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Lost Odyssey
Platform: Xbox 360
Lost Odyssey certainly touched me deeply with its storyline’s many intricacies and similarly in-depth cast.
Review by Sirus
While some were busy laughing at Blue Dragon for its graphical style not being mature enough for them, Mystwalker was busy developing Lost Odyssey with its more mature look and themes. The developers at a little company called Feelplus, which many knew previously as Nautilus, who made the Shadow Hearts series helped Hinorobu Sakaguchi realize his vision of creating a RPG that deals with mature themes and tugs at gamers’ heart strings. Lost Odyssey certainly touched me deeply with its storyline’s many intricacies and similarly in-depth cast.
Kaim is an immortal who has been alive for thousands of years. He has fought for every country in existence and feels nothing for the lives of those he kills. The game opens with a battle brewing on the Highlands of Wohl. Kaim has been hired to fight on the side of the country of Uhra as a mercenary. The battle is fierce and bloody but nothing more than Kaim has grown accustomed to over the years. It is probably for the best that he has no memories of the one thousand years he has lived up to this point. In the middle of the battle, something terrifying happens. A meteor crushes down to earth, destroying the entire battlefield in an instant. Kaim happens to be at the very center of the point of impact but somehow, though hard to say if by miracle or curse, he survives the devastating impact.
After regaining his composure, Kaim starts on the long walk back to Uhra so he can find out the nature of his next assignment. Kaim comes before the council that rules Uhra and is ordered by a man named Gongora to investigate the strange occurrences at a large magical facility known as grand staff. Kaim brings along one immortal, named Seth, and one mortal, named Jansen. Along the way, Kaim finds himself slowly regaining his memories even though some are extremely painful. He is still eager to remember the people he keeps seeing glimpses of in his dreams, to know their names, and to find them alive. After a while, the journey that began as a simple investigation grows into an epic journey spanning three great empires. The team of three is joined gradually by numerous mortals and immortals. Each character is developed adequately and feels unique and meaningful to the story. For the majority of the game, you have very little knowledge of your end mission but the political intrigue and emotional character interaction is enough to keep players interested. The game comes to a fitting conclusion that ties up most of the loose ends.
The story is presented through both in-engine cutscenes and CG cutscenes. Both look fantastic, although there is a noticeable difference between the two. There are also additional scenes that offer deep and meaningful back story for some of your characters that are known as A Thousand Years of Dreams. These sequences are written by a famous Japanese novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu. Each dream is self contained, presenting a story through text on static backgrounds while music plays and you occasionally hear sound effects. Some gamers might decide to skip the dreams altogether because, when you unlock one, you are given the option to watch it right then or later. After dreams are unlocked, you can view them any time from an inn. Even if the dreams sound like something you aren’t interested in, you should give them a chance because they are deeply emotional and touch on many mature themes.
Gameplay in Lost Odyssey is quite linear with side quests that don’t show up until disc 4. The decent number of towns throughout the game have small amounts of optional stuff available that usually net you good items. Most of the dreams are found in towns as well so that if you do everything available in a given town, it might seem like the amount of time spent there is considerably higher than you might want. It is quite easy to rush through town sections and get on to gameplay although some do contain story sequences that are relevant to the main plot.
Dungeons are numerous and for the most part are shorter than your average JRPG dungeons thanks to some gameplay tweaks. All fighting is done through random battles that are rare enough that they don’t really get in the way. Characters always need 100 experience points to level up. The game is structured in such a way that, while you are a lower level than the enemies in the area, you gain considerably large amounts of experience so that reaching the required level is never a grind. After you have reached the level of the area’s enemies, however, you don’t gain anymore experience points from battles, although you can still gain skill points.
While it would have been nice to have Blue Dragon style encounters with visible enemies so you could ignore enemies at this point, running away from battles is easy and shows no obvious adverse affects. There is also a skill you can learn fairly early on that allows you to run away from battles instantly so you don’t waste your time and energy defeating enemies that aren’t going to give you any experience. For the most part I reached the highest level possible in an area right about the time I reached the boss.
