Guides
| Platform | User Reviews | Avg. Score |
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| All Reviews | 22 reviews |
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| Xbox 360 | 22 reviews |
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| Add your own user review | ||
 Lost Odyssey
My name is Adam and I'm a turn-based combat-aholic. My other confession? Lost Odyssey is my first Japanese RPG and I can say without a doubt that it won't be my last. Almost every moment of this game is a beautiful and moving experience. An experience stretched over 4 discs and 45 hours, but one worth all that time and effort. This was never a game I thought I'd play. With a full-time job, 13 month old son, starting up a new business, etc. etc. I have no right to set aside forty hours of my life to just one game, but I'm so glad I did. Once that first disc goes in and the cinematics kick off, you fall under it's spell and enter a fantastical magical world. Playing as Kaim, an immortal wiped of his memories, you start in the midst of an epic battle, interrupted by a deadly meteor impact. From there you begin a journey to reclaim your memories and investigate Grand Staff - the centre of a new and potentially unstable magic energy plant. The journey of the game is all about the characters as opposed to the plot. Kaim is a brooding and dour hero with little show of positive emotions and a far too serious nature - something that would be disastrous on its own but is countered by a tremendous ensemble cast. The most notable is Jansen, a wise-cracking, womanising mortal who balances out the seriousness of the immortals and also adds a touch of realism to the characters. It's within the group that the real story lies. The plot of main game is cliched and follows an obvious path, but acts only as a carrier for the gripping development and self-discovery of the characters. This self-discovery is told in conventional cut-scene form and also in the form of 'dreams', small fragments of the immortals memories that surface as your progress through the game. These dreams are essentially short stories shown on screen in text form. Wait! Text? On a screen? Boring surely? Well no. The whole manner of their presentation is a tribute to the game's art design. The text of these memories are revealed slowly and sometimes dynamically as you read with still, sometimes hand drawn, images fading in and out at appropriate moments. This, coupled with a truly melting and melodic soundtrack provides some of the most moving moments of the game. On several occasions I was reduced to tears whilst reading. Not the 'I've-got-somehting-in-my-eye' tears but full on baby-weeping, inconsolable, the world is ending tears. It's these moments, followed by a heart-wrenching scene about Kaim's daughter and grandchildren, that make the first disc a complete sob-fest and genuinely moving you to care deeply about the characters you play. This leads on to a minor gripe that the story never really reaches those dramatic heights again - not to say it isn't compelling from that moment on, but the rest of the game merely fades back into being excellent rather than life-changeling so. The other problem is the translation of the stories. Some are fine but many others suffer from an odd word or turn of phrase that doesn't quite fit in with the epic scope of the theme. This might partly be due to the American localisation as well as translating the text from the original Japanese. But still, it's a minor gripe and doesn't detract too much from the experience. I found that the english language audio was also waaaaay too American for my tastes and turning it back to the Japanese with subtitles made the experience richer by far. In terms of gameplay we have a very traditional turn-based combat system which, dammit, I like a lot. Although the pre-battle muscle flexing can get tiring after a while, as does the random battles - something that surely should be a thing of the past by now? Aside from those minor quibbles Lost Odyssey is a tremendous work of art and regardless of any time constraints you may have is worth devoting as much of your life to it as possible. In 45 hours of gameplay I only got frustrated once - and that was facing the final boss. For the record I managed to beat the game with most characters on level 49-50, not particularly high for a game like this. A word also about the soundtrack. Beautiful. It has a perfect blend of delicate instrumental tracks and migraine-inducing techno-splurge. The music for the final boss is just an epic orgasm of rock guitar and a double choir - something that should be downloadable for Rock Band surely? Conclusion The maker of Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima, was recently quoted saying that he wanted his game to make people change the way they look at the world or feel about certain issues. I'm not sure if he succeeded in his game but Mistwalker certainly has with theirs. I came away from parts of this story feeling more alive and more drained of emotion than any film or book in recent memory - it's not preachy or blatent in any message or moral issue, it's just an excellent blend of storytelling and gameplay with memorable characters and a fantastical world. 
