Lost Odyssey

"An odyssey lost in years gone by..."

Lost Odyssey

Pros:
+ Exceptional presentation
+ some hilarious dialog and memorable characters
+ Dream sequences
+ Music

Cons:
- very unstable difficulty level
- some awkward and sometimes pointless quests
- cutscenes and dialog that are often times intrusive to gameplay
- Strange, and sometimes overly archaic, design decisions
- "Dreams" have far stronger narrative than the game's actual story

A few years ago a man named Hironobu Sakaguchi, pretty much the father of all things Final Fantasy, left Square to create a little company of his own called Mistwalker. Backed by Microsoft, he was to create two 360 exclusive titles for the company. First was Blue Dragon, and here today we have Lost Odyssey. Does Sakaguchi's latest effort live up to those of the company he once helmed? Kind of. Sakaguchi's an older guy. He's been producing Final Fantasy titles since the very first one. While his games, almost all excellent, eventually evolved and changed over the years, with Lost Odyssey its quite obvious he's designing a game from his hey-days. And that's fine. Many turn-based RPG's of yore can still stand toe to toe with today's greatest. The problem is that too many archaic design and technical issues fly wing along with it.

Lost Odyssey's story begins with what is probably one of the slickest introductions in an RPG ever. Kaim, an invincible immortal who has lost his 1000 years of memories, fights his way across a battlefield where magic and swords win the day. When a giant meteor suddenly out of no where ends up landing right on top of the two warring armies, you know someone is going to have to issue a parking ticket. Kaim is ordered to investigate the strange occurrence, which is apparently linked to a gigantic magical staff being built on some island (called Grand Staff no less). At this point another immortal and a comedy relief joins his crew, and the three of them set out to discover the problem with Grand Staff, recover a bunch of lost memories, and eventually save the world.

Lost Odyssey's story probably won't win any awards. It's not that the story is horrible or overly cliche. It's because it plays it safe the whole way through. There are no massive plot twists and the main villain can't even hide himself for even half of one bloody disc. Some of the main characters are pretty lifeless as well. There are two party members you will gain on the second disc and they seem to exist only as "the question answerer" while the other acts as "quiet and hardly talks type". It's really too bad characters like those drag the story down because some of the characters personalities are great. Seth and Jansen are both very animated and hilarious respectively. At least the game world has a consistently strong sense of character. The world's design is based on what one calls a "Magic Industrial Revolution" (what a mouthful). Just imagine if we had discovered magic instead of steam or electricity. Magic microwaves anyone? Every location you visit has it's own unique presentation and all are very vibrant, pulling you straight into every setting. Another strong feature within the game's story are the "dreams". These are brief text stories that relive parts of Kaim's memories and they are very strongly written. But the game never makes a connection between the main story and these dreams and we're left detached because of it. They're like brief bubbles of genius not to be related to actual events going on around you. Not to mention the writing behind the "dreams" is far stronger than the central storyline. In the end, it's just hard to find ones self interested in 1000 year olds who already know everything there is to know about the world and will remain unchanged and static for the majority of your journey. Even when Kaim recovers his memory he is simply a little more talkative, but no less moody... something even Jansen is quick to point out.

So if the story probably won't be the largest deciding factor on whether or not the game sucks you in, will the gameplay? Probably. It's going to depend strongly on how acquainted you are with your JRPG's and how much you enjoy the more traditional ones. Lost Odyssey is difficult. Difficult in the sense that the first boss can shave away half a characters health in one swipe, or do it to the whole party on a whim. Why? Because it can. The sad thing is that this sort of combat only really follows you for the first three quarters of disc 1. After that your immortals will gain so many skills and items that the game's difficulty jumps between very annoying to "what was I complaining about again?". Outside of combat, the game can be a fun romp around multiple dungeons and towns. There are always lots of things to look for or exploration to be had. However, there are also completely pointless and inane quests the player will be driven to do. The best example is the flower and branch fetch quest. It is a horribly monotonous task that does nothing to enhance the story and simply extends the games length artificially. The leveling system is also strange... Suikoden strange. You are awarded a certain EXP out of 100 for every battle. It's based on your level and it takes 100 exp to level up. So after about five battles in every area, you will reach the maximum level-up. After that point, all monsters will only give you one exp point. Battles then become pointless except to gain SP for learning skills. This makes it easy for unused characters to catch up to leveled ones (except for the fact you can only gain one level per battle), but it also means if you're having trouble with an enemy that leveling up won't be an answer. The game is pretty well balanced though so you shouldn't need to grind much... but this is unfortunately very unforgiving to casual and new players. As far as gameplay goes, Lost Odyssey can be a mixed bag.