Battles play out in typical turn based JRPG formula with enemies on one side and your characters on the other. Battles are split into rounds and, within the rounds, the order of actions depends on the speed of the characters as well as the speed of the skill or magic they are using. Items go into effect instantly while strong magic can require charging such that your spell won’t go off until later in the next round. For example, a basic flare magic spell will go off within the round in which it was cast while a high level zephyra magic that heals your entire party large amounts of health will need to be charged into the following round. Having magic use charge times is nothing new but it adds a strategic element to battles because if you don’t cast that zephyra spell early enough, your party member could be killed before it goes off.
Another way that battles are made more strategic is the ring. All characters can equip rings that give added bonuses to their physical attacks. Ring effects range from increases in physical damage to elemental or status effects. When you attack, a ring will appear on screen. If you hold down the right trigger at that time, a larger ring will appear and start shrinking. If you let go of the right trigger at the right time you will succeed in adding the effect to your attacks. Success can come in both good and perfect. Good will activate most ring effects while perfect will enhance the effect and is required for some more powerful rings.
Most enemies have either a type or element with a weakness that can be exploited by equipping the best rings. Just like most mage characters are most useful when they can exploit enemy weaknesses with their spells, melee characters become considerably more useful when they are able to exploit enemy weaknesses with rings. Rings can be found in chests but for the most part they must be assembled by combining multiple components found on your travels. The highest levels of rings require rare items to assemble but they aren’t required to progress in the game. You will also encounter NPCs who can combine multiple rings to create more versatile ones that have three effects.
Magic spells are found in the same manner as they were in Blue Dragon. Many spells can be purchased from shops but a conscientious gamer can find most of the spells required hidden in dungeons and towns. Magic is split up into black, white, spirit, and composite magic. Spirit magic consists of status boosting and lowering spells and composite magic combines multiple types of magic to deal devastating damage to large groups. You get a mortal who is inherently good with each of white, black, and spirit magic and you could have all your immortals learn to use those types of magic from skill links with them or accessories you find.
Immortals don’t learn skills on their own by leveling up so they can either link with mortals or equip accessories to do so. All skills you are learning require a certain amount of skill points to master and, once they are learned, you can equip any number of skills depending on how many skill slots your immortals have. Immortals start with very few skill slots but through using slot seeds (items that increase skill slots by one) and learning skill slot increasing skills, you can increase initial numbers of slots tenfold. Mortals can only use skills they learn through leveling up and one or two more that can only be used while the associated accessory is equipped.
One final way battles are given a strategic element is the guard condition (GC). In battles you start out with full GC gauge. While your GC gauge is full, characters positioned in the back row take considerably reduced damage. All damage done to your front row characters decreases the GC gauge slowly while any time a front row character is defeated, the GC gauge is depleted considerably. The same thing is in effect for enemies you encounter, forcing you to defeat the enemies in the front row before you can deal decent damage to the back row. The GC gauge is meaningful in battles because it allows mage characters positioned in the back row to live longer than they might otherwise because of their lower max HP. Battles are generally over fairly quickly. While it may seem that the attack animations make battles drag when fighting large numbers of enemies, you don’t have to fight as many battles as other games in the genre.
A few times in your travels you will gain access to ships for exploring the wide oceans. The biggest annoyance I had with these ships was the lack of background music while you are sailing around. There is a great song you can hear when you go inside your ship to talk to your characters or save your game but you are left hearing the roar of the ship parting the waters. Most of your ships go slow enough that you are easily put to sleep, especially because you never encounter any enemies on the open seas. The only real purpose for these ships is accessing side areas but they could have been implemented much better considering the numerous examples on the Playstation of better world map traversing vehicles.