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 A very deliberate odyssey
Running four disks, perhaps one of the most insanely over the top intro’s in gaming, and a sometime obtuse and initially slow plot that centers around an amnesiac immortal warrior: Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, delivers a product that is far from subtle in what it’s trying to do. Clearly a Final Fantasy game in disguise, Lost Odyssey is clearly trying to encapsulate the JRPG genre from the first Playstation era. Lost Odyssey’s core story themes and traditional turn based battle system are nothing new to veteran JRPG gamers. But like any standard Final Fantasy game, Lost Odyssey does enough to twist the tired and true formula to make it original and perhaps one of the, surprisingly most engaging, JRPG’s to be released in a while. Even with the bizarre, but too predictable Unreal engine related technical shenanigans. The main protagonist, Kaim, has a story starts that initially seems simple but in true fashion expands to the basic heroes off to save the world. I don’t want to spoil much so ill give a very bare bones synopsis. Your standard steampunk magical planet (housing a citadel city that looks identical to Vector from Final Fantasy VI, get ready for a lot of location/gameplay mechanic comparisons between the two series.) is home to several wandering immortal characters. One of which (of course) decides to become evil. Throw in political turmoil regarding a “magical industrial revolution”, which is exactly as it sounds and we have the beginnings of a typical JRPG outing with: Countries at war, weapons of great power being used, and an evil immortal orchestrating the entire charade. Instead though, the brunt of the story is focused on the characters of the party, and not the bare bones threat that prepares to mess up the planet. Each immortal character is host to dramatic back stories, personal problems, and genuinely well written dialog. The game was created with the English localization in mind, characters lips are properly synced and emote appropriately. The blackmage/comic relief archetype Jansen, runs the gamut of improv setting a sense of sanity to the affair while the two child characters of the party (whom are a bit annoying.) are voiced by actors who speaks at an appropriate decibel. It’s not perfect by any means, but in comparison to localizations of JRPG past: It’s light years ahead of the competition. With the option to play it in Japanese and a multitude of other languages, Lost Odyssey has the presentational aspect covered. The game has multiple cutscenes and is generally paced well throughout it’s first, third and forth disks, having pacing issues and general weirdness in it’s presentation (key sequences not voiced.) in it’s second disk. There are some impressive tragedies here, one of which ends the first disk. (Because, again, like a traditional Playstation Final Fantasy: The first disk must always end negatively.) Not every character is developed properly. But it should be noted for every mistake in its presentation there is a genuine scene of satisfaction. Rounding out the character development with novella style flashbacks that are superbly written, coupled by some incredibly deep characters and social situations and you have one of the most memorable JRPG’s to come out in recent memory. Let’s just say for the first time, in a long time, the main typical silent anti-social protagonist in a Japanese game has a fairly legitimate reason, to be the way he is. Keeping in theme the battle system in Lost Odyssey is turn based with random battles. Recently it seems there has been a neat influx of more active style battle systems in JRPG’s. I always chuckled a bit when I read a reviewer felt that Lost Odyssey’s dedication to this style was a step backward and that active battle systems are some brand new gameplay concept that has recently revealed itself. My copy of Tales Of Phantasia that dates back to 1995 seems to have umbrage over this opinion. Not to say one style is better than the other, but simply slamming the style of gameplay because of its traditional designs is a bit awkward. Especially for Lost Odyssey because it actually does things to these gameplay mechanics that I actually felt rectified many of JRPG game design since its inception. If you were one of the many vocal critics of Final Fantasy’s different direction in combat in XII, or simply one of the thousands of people who have been purchasing and being content with this concept of turn based battles: Welcome to your new game. Characters learn the traditional set of skills and abilities (via an item/skill learning system from FFIX.) The game incorporates a “Wall” system, in which front row characters absorb damage dealt to back row spell casters. (Making battle formation actually meaningful.) But this system is overshadowed by the level cap system in play with each dungeon having a level cap stopping character evolvement for a dungeon when reached and putting you at the same level as the dungeon boss. Grinding becomes obsolete in these situations forcing you to prioritize on stradegy, not typical brute force. Lost Odyssey is hard. While there are admittedly tricks and skills to beef up your characters to god like power if you wish later on, if you only apply yourself to the main quest: prepare for a challenge. Strategy takes center stage and the game reminds you why you play turn based games in the first place. Sadly, Lost Odyssey like most Unreal powered games is full of
technical problems mostly involving long load times. Instead of loading the
game’s textures as you play (Mass Effect.) Lost Odyssey loads everything before
showing. It never broke the game for me: It was admittedly annoying but not
earth shattering. Personally I don’t think it’s appropriate for the game from Lost Odyssey has a total of 1100 achievements, 100 of those come from an incredibly difficult and time consuming DLC dungeon. Unlike Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey’s achievements make sense and are actually quite simple. Certain ones such as learning the every immortal character’s skill and the almighty Treasure Trove achievement (Get every field treasure chest.) are time consuming. It’s quite simple: If you’re looking for an engaging JRPG on your xbox 360 and are a fan of Final Fantasy, check Lost Odyssey out. It might not reinvent the genre, but it delivers a memorable experience that all JRPG fans will appreciate.
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 A trip down memory lane.
