Star Ocean: The Divine Force — How to Blindside Attack

Star Ocean: The Divine Force is a combination of traditional and modern JRPGs. Like most genre games released in the last few years, The Divine Force features a real-time combat system. Learning the ins and outs of this system will make combat a lot easier and more enjoyable. One of the most important things to learn is how to consistently land blindside attacks.

What are Blindside Attacks?

Blindside attacks are exactly what they sound like: attacks that hit an enemy from a direction they can’t see. To do this, you’ll need to use D.U.M.A., who you acquire pretty early in the game. D.U.M.A. is automatically equipped to the current character.

However, it’s worth noting that certain characters, like Nina, cannot perform blindside attacks. Make sure you have the right character selected before you attempt to blindside an enemy.

How to Perform Blindside Attacks

You’ll need to have D.U.M.A. equipped and some VA (Vanguard Assault) Gauge to perform blindside attacks. The VA Gauge is found just below your AP, which is located underneath the currently selected character. If you don’t have any VA Gauge available, you can fill it quickly by attacking enemies.

Once you have some VA Gauge to work with and some enemies to fight, make sure the enemy you want to blindside is facing you or away from you. Press the VA button (on PlayStation consoles, this is bound to R1 by default) when you have an enemy targeted. This will shoot you toward the targeted enemy.

If the enemy has you in their sights, press the left analog stick in any direction except forward to quickly change your character’s trajectory and get out of the enemy’s sight. Your character will dodge in that direction before hitting the enemy with a VA attack.

If the enemy you’re fighting is facing away from you, or you’ve snuck up on them, simply hitting them with a VA attack should be enough to trigger a blindside. If you’ve attracted the attention of a large number of enemies, you can hit multiple enemies at once with a single blindside attack.

Landing a blindside attack successfully does a lot of damage and will stun any enemies hit with it for an amount of time based on the VA Gauge’s level. The “?!” symbols over an enemy’s head will tell you how long they’ll be stunned for, so keep an eye on it.

Hitting an enemy with a blindside attack will also increase your AP to a maximum of 15. Be warned, however, that being hit by enemies after landing a blindside attack will gradually reduce AP to a minimum of five, depending on how many times you get hit. AP increases will also carry over if you swap characters.

Using VA Attacks consumes the entire VA gauge if you don’t land a blindside, and 50% of it if you do, so pick your spots carefully. If you make a mistake, just wail on some enemies for a little bit, and the VA Gauge will refill.

Enemies That Cannot be Blindsided Normally

Enemies that do not have eyes, like worms, or have eyes covering their entire bodies, cannot be hit by blindside attacks because there is no way to make them lose sight of you.

In addition, powerful enemies often have very wide fields of vision, making them difficult to Blindside. That said, powerful enemies can become enraged, which makes Blindsiding them easier. You’ll know when they’re enraged because they’ll glow red. When they do, it means they’re readying a powerful attack you’ll want to avoid, but it also narrows their vision and leaves them open to being blindsided. This is the perfect time to strike!

Landing blindside attacks is an important part of Star Ocean: The Divine Force, and it can be a little hard at first. Keep these tricks in mind, however, and you’ll be pulling them off effortlessly in no time.