Graphically, Lost Odyssey looks great and makes full use of the Unreal Engine 3. Most characters and enemies are stylized while still looking realistic. The facial expressions on characters could use a little work. Lip syncing is done pretty well for the English dialogue but facial expressions of emotion leave a little to be desired. Dungeons and towns look great and the oceans you can travel with your ships are especially impressive. The music in the game is all composed by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu and it is one of his best works to date. Music includes a variety of styles from electric guitar and synthesizer to epic orchestral and mellow piano. The ending song “What You Are” is especially wonderful with lyrics written by Hinorobu Sakaguchi himself and beautiful vocals from Sheena Easton.
The game’s voice acting is also very well done with a solid cast for the main characters in English. There is also dialogue in Japanese and a few other languages selectable from the main menu. My biggest complaint with the sound comes in the lack of balance between music, sound effects, and voice acting. The game lets you change the volume of music and sound effects in the options menu but doesn’t give you an option to tweak the voice acting. When I turned down the sound effects that were too loud to begin with to a decent level so I could focus on the beautiful music, I found myself unable to hear the dialogue well in the in-game cutscenes.
The game took me 57 hours to beat doing very few of the game’s numerous side quests. For the most part, the game is pretty easy if you learn the right skills and fight the enemies you encounter while exploring dungeons. There are a lot of side quests available before going into the final dungeon but doing them will make the final boss lose what little challenge he had already. You can also access a new game + after beating the game so that you can play through the game quickly to experience the story again. Lost Odyssey is a worthwhile JRPG experience for anyone who is nostalgic about Playstation style JRPGs. It basically takes the gameplay from that era and brings it to the 360 with updated graphics. The story is solid and filled with emotion and mature themes. The gameplay is a twist on the tried and true without reinventing anything. If you are tired of the traditional turn-based JRPG formula, this won’t change your mind but anyone else who is still an addict should play Lost Odyssey at least once.
Platform: Xbox 360
Lost Odyssey certainly touched me deeply with its storyline’s many intricacies and similarly in-depth cast.
Review by Sirus
While some were busy laughing at Blue Dragon for its graphical style not being mature enough for them, Mystwalker was busy developing Lost Odyssey with its more mature look and themes. The developers at a little company called Feelplus, which many knew previously as Nautilus, who made the Shadow Hearts series helped Hinorobu Sakaguchi realize his vision of creating a RPG that deals with mature themes and tugs at gamers’ heart strings. Lost Odyssey certainly touched me deeply with its storyline’s many intricacies and similarly in-depth cast.
Kaim is an immortal who has been alive for thousands of years. He has fought for every country in existence and feels nothing for the lives of those he kills. The game opens with a battle brewing on the Highlands of Wohl. Kaim has been hired to fight on the side of the country of Uhra as a mercenary. The battle is fierce and bloody but nothing more than Kaim has grown accustomed to over the years. It is probably for the best that he has no memories of the one thousand years he has lived up to this point. In the middle of the battle, something terrifying happens. A meteor crushes down to earth, destroying the entire battlefield in an instant. Kaim happens to be at the very center of the point of impact but somehow, though hard to say if by miracle or curse, he survives the devastating impact.
After regaining his composure, Kaim starts on the long walk back to Uhra so he can find out the nature of his next assignment. Kaim comes before the council that rules Uhra and is ordered by a man named Gongora to investigate the strange occurrences at a large magical facility known as grand staff. Kaim brings along one immortal, named Seth, and one mortal, named Jansen. Along the way, Kaim finds himself slowly regaining his memories even though some are extremely painful. He is still eager to remember the people he keeps seeing glimpses of in his dreams, to know their names, and to find them alive. After a while, the journey that began as a simple investigation grows into an epic journey spanning three great empires. The team of three is joined gradually by numerous mortals and immortals. Each character is developed adequately and feels unique and meaningful to the story. For the majority of the game, you have very little knowledge of your end mission but the political intrigue and emotional character interaction is enough to keep players interested. The game comes to a fitting conclusion that ties up most of the loose ends.