If I had to describe Lost Odyssey in one phrase, it would be old school. From the turn-based random battles to the frequent cut scenes to the game's 40-50 hour length (spread over four discs, even), this is a game that would have been at home on the Playstation 1, albeit without the shiny graphics. With Lost Odyssey, Hironobu Sakaguchi (he of Final Fantasy fame) aims to bring back the glory days of Japanese RPGs, and in a lot of ways, he even manages to succeed. The game feels like a Final Fantasy, and it almost has the same level of polish as most entries in that series. Lost Odyssey breaks very little new ground for its genre, but purists will certainly appreciate the throwback nature of the game's design.
The story, any RPG's crutch, centers around Kaim, an immortal who has lost all his memories at the start of the game. Kaim starts out as a stoic, brooding introvert, typical of JRPGs. But he is supported by a colorful cast of characters with distinct personalities, all of whom are interesting in their own right. As the story progresses, you learn more about Kaim and his fellow immortals, and Kaim opens up more as he regains his memories. The story itself unfolds rather predictably and is really little more than window dressing for the development of the game's characters, which is where the real story lies. Lost Odyssey has one of the most memorable and likeable casts of any RPG I've ever played. Even the token comic relief character works as intended most of the time. The only remotely uninteresting characters are Kaim's wife, who doesn't do very much to justify her place in the party besides the fact that she's his wife, and Ming, a rather boring royalty. One of Lost Odyssey's most unique aspects is the way it handles Kaim's character development. Throughout the game, Kaim's memories will return, mostly in the form of mini novels. While it may seem lazy to develop characters in a video game through text, it works really well, and the stories are well written (if sometimes a bit awkwardly translated). They do an excellent job of conveying the loneliness of being an immortal in a world where everyone else dies around you. While the central theme of these stories usually deals with just that, there are also themes of justice, love, friendship, tragedy, life and death. They rarely overstay their welcome, and some are genuinely moving. The music, written by fellow Final Fantasy stalwart Nobuo Uematsu, does an excellent job of capturing the melancholy feel of these stories. The gameplay of Lost Odyssey, as said, is very reminiscent of old Final Fantasy games. You select a location on the world map, you walk around, and every so often the screen will swirl and your party will be facing a bunch of monsters. The battles are strictly turn-based affairs, with no real-time shenanigans or anything to hide that fact. You select the actions of all your party members, and then you watch as they and their enemies act out their moves according to their speed stats. The only twist here is that your characters can equip rings with certain attack-enhancing properties, which must be triggered just as they attack by holding down the right trigger and letting it go when the two circles that appear overlap. This is a useful feature and makes battles a bit more active, but only slightly. The random battles generally aren't very challenging, but there are a couple of spots in the game where the enemies you run into are suddenly much, much tougher than the enemies you faced previously, which can make for a bit of a rude awakening. It's pretty frustrating to die in a random battle and have your progress erased since the last save point, simply because the game decided to throw a curveball at you. These difficulty spikes leave you with little recourse other than to run circles around a save point and doing a few battles to level up just so you are actually prepared for these encounters. You can't really level up by grinding on weaker monsters, because those stop giving out enough experience points to level up after you reach a certain level. Other than a couple of difficulty spikes, the only other problem with the battles is that they can occasionally overstay their welcome. In some areas you'll often face groups of six or seven monsters, which means you have to watch all those monsters act as well, since there is no way to skip this, and it just feels more like a chore because it takes so long to kill them but they don't actually pose a challenge. Boss battles are more interesting and generally require a fair bit of strategizing and utilizing the strengths of each party member wisely. Support magic plays a very useful role in these encounters, and learning your enemy's weak points can often prove instrumental in achieving victory. Overall, the game's difficulty strikes a pretty good balance, and it's mercifully free of mandatory grinding. The random encounter rate is also kept very modest, which is one of the few areas where this game breaks JRPG tradition. The slow pace of the battles themselves is exacerbated by the game's frequent and lengthy load times. Before every battle you will have to watch around ten seconds of the camera panning the scenery and your characters getting ready before the battle actually starts, and transitions between areas also accompanied by rather lengthy load times. The load times even pop up between cut scenes and really hamper the sense of immersion. Some technical and pacing issues aside, Lost Odyssey is a fine, if very traditional, game. If you're absolutely sick of random, turn-based battles and lengthy cut scenes, you won't find anything to like here. But if you don't mind some throwback gameplay mechanics and you're interested in experiencing a pretty good story with great characters, Lost Odyssey is definitely worth playing.
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Get Lost in this Odyssey
2008 is shaping up to be the year of the RPG. It's still early on and yet there are numerous titles being released across many platforms, the most interesting of them being the 360. Lost Odyssey isn't the first JRPG to grace the system, but it certainly is the best.
