The journey of eternity begins with one step
Lost Odyssey is a special breed of JRPGs. While it doesn't do anything completely new with the gameplay, the story does a complete 180 compared to most out there. It tells the story of Kaim Argonar, an Immortal who has lived for 1000 years(so far). While most people think that living forever would be great, Lost Odyssey shows the brutality and hope that life gives to everyone through the eyes of Kaim as he wanders across the planet. Some of the Dream Sequences Kaim has are very powerful, and will surprise you on how moved you will be to the story. Mistwalker did story-telling that hasn't been seen in JRPGs in awhile.
The gameplay doesn't do anything completely new, the acquiring of abilities like Black Magic are changed for some of the characters. While in most RPGs, the player levels up the characters and they learn new abilities, right? Half-right. The Immortals cannot learn any skills or spells, so they must rely on the mortals for abilities. After the SP of the ability is fulfilled, the Immortal has learned that ability. The setup is similar to the skill setup in Blue Dragon.
Another thing is the removal of armor. The characters still have defense, but armor has been replaced by rings. Equipping rings do the same thing as armor, but the Immortals can learn from some of the effects the rings have(like immunity from paralysis). If you have a ring attached to a character, in battle, when the character attacks, a ring appears on the enemy. If you time it right, you can add the rings' effect onto the enemy(like poisoning it or adding extra damage if you have a ring that does extra damage to a certain types of enemies).
The music is amazing. Uematsu always amazes me with his music, and Lost Odyssey's soundtrack is no different. Every song fits with the moods throughout the game perfectly. Once hearing the theme of Uhra, I had to get the soundtrack for myself.
Wile the game is amazing, it does have a few downsides. The first being the loading times. The loading isn't long at all, but there are many of them throughout the game. Walking into a tavern and walking out has around a 2-5 second loading time. While minor, it is very annoying. The second are the Dream Sequences that Kaim gets. There stories would be better if they were vocal and not written, but that's not the main problem. the problem is the color of the text to the background. if the background is very dark, the text will be white, which is fine, but in one of the dreams, the bottom of the screen was a bright glowish-red, which signifies the event happening then. The text was white, which made me having to squint at the television trying to make out the words in that location.
Lost Odyssey is a great game, despite the downsides that should be picked up by any RPG fan who owns a 360. Now the question is, do you want to dive into 1000 years of memories?