The story is presented through both in-engine cutscenes and CG cutscenes. Both look fantastic, although there is a noticeable difference between the two. There are also additional scenes that offer deep and meaningful back story for some of your characters that are known as A Thousand Years of Dreams. These sequences are written by a famous Japanese novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu. Each dream is self contained, presenting a story through text on static backgrounds while music plays and you occasionally hear sound effects. Some gamers might decide to skip the dreams altogether because, when you unlock one, you are given the option to watch it right then or later. After dreams are unlocked, you can view them any time from an inn. Even if the dreams sound like something you aren’t interested in, you should give them a chance because they are deeply emotional and touch on many mature themes.
Gameplay in Lost Odyssey is quite linear with side quests that don’t show up until disc 4. The decent number of towns throughout the game have small amounts of optional stuff available that usually net you good items. Most of the dreams are found in towns as well so that if you do everything available in a given town, it might seem like the amount of time spent there is considerably higher than you might want. It is quite easy to rush through town sections and get on to gameplay although some do contain story sequences that are relevant to the main plot.
Dungeons are numerous and for the most part are shorter than your average JRPG dungeons thanks to some gameplay tweaks. All fighting is done through random battles that are rare enough that they don’t really get in the way. Characters always need 100 experience points to level up. The game is structured in such a way that, while you are a lower level than the enemies in the area, you gain considerably large amounts of experience so that reaching the required level is never a grind. After you have reached the level of the area’s enemies, however, you don’t gain anymore experience points from battles, although you can still gain skill points.
While it would have been nice to have Blue Dragon style encounters with visible enemies so you could ignore enemies at this point, running away from battles is easy and shows no obvious adverse affects. There is also a skill you can learn fairly early on that allows you to run away from battles instantly so you don’t waste your time and energy defeating enemies that aren’t going to give you any experience. For the most part I reached the highest level possible in an area right about the time I reached the boss.
Battles play out in typical turn based JRPG formula with enemies on one side and your characters on the other. Battles are split into rounds and, within the rounds, the order of actions depends on the speed of the characters as well as the speed of the skill or magic they are using. Items go into effect instantly while strong magic can require charging such that your spell won’t go off until later in the next round. For example, a basic flare magic spell will go off within the round in which it was cast while a high level zephyra magic that heals your entire party large amounts of health will need to be charged into the following round. Having magic use charge times is nothing new but it adds a strategic element to battles because if you don’t cast that zephyra spell early enough, your party member could be killed before it goes off.
Another way that battles are made more strategic is the ring. All characters can equip rings that give added bonuses to their physical attacks. Ring effects range from increases in physical damage to elemental or status effects. When you attack, a ring will appear on screen. If you hold down the right trigger at that time, a larger ring will appear and start shrinking. If you let go of the right trigger at the right time you will succeed in adding the effect to your attacks. Success can come in both good and perfect. Good will activate most ring effects while perfect will enhance the effect and is required for some more powerful rings.
Most enemies have either a type or element with a weakness that can be exploited by equipping the best rings. Just like most mage characters are most useful when they can exploit enemy weaknesses with their spells, melee characters become considerably more useful when they are able to exploit enemy weaknesses with rings. Rings can be found in chests but for the most part they must be assembled by combining multiple components found on your travels. The highest levels of rings require rare items to assemble but they aren’t required to progress in the game. You will also encounter NPCs who can combine multiple rings to create more versatile ones that have three effects.
Magic spells are found in the same manner as they were in Blue Dragon. Many spells can be purchased from shops but a conscientious gamer can find most of the spells required hidden in dungeons and towns. Magic is split up into black, white, spirit, and composite magic. Spirit magic consists of status boosting and lowering spells and composite magic combines multiple types of magic to deal devastating damage to large groups. You get a mortal who is inherently good with each of white, black, and spirit magic and you could have all your immortals learn to use those types of magic from skill links with them or accessories you find.