Lost Odyssey follows the story of Kaim, an immortal who has walked the earth for a thousand years. The catch is that he seems to have lost his memories from that period of time. He is a mercenary, and a proficient one at that - he is immortal, after all. The story throws several other characters into the mix ranging from Jansen the bumbling playboy, to Cooke and Mack the young brother and sister duo. All the characters have a unique and very likeable personality that play off each other very well. The plethora of heroes come together to go on an adventure that will see them trying to stop the evil lord Gongora in his attempt to take control of the political world and become a God amongst men. It's not breaking the RPG story mold by any means, but it shines in its delivery of the story and the characters that drive it. The main game itself does a fantastic job of illustrating the story, and you will see your fair share of both in game and CG scenes, but when you are playing as someone who can't remember anything from his past, it makes it hard to connect with him as a character. This is where one of the game's key features comes into play. A Thousand Years of Dreams is a series of short stories that are unlocked and viewed after finding the places where an event will trigger the memory for Kaim. They tell various stories from Kaim's past and let you in on just what he's been up to for such a long time. The stories themselves are remarkably well written, and will play with your emotions more than you'll expect them too. Some of them are so good you will want to read them for a second (or tenth) time. Doing so is quite easy as whenever you use an inn to rest you may view any of the dreams you have unlocked so far. You can also view them from the games starting menu, if you so wish - and trust me, you will. They aren't just text on a white screen though. The stories come fully equipped with beautiful animated backgrounds and sounds that echo what text is on screen at the time. They truly are very well done. There are quite a few dreams to be found throughout the game and some will be revealed through normal play while others may be a bit more hidden. A good story in a RPG is great, but it won't hold up without great music to go with it. Luckily, Lost Odyssey delivers in the music department as well. If you are a total role-playing geek, you will more than likely recognize the name Nobuo Uematsu. He has been bringing incredible music to games for a long time now, and so it shouldn't come as a surprise that he has delivered yet again. The theme for the game itself is sweeping and infused with strength and powerful notes that will have your heart skipping beats. The battle theme is great the first hundred times you hear it, but having at least a few other themes for regular battles would have been nice. Bosses have their own theme, but again some variety would have been a good addition. The music is absolutely top notch, but even the best music can become droll after seventy hours of play. It isn't a kind of nagging that you can get from some music, it just becomes more unnoticeable as you play through the game, which is a shame because it is very well written and played. The sound effects during battle and in the general world are all well done and do a good job of making the world seem alive. The voice acting is also very well done on the whole, with only a couple of characters being a bit iffy. Gongora's voice actor has his moments, but in some places he just seems to be trying too hard, and General Kakanas suffers from the same issue. Graphically, Lost Odyssey is really solid. It's running through the Unreal 3 engine, and it's used decently well. The character models all look great standing still or in action, but they start to crumble a bit when you get in closer, which does happen a lot during cut scenes. The color palette and overall artistic design is very well done and strays from the usual JRPG spiky-haired teenager theme just enough to pass as marginally unique. The battle animations are all well done, but the magical attacks are a bit lacking. Where there aren't any summoning abilities you kind of hope for some really flashy magical attacks but you will more than likely be a bit disappointed. The elemental attacks all look basically the same as you get stronger variations of them, and the fearsome game-ending magic you can acquire all look surprisingly similar, save one, which won't be mentioned for spoilers. One of the two issues that stand out the most graphically speaking, is that during cut scenes that use the in game engine the emotion expressed by the voice actors aren't always very well portrayed in the actions and facial expressions of the character. The king of them all being Gongora who's voice actor seems to be way to over-zealous for the corresponding actions of the character on screen. A maniacal laugh looks more like a man who's had a stroke, giggling. The other major hitch, though hideously exaggerated by some, is the load times. It isn't so much the battle load times, or the transition load times for entering new areas, as it is during cut scenes. Nothing pulls you out of an emotional moment like a load screen showing you Jansen's battle rankings. Some people would like to see the traditional game play elements of JRPGs to die, such as random encounters and turn-based battles. If you are one of those people, you might have a hard time playing this game. Lost Odyssey stays true to its JRPG roots, and is basically a graphically improved traditional JRPG. The battles are all random encounters, aside from a few instance battles thrown in the odd place like many of the genre have. The battles are also turn-based and offer the usual commands of attack, item, magic, defend, and flee. To make the battles more strategic and involved, Mistwalker has included the ring system. Basically, there are numerous rings that can be found and crafted if you have the correct parts. These rings all have varying abilities to aid you in battle. The abilities range from increasing damage or critical levels, to status inducing or hp/mp absorbing. There are three levels to almost all the available abilities a ring can have, and so