The battle system in Lost Odyssey plays like most traditional turn-based role playing games. The battle system still includes a basic front and back row and everyone takes turns moving based on... what? Your actual speed and spell casting statistic does little to influence when you will attack. Instead, it takes into effect your actions, pushing items before attacks and attacks before magic/skills... but only in most cases. Not only is this weird, but it makes it hard to plan out your turn strategy. This is easily fixed, however, with a bar that shows you and your enemies turn order. And that's exactly what the designers did. Unfortunately, you cannot actually see who will move in what order until you've initiated battle. And it's exactly that which leads me to ask what the point is of showing me the turn order only DURING the battle when at that point it has no use? Is its purpose merely to let me groan or shriek "YES!" several seconds before the actions are played out? Why even bother with it then? It's both a strange and poor design choice. Another annoyance is that even basic spells can take multiple turns to cast, and possibly more if the character is interrupted. Thankfully there are skills you can earn to prevent this, but it is annoying none the less.

Two features special to Lost Odyssey's battle system are Guard Condition and the Aim Ring system. The Guard Condition is the total of your front line characters HP and it's divided in to four quarters. It's purpose is to serve as a damage barrier for characters in the back row. The more damage your heroes up front take, the less guard control you have. It's an interesting strategical concept that both be a savior and a pain in the ass thanks to your enemies utilizing the same feature. Overall though, its implemented very well and forces you to think as opposed to holding down "attack". The other feature is the Aim Ring system. Using this, before your character attacks there will be one small ring surrounding the enemy and one larger ring shrinking to the size of the smaller one. You need to hold the right trigger down until both rings are perfectly aligned and let go once they are. Depending on the Ring you have equipped your attacks will have various effects if you pull the maneuver off successfully. While I applaud the initiative to give players something to do other than merely watch the battle take place, the Aim Ring system takes a while to get used to and it is very hard to consistently judge your alignment with much accuracy. It's a feature based more on luck than reflex or skill.

I do have this to say about Lost Odyssey. No matter what anyone says about any aspect of the game, I can't find it possible for anyone to argue that Lost Odyssey is not at least a very good looking game. From the general art direction of the world and its locations, to the design of all the monsters and characters, Lost Odyssey looks brilliant. And thats why it's a shame that the game's camera blurs all textures out of focus unless your character happens to be close to them. At some points I felt like I was seeing 360 textures cross over into PS2 textures. For the most part though this doesn't greatly detract from the aesthetic appeal but, intentional or not, it's annoying to watch. Game menus are very simplistic but easy to comprehend. The combat skills for the most part look pretty damn cool. It's obvious the favor here was in clean looks versus cinematic appeal *furrows brows at Final Fantasy*. And I gotta say the music was spectacular, but I wish there was more of it. The voice acting is well above average for a video game, so I don't have many complaints there outside of the freaking kids that you meet. As far as presentation goes, my only major gripe is sometimes there is too much. Cinematics and dreams can at times overwhelm gameplay to the point where you wonder where you stopped playing and started watching (especially during disc 3, holy crap). Loading times are also noticeable. Not enough to make a person cringe, but enough that it slows down the pace of gameplay and combat to a notable degree. Heck, something is even wrong with the loading screen backgrounds. sometimes they don't show up for several seconds and then vanish just as quickly.

So, despite some nagging presentation and gameplay issues, how does Lost Odyssey come out as a whole then? It comes out good... For the most part. Lost Odyssey is a strong role playing game. It has a decent combat system, a somewhat interesting plot with a few memorable characters, enough side quests and diversions to keep you playing for 40 hours or well over, and a fantastic presentation. But it's also riddled with some strange design choices and very archaic RPG elements. Things like the turn counter, the ugly texture blurring in the environment, the ever up and down difficulty level, the noticeable loading times, the strange leveling system... The games flaws are constantly present, even if they don't always interfere with the flow of the game. When they do though, they really stick out. Why, for instance, do save points heal you completely when you load your game, but don't heal you when you touch them? Why the extra 3 minutes of loading and annoyance for such an easy to access benefit? And as far as the narration goes, It's almost as if the game tried so hard to be "bigger" than other role playing games that it ended up being less original for it. The game has a gigantic magical staff as a central plot point for crying out loud. Sure it looks cool, but it's just a really big staff. How is that a strong plot device? Were giant swords going out of style? I wouldn't blame a game for being unoriginal but I can blame it for not doing unoriginal elements well, and Lost Odyssey doesn't always manage to stack up in those areas.

As far as 360 RPG's go, Lost Odyssey is the best of its kind you will find on the system. Then again, on a system where the only other JRPG's are available are the likes of Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Enchanted Arms... that might not exactly be high praise. Still, Lost Odyssey is a solid role-playing game, if not one of the most remarkable ever produced. If you have no better rpg's to play, go ahead and treat yourself to some solid, traditional JRPG love. It's a bit of a shame that a man who created so many memorable role playing experiences seems unable to pull new and old gameplay together in a constructive and memorable fashion for this generation of consoles. Maybe his fourth game will be the charm? I hope so, because I really do enjoy my JRPG's... I will say Lost Odyssey is quite possibly the first game of its kind that didn't have characters with gravity defying hair cuts though. That must count for something, right?

Presentation/Story - 7/10
Graphics - 8/10
Gameplay - 7/10
Sound - 9/10
Longevity - 7/10

Overall - 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/21/08, Updated 02/22/08

Game Release: Lost Odyssey (US, 02/12/08)