Immortals don’t learn skills on their own by leveling up so they can either link with mortals or equip accessories to do so. All skills you are learning require a certain amount of skill points to master and, once they are learned, you can equip any number of skills depending on how many skill slots your immortals have. Immortals start with very few skill slots but through using slot seeds (items that increase skill slots by one) and learning skill slot increasing skills, you can increase initial numbers of slots tenfold. Mortals can only use skills they learn through leveling up and one or two more that can only be used while the associated accessory is equipped.
One final way battles are given a strategic element is the guard condition (GC). In battles you start out with full GC gauge. While your GC gauge is full, characters positioned in the back row take considerably reduced damage. All damage done to your front row characters decreases the GC gauge slowly while any time a front row character is defeated, the GC gauge is depleted considerably. The same thing is in effect for enemies you encounter, forcing you to defeat the enemies in the front row before you can deal decent damage to the back row. The GC gauge is meaningful in battles because it allows mage characters positioned in the back row to live longer than they might otherwise because of their lower max HP. Battles are generally over fairly quickly. While it may seem that the attack animations make battles drag when fighting large numbers of enemies, you don’t have to fight as many battles as other games in the genre.
A few times in your travels you will gain access to ships for exploring the wide oceans. The biggest annoyance I had with these ships was the lack of background music while you are sailing around. There is a great song you can hear when you go inside your ship to talk to your characters or save your game but you are left hearing the roar of the ship parting the waters. Most of your ships go slow enough that you are easily put to sleep, especially because you never encounter any enemies on the open seas. The only real purpose for these ships is accessing side areas but they could have been implemented much better considering the numerous examples on the Playstation of better world map traversing vehicles.
Graphically, Lost Odyssey looks great and makes full use of the Unreal Engine 3. Most characters and enemies are stylized while still looking realistic. The facial expressions on characters could use a little work. Lip syncing is done pretty well for the English dialogue but facial expressions of emotion leave a little to be desired. Dungeons and towns look great and the oceans you can travel with your ships are especially impressive. The music in the game is all composed by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu and it is one of his best works to date. Music includes a variety of styles from electric guitar and synthesizer to epic orchestral and mellow piano. The ending song “What You Are” is especially wonderful with lyrics written by Hinorobu Sakaguchi himself and beautiful vocals from Sheena Easton.
The game’s voice acting is also very well done with a solid cast for the main characters in English. There is also dialogue in Japanese and a few other languages selectable from the main menu. My biggest complaint with the sound comes in the lack of balance between music, sound effects, and voice acting. The game lets you change the volume of music and sound effects in the options menu but doesn’t give you an option to tweak the voice acting. When I turned down the sound effects that were too loud to begin with to a decent level so I could focus on the beautiful music, I found myself unable to hear the dialogue well in the in-game cutscenes.
The game took me 57 hours to beat doing very few of the game’s numerous side quests. For the most part, the game is pretty easy if you learn the right skills and fight the enemies you encounter while exploring dungeons. There are a lot of side quests available before going into the final dungeon but doing them will make the final boss lose what little challenge he had already. You can also access a new game + after beating the game so that you can play through the game quickly to experience the story again. Lost Odyssey is a worthwhile JRPG experience for anyone who is nostalgic about Playstation style JRPGs. It basically takes the gameplay from that era and brings it to the 360 with updated graphics. The story is solid and filled with emotion and mature themes. The gameplay is a twist on the tried and true without reinventing anything. If you are tired of the traditional turn-based JRPG formula, this won’t change your mind but anyone else who is still an addict should play Lost Odyssey at least once.
| 8.5/10 - Age old gameplay with minor tweaks to keep things fresh. | ||||||
| 9/10 - Stylized main cast with beautiful environments and dungeons. | ||||||
| 10/10 - One of the best soundtracks in years. | ||||||
| 9/10 - A fantastic story both in dreams and in-game sequences. | ||||||
| 9/10 -57 hour main quest with numerous side quests. | ||||||
| 9.1/10 (Marvel-Ous) | ||||||
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