their effects increase. There are also ultra versions of many of the rings in the game, which give the same abilities but increase the attack circle size to make it easier to land a perfect attack - which we'll go over next. The ring system adds an interesting twist to melee attacks in Lost Odyssey. As your character runs at the enemy, a circle contracts from outside the screen inward to match up with a stationary ring surrounding the enemy. You hold the right trigger to start the process, and you basically want to have the contracting ring land within the stationary circle to produce a "good," or preferably on the outer edge to produce a "perfect" attack. If you land outside the circle, or take too long and the timer runs out for your attack, you will be rewarded with a "bad" attack. You want to get good or perfect as these are the only outcomes that will result in your equipped rings' abilities to work. The better the attack, the more effective or higher the chances your rings' abilities will be against the enemy. It all might sound a bit convoluted, but it's very simple in action and works very well. You also have the ability to switch rings at any time during a battle to adapt to different enemy types if you so wish. There are also accessories that you can equip to your characters to boost their attack, defense, etc. There are an incredible number of accessories to be found throughout the game, and they, like the rings, can vary in strength. The other usefulness of the accessories is that your immortals can learn the skills applied to them. This one way that immortals can learn skills for use, as they don't learn them through leveling like the mortals do Immortals don't learn skills as they increase in level, as mentioned above. Instead, they learn them through one of two ways. They can equip accessories and earn SP through battling until they have enough to master the accessory. The other way they can learn skills is through skill linking. Skill linking is the process of simply linking an immortal to a mortal's skill though the main menu. From there, you learn the skill through gaining SP just as in using accessories. The mortal you are linked to must be in your party in order to learn the skill, so you can't just link to a mortal who is on the sidelines. Learning skills for your immortal characters is a vital part to being successful, and you will be doing it quite a bit. It will rarely have you resorting to grinding, which is nice. You won't be grinding for levels either, or at least you won't have to. Each area in the game has a cap at which the enemies will eventually give you barely any experience. This effectively kills the grinding aspect that a lot of JRPGs suffer from and it makes for a smoother gaming experience. Something that a lot of JRPG fans will miss, especially those who have played the Final Fantasy series of games, are summons and character specific special attacks. You are left with regular attacks and spells, nothing more, which can be a bit boring sometimes but you get used to it fairly quickly. It would have been nice to at least have some special attacks of some kind to add some more excitement to the battles, but the battling is just fine the way it is. The only real gripe with the game play is that it is actually a fairly easy game. Most of us do not want to have our butt handed to us a million times before we beat a boss, but Lost Odyssey seems to reverse the difficulty curve - it gets easier as you get further. If you just play through the game and skip everything but the main track, you might have a struggle in one or two places. However, if you do an odd side quest here and there, the items you receive combined with the levels you gain make for a very easy game. Even the optional bosses are a breeze. If you thought you were going to dance with the cousins and close relatives of Emerald Weapon, you might be a bit disappointed. With that being said, the recent release of content for the game does throw some seriously challenging things your way, so if you spend some extra cash you might just get a run for your money so to speak. In all though, the lower difficulty level doesn't entirely detract from the enjoyment of the game, and you probably won't notice it unless you go looking for it. The average player will more than likely be able to beat the game their first time around in about 70-80 hours if you do at least one or two side quests. If you are a veteran JRPG player you might be able to blast through in less than that, but you'll miss out on a lot of great story and character development. The newly added content will tack on another few hours of play but will only be for those who are looking for a good battle challenge. There is also the option to start a new game at level 50 for your immortals, but mortals get their regular levels. You also don't keep any items or weapons at all which kind of makes this a bit of an odd addition to the game, but it is there for those who want it nevertheless. Those who were hoping for a fresh take on the genre will be a bit disappointed, but will still enjoy the game for what it brings to the table. At its heart, Lost Odyssey is a story-telling machine that sacrifices the flashy stuff for the delivery of the story. If you own a Xbox 360 and have that JRPG itch that needs to be scratched, Lost Odyssey is definitely going to do the trick. If you are new to the genre and want to dip your toes in without being in over your head, this is your best bet so far. A rewarding experience from start to finish, Lost Odyssey is a must play for fans of the genre and story lovers alike.
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Final Fantasy Rival?
WARNING: Spoilers, Bad Language!Having finished Blue Dragon only quite a while before picking up Lost Odyssey at launch, I have to say that it feels that some content from Blue Dragon was inserted to Lost Odyssey (such as: some locations and creatures).
In conclusion, Lost Odyssey is a step forward from Blue Dragon for Mistwalker, however, competing with past Final Fantasy games (Final Fantasy VII ~ X-2) - it just doesn't match up.
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Less than the sum of its parts.
