revealed during today’s PlayStation State of Play livestream.

We didn’t get much in the way of hard info about the game’s story or gameplay systems, and it’s looking pretty rough at the moment, but still, as a longtime fan, I’m intrigued.

Here’s the trailer:

“Featuring a story that blends fantasy and a sci-fi settings, a plethora of different playable characters and side stories, and a unique battle system that allows for thrilling fights using simple and instinctive controls,” read’s Square Enix’s description for the Tri-Ace-developed game.

The same could be said of any Star Ocean, but this one looks to be following in the footsteps of JRPGs with more open world-style exploration like Monster Hunter and Xenoblade Chronicles. It’s hard to tell from the trailer, but it looks like combat will be more free-flowing as well instead of relying on discrete battlefields separate from the reset of the environment.

Star Ocean got its start on the SNES back in 1996. Since then there have been four more, as well as a number of ports and remasters, all of which revolve around a clash of magic and Star Trek-style exploration by technologically advanced civilizations. The first three games are great, but results have been much more mixed since the PS3 era.

It’s been five years since the last one, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness. That one was pretty terrible, and seemed like a sign Square Enix might abandon the name altogether. Somehow it hasn’t. It will soon be 2022, and apparently new Star Oceans will still be coming to new Sony consoles.

In the meantime, there’s no better place to get acquainted with the games than Star Ocean First Departure R, a remake of the first game which arrived on Switch and PS4 a couple years back.