Odin Sphere
Platform: PS2
Odin Sphere is a game that all PS2 owners should experience, either for the maddeningly difficult 2D strategic brawling gameplay or for the beautiful story.
Review by Sirus

Odin Sphere is an action RPG in the loosest sense of the word because, unlike other action RPGs, Odin Sphere requires quite a lot of skill from the player in everything you do. Thankfully with a little practice, skill, and luck, players shouldn’t have too much of a problem enjoying Odin Sphere’s beautifully crafted story.

Odin Sphere tells the story of five characters who are each members of the different factions that exist in their world. Each character is struggling to find his purpose in whatever way possible while hoping to overcome destiny. The game progresses through their stories in a linear fashion. Each story is viewed through the character’s own book consisting of progressively difficult chapters. After you complete all the five characters’ books, you gain access to the final book in which all of the main characters must be used only once in a series of epic boss fights.

The first character, Gwendolyn, is a Valkyrie under the rule of King Odin and is struggling to find acceptance and love from those around her. The second character is Cornelius, a prince from the kingdom of Titania who is fighting to keep his love even when it seems as if the world won’t allow it. The third character is Mercedes, a princess of the fairy kingdom who is given huge responsibility at a young age and forced to step up to the occasion with maturity. The fourth character is Velvet, a princess from a kingdom that is now destroyed who must fight against her fate of which she has been made aware. Finally there is Oswald, the shadow knight who kills for hire who is going through emotional issues and just wants to be accepted and feel love.

All of the five characters meet and interact at different points in their respective books, giving us the rare opportunity to see a good number of the game’s major events from multiple perspectives. The story is told in such a way that it feels like you are watching a play during the story sequences. Once you have viewed a story sequence, you can watch it again from the menu to save yourself from replaying the entire game. The ending sequence of events in the final book was amazing enough to make all of the game’s challenges worthwhile. The dialogue is extremely well written and the experiences the characters face are heartfelt. There are so many twists in the story, especially in books 5 and 6, that keep things from feeling stale. If you really don’t care about story, you can just skip every story scene in the entire game.

Chapters are generally preceded by short story sequences after which you are sent to a battlefield. The game’s battlefields are quite unique but very easy to traverse. Each battlefield is split up into a number of smaller circular stages. Stages can be a mini-boss fight, of which there are generally two in each battlefield; a true boss fight, which will prove to be quite difficult; shops; or normal stages. All of the stages have a timer at the upper right corner of the screen that counts up as you fight. Defeating normal and mini-boss stages net you a score that determines the types of items you get from a chest which falls after all the enemies are defeated. Clearing these stages quickly and without taking very much damage gives you a much higher score.

As I mentioned above, every stage is circular, although while you are fighting in them they appear linear. The best way to think about the stages is that they are linear stages in which walking off one end brings you to the opposite end. The game shows you a minimap of each stage as a circle that you traverse to show you where you are on any given stage. All the stages are connected by lines that are visible once you obtain the area map and that show you the paths between stages.

In combat, you press square to do a normal attack. With some characters, holding certain directions while you press square will have them do different moves. You can jump by pressing X, open your magic menu with triangle, and open your item wheel with circle. Every spell costs a certain number of Psypher meters. Your Psypher meter is filled whenever your Psypher absorbs Phozons from defeated enemies. Absorbing Phozons also levels up your Psypher, increasing the amount of damage it does as well as the amount of Psypher meters you can stockpile. Leveling up your Psypher also gives you access to new spells.

Your item wheel lets you use any number of items you have collected over the course of your adventure. To start with, you have two bags, each with capacity for eight items. Over the course of the game, you can buy up to four more bags, each of which can carry anywhere from three to eight items. At first, managing your inventory can be quite daunting but, after some practice and time spent in the game, you will start to understand what items you truly need to pick up and what items are better left on the ground. While in your item wheel, you can also perform Alchemy.

Alchemy is quite simple to do although I wished throughout my game that I could have had the ability to buy necessary alchemy components instead of having to search each stage for them. To create a simple antidote with alchemy, once you have the recipe, you select a material 0 and then select an Onionne. An antidote will drop to the ground and two Phozons will be released. Other more complicated alchemy recipes require powering up the material before combining it with an Onionne or any other of the five Mandragoras.

You can also plant seeds in any of the stages you encounter that need a set number of Phozons to mature and bear fruit. The simplest of such seeds is the mulberry seed which requires five Phozons to mature and bear two mulberries. The mulberries must be knocked off the plant before too long or they will over-ripen and fall off. Over-ripened fruit takes longer to digest and is thus harder to use in the heat of battle for healing. Eating mulberries and the other types of fruits available in the game will earn experience towards raising your HP level. As your HP level increases your maximum HP number also increases. You can also take these fruits along with other items to cafes in the Pooka Village and pay to have them cooked into meals that give much greater HP experience to speed up the process. Those who are crazy and want to play the game at level 1 HP will be able to simply drink healing potions, which do not give any HP experience, for their healing needs.

The graphics in Odin Sphere are absolutely stunning. I had never before in my life seen such beautiful 2D graphics before I first booted up Odin Sphere. The first time visiting each new area I stopped for a few minutes just to take in the scenery which is built with multiple layers of 2D sprites, many of which move while you play. With such beauty comes limitation. Because of the likely high cost of creating new areas, every character has to fight through the same nine areas and fight many of the same enemies and bosses over and over. Thankfully, the order of visiting each area changes with each character so the difficulty of each area also varies. Many times it felt as if the bosses were simply added at the end of some chapters because the game’s designers wanted to have a boss rather than because it was truly needed for the sake of the story.

To make matters worse, anyone who rushes through the first five books without much leveling will be forced to replay each one from the beginning to level up in preparation for the sixth book. Specific boss fights throw quite a bit more at you than the game’s engine can handle. This creates massive slowdown that can make some bosses quite frustrating. The game also sports an extremely high difficulty even on the easy setting. Many of the bosses will rip through your characters every time you fight them, making the times when the boss feels tacked on even more frustrating. The difficulty is quite unfair at times but the game lets you retry any fight at the beginning of the stage as soon as you die, minimizing the frustration. At any point in a given level you can go back to base to save it, after which you can restart the battle from the beginning with your current experience and items. All the boss fights are worth persevering and defeating because their deaths are quite satisfying and the story in the game is a great reward for your hard work.

The voice acting in Odin Sphere is fantastic both in English and Japanese. The game can be changed from Japanese to English voice acting any time in the game when you have access to the menu. The music is absolutely beautiful, composed by a group of composers led by Hitoshi Sakimoto. The music fits each scene perfectly and the music in the credits is a joy to listen to.

Odin Sphere is a strange game that shows just how beautiful and fresh 2D can be. While it may look and sound like an RPG, do not be fooled. Odin Sphere is a strategic brawler at its core and requires quite a lot of dedication, practice, and pattern memorization to complete. Fans of Japanese RPGs and the stories they tend to tell will find a beautiful story in Odin Sphere provided they are ready to work for it. Odin Sphere took me just around 30 hours to complete. The game also sports quite a high learning curve so players should expect to spend 2-3 hours playing before they get the hang of everything the game has to offer. Odin Sphere is a game that all PS2 owners should experience, either for the maddeningly difficult 2D strategic brawling gameplay or for the beautiful story. While the game does sport a higher than average difficulty, force you to play through the same levels and boss fights multiple times, and tend to slowdown during a few key boss fights, anyone who can overlook the game’s faults will find a gem of a game with a timeless story.

Graphics: 10/10
Sound: 10/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Lasting Appeal: 9/10
Story: 9/10
Playtime: 30 hours
Final Score: 9.2/10