I really wanted to like Lost Odyssey, I really did. But after spending nearly 60 hours with the game, the only thing I came away with, was wanting those 60 hours back. From a gameplay perspective, Lost Odyssey does nothing wrong. It has a very polished and strategic turn-based battle system, that almost feels like a tactical experience in the last quarter of the game when you get to choose from nine playable character to bring into battle. Each character can equip hundreds of items and learn tons of skills, on top of that there is a nice option to interchange equipment mid-battle so you never feel like you’re at a disadvantage in case you equipped an item that does massive damage to magical enemies, but you happen to be fighting a robotic soldier for instance. The enemies of the game are actually probably one of the high points. I can safely say that this game has some of the most creatively designed, and most expressive (Dark Kelelon anyone?) enemies in any game. Now if only this great design was brought forth to the central characters. For a game that is attempting to craft an emotional story of loss and struggle, these characters have about as much depth as the puddle I stepped in walking home this morning (it wasn’t very deep at all, I don’t even think I got wet). Kaim, one of the four amnesiac immortals, walks around for half the game saying pretty much nothing, so then later in the game when it is time to make any sort of grand speech or ultimatum, it comes off as sounding out of place and awkward. The other characters don’t fare any better. They range from a stereotypical gun-ho pirate, to two kids, who not nearly as annoying as other kids video games, seem to have no real place in the adventure after the first disc. It’s not even that these characters are badly designed per se, it’s just that the writing and dialog in the actual game is atrocious. The timing in conversations is incredibly bad, people constantly repeat what others say but in question form, and then just when you’re trying to decipher what they’re actually talking about, it simply ends. Half the time, I had no idea why my characters were traveling to this or that land. Plus the camera work in the in-game cut scenes is all over the place. It frequently pauses on character’s faces, even though they show pretty much no emotion, then it takes them another five seconds to pan around in silence before fading out for no apparent reason. In general, don’t play this game for the main storyline. An incredibly derivative villain, and numerous plot holes, make the whole package hard to follow; and when you do finally realize what’s going on you find yourself thinking why on earth didn’t they explain that earlier in a scene that would have made infinitely more sense. By the end of the game, half the conversations are throwing in places and events that try to tie up unknowns, but in the process it makes the whole thing even more convoluted since those additions are themselves never fully explained. I’m not asking to be spoon fed the story here, and I understand that the whole point of losing ones memory is the factor of the unknown, but if you want emotional attachment to the story, don’t make it sounds as if you’re making it up as you go along. The one saving grace of the story is something that oddly takes a back seat. Throughout the game, Kaim and some other characters will encounter a situation that will unlock a memory they had of their one thousand years of existence. These are presented as text on colorful backgrounds with accompanying music. Any one of these short stories has more substance to it than the entire plot of the game, there are roughly thirty in all, but reading just one shows how much more emotion and description can be found in the text compared with the actual game. Characters seem to actually be alive in the stories, not just a CG character voices by someone reading from a script for the first time. This makes even more disorienting when you finish a story with Kaim in it, then go back to the actual game and realize that the Kaim you control has none of the traits or emotion of the that you just read about, instead you once more control a walking mannequin. If you compare this game with Mistwalker’s other RPG, Blue Dragon, it’s easy to see that Lost Odyssey is a better game by definition. It just seems like a more polished and fleshed out product in terms of gameplay. However, I would still prefer Blue Dragon over Lost Odyssey anyday, just for the simple reason that playing Lost Odyssey, and sitting through the archaic dialog, is so painful, that any fun you get from the actual battles is instantly sapped once you realize you have no desire to see the story play out what so ever. This isn’t to say Blue Dragon’s characters are deep and intriguing, but that game wasn’t going for the emotional drama that Lost Odyssey fails at miserably. Blue Dragon was a simple light hearted adventure, and it pulled it off perfectly. People say that this game is a traditional RPG that isn’t trying to rewrite the genre. That’s fine. But hold this game against any top tier RPG that came out in the last seven to eight years, and you’ll quickly realize that the script is what needs to be rewritten. Unless your are an absolute die hard RPG fan that only cares about stat building and turn-based battles, don’t bother with this game. The few things it does well are completely crushed by characters and a script that you’ll have to endure through the entire journey. Don’t play this game, that’s my opinion. I want my 60 hours back.
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A Franchise to Rival Final Fantasy
Lost Odyssey on the surface looks to be a typical JRPG that could be enjoyable for fans of the genre but nothing that memorable or stunning. However, as you delve into the world of Lost Odyssey, it easily tops it's main rival in the genre Final Fantasy in a number of ways - especially when you look at the latest iterations of the FF series.
Story The story is what makes this game so unique and seperates it from the crowd. While it keeps a pretty standard JRPG format, following a group of people trying to stop someone evil, the story itself is much more mature and interesting than your standard JPRG plot. It follows the story of Kaim, who in the beginning is engaged in a massive battle between two armies - only for a great meteor to drop out of the sky killing everything in sight, but him. For Kaim is immortal, and throughout the story we see and learn of the pain and suffering of 1000 years without dying. There are optional stories to enhance his experiences, which even turned me around into reading them - something I would normally look over in any video game. The stories are fantastically written and make you excited and anxious to read the next in the series of dreams. The characters are fantastic and lovable, bar the two children you pick up in the game and another female character I won't talk about for spoiler reasons, and really add to the story. You start the game with two fellow characters, Jansen and Seth. Jansen is the typical JRPG comedy character but he is the first of his kind to EVER make me laugh. His lines are so witty and well written that your guarenteed to crack a smile at the very least. Seth is also immortal like you, and acts as the character to add some energy to the crowd, since Kaim is a little on the depressive side in the early stages. The thing to focus on in the story however, is the story itself. It's full of political backstabbing (in a good way, not boring politics!), plot twists, relationships and even emotional moments. I found the end of the game pretty upsetting to say the least - but it's also one of the most satisfying endings in a video game. I would love to go indepth on this story, but for fear of spoiling anything, I'll leave it here. Gameplay The gameplay is your bog standard JRPG style - a turn based system using items, spells, attacks to defeat an enemy. However, there have been some twists added to the gameplay to improve an old format for JRPGs. The first is the Ring system. As you do a melee attack, you hold down the right trigger as a circular "minigame" appears on screen - the aim to be to try and let go of the right trigger when the outer ring reaches the inner ring of the onscreen diagram. Hit it dead on (which after about a disk in will be almost always) and you'll get a PERFECT, allowing you to hit more and have more chance of a critical strike. Miss it by a little, you'll get a GOOD allowing you to hit a small amount more than usual. Attempt it and absolutely fail, and you'll get a BAD - reducing damage. Or you can ignore it altogether for no penalty or reward. It helps to keep you engaged and spice up the repetitive battles of JRPGs. The second is the skill system. Immortal characters must learn skills from the mortal allies they gain in the game by skill linking. You must choose an ally, choose a skill, then get a certain amount of SP (gained from winning battles) to learn it - but your ally must be in your team of five on the battlefield so you can learn it. It adds a nice reliance on using all characters, and allows those who really train their characters to make the immortal characters a real fighting force to be dealt with. The final addition is Formation, something that has appeared in other JRPGs but I thought was worth mentioning. This feature allows you to move your weaker characters behind your stronger ones - should they be attacked, your front characters HP will make up a defence rating, significantly reducing the damage taken by the back row. However, when the front characters take damage, their defence bar rating goes down (healing does not bring it back up) and allows more damage to be taken by the back row. If all your front row is weak, your back row of characters is very vunerable. Overall Impressions The story, the gameplay, the music and the world itself is something very memorable and has made it a much loved game of mine. The voice acting is fantastic, the music is remarkably good and sticks with you even after you've finished the game, and the story is a brilliant example of how a more "grown up" JRPG style can work wonders. The after content support has already started, with new items such as one to allow you to watch cutscenes without playing the whole game again, and a whole new dungeon with the toughest boss in the game - and when I say tough, I mean tough. Additionally, Mistwalker are promising there is more DLC to come. The more adult nature of the game makes it shine out from the rest, and puts most other JRPGs to shame and enables itself to easily rival some of the biggest games in the genre to date - and puts it firmly in the Must Have list for the Xbox 360. Story: 4.5 / 5.0 Gameplay: 4.0 / 5.0 Graphics: 4.0 / 5.0 Audio: 4.5 / 5.0 OVERALL: 4.5 / 5.0 Note: Many places reported long loading times - I have had no such issue. Longest load time was 8 seconds or so.
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An Odyssey that you can get lost in...
The Xbox and the Xbox 360 really have not had much to offer for RPG enthusiasts. That was mostly Sony's territory, as the PS2 had a barrage of excellent, and not so excellent, Role-Playing Games. The 360 now has had Blue Dragon and currently Lost Odyssey in the US alone. While Blue Dragon wasn't a well received game, Lost Odyssey manages to do better.
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From the makers of Final Fantasy comes Lost Odyssey
was excited, worried and also happy that this game was one of the first RPG's to come out this year, this game is infact a story telling game where you just get to fight and hear some pretty good voice acting but there are a couple of things that hold this game back from its true potential.
First thing comes first im sorry to say to all who just decided to give this game a 9.5 and a 10...you can't give a game with a bad frame rate a 10 or a 9.5 thats just not going to happen...yes infact you must be a patient person to enjoy this game and you must also like leveling up your characters above where they should be just to get past the next boss as well as the loading times which can be long and last to about a minute especially when the graphics aren't the best even though they are running on the Unreal Engine. Ok so the story as i said is the absoloute best part about this game. This story is about a character named Kaim who just so happens to be immortal (as well as other imortals that you will get to meet) it just so happens that he lost his memory and over time in the game pieces of his memory come back to him. So yea Kaim....immortal sounds boring right? well as you move through the game you see beautiful area's and scenary and when you get to see his memory through dreams and story telling its a beautiful thing. There is also corruption that happens in the main city of the game where Gorrgon (or w.e his name is) is creating the Grand Staff which channels magic energy and makes it more stronger (which is why at the start of the game a huge metor comes crashing down and basically kills almost everyone). To be honest there is not much more i know about the story anymore then that. This game is around 120 hours long so cut me some slack lol. The gameplay is something that you would find from Final Fantasy being a turn based RPG that allows you do moves each turn depending on your spead and how much mana (MP) you have then seeing how long it will take to cast and blah blah blah...its basically the same thing you've done over and over again in any other RPG just with the additon of these rings. These rings allow you to do more damage...or just do the same damage to a target. When your just attacking with a weapon you pull down the right trigger as the ring gets smaller into the other ring on the target where you can get Bad. Good or perfect which is the maximum amount of damage, some rings have affect like...one ring might steal MP from a target when you attack or do fire damage so its more effective against like grass. (note that the rings do not affect spells). As i said the graphics of the game are...meh...the character models are so so depending on the character but what really stands out is usually the background and the scencary which looks really nice...but the problem is that it slows down depending on where you are, and its the same thing in the cut scenes which are probably the best graphics in the game but sometimes cause huge amounts of lag. The sound is of good quality and is above average when rain starts falling it sounds like really rain or anything else that interacts with the scenary but im just not into a small noise when you cast a spell like flare or wind or something like that its just a quick noise then done. Overall as i said this game dosent deserve a 9.5 or a 10 you must be a patient person to get the full enjoyability (which isnt a word i know just bare with me) or if your just in RPG's you could actually buy this game being 120 hours long and should take you a long time to get through, this game has a great story alright gameplay laggy graphics and alright sound
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The best JRPG currently on 360
The game begins with Kaim fighting on a battle field, chopping down
soldiers no problem, but then out of no where comes this meteor falling
from the sky. Kaim manages to survive without a scratch. Not knowing
how he is still alive and not having any memory of his past he begins
his journey.
Like many RPG's you will meet up with new characters as your progress through the games story. With the game being about 60+ hours to beat, it many take several hours before you meet some key characters from the story. Leveling up is also present in this RPG, with a maximum of level 99 for all your characters. Depending on how tough the enemies you are fighting, you will level up accordingly. Lost Odyssey is divided into 4 disks. The first 3 disks will last you between 5-10 hours each. Disk 4 the one you will spend playing the most, specially if you try to go for all of the achievements in the game, which will take just over 100 hours for the average gamer. Powered by the Unreal 3.0 game engine, Lost Odyssey is a good looking game, but not great. Compared to other Unreal 3 powered games (Gears of War), Lost Odyssey falls short. There are some very cool innovative features in the games gameplay, such as being able to assemble rings, and the skill link system. You can assemble rings to each one of your characters. Some rings will increase your characters attack power, some will give your attacks fire damage, and some will give you up to 3 different types of attack attributes. The rings only work on regular attacks, not spells. Then there is the skill link system, which is only for Immortals. Mortals are the only ones who can learn skills, so Immortals have to learn skills from them. To equip a skill your want to learn, just link a skill from anyone of your Mortals to your Immortal Character. Then you will have to fight battles and gain SP so your Immortal can learn the equipped skill. For anyone looking for a JRPG on the 360 or is in need for a good story driven game, i recommend Lost Odyssey.
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Lost Odyssey "Almost, but not quite"
Well after finally getting my hands on this game I was blown away, it's probably the most enjoyable RPG I've played since Final Fantasy 8. The graphics are amazing, the music is pretty good, the story is awesome and the game play mechanics have that great old school feel to it. The main problem with the game is the same thing that makes it look good is what also hold it back. While the graphics are impressive you will be seeing several loading screens that last anywhere from 10-20 seconds. While the music is top notch in a way, it also brings to many styles of music to the table which equals disliked track that gets overly played. Going from calm vocal or midi style music to classic rpg style to hardcore techno, it's something for everyone to like and also things people will hate. The story and characters stand out the best to me in this game, and kept me wanting more and more. But this great story line is sort of brought to a screeching halt after the first CD and it kinda seems like everything in disc 2 and 3 are basically things to drag the game length, then it picks back up in disc 4. While there is a good story in between the disc it's not as epic and fleshed out like Disc 1 and 4 are. The other problem with the story is the way they do characters past development with constant dream sequences of page after page of information of the past. I would of rather liked them show these back story's as cut scenes or game play segments instead of cramming 5-15 minutes of walls of text down your throat. The game play has a great classic feel to it and the style between immortals and mortal characters bring something sorta new to the table.While the mortals all have seperate ability's and purpose, the Immortales basically sit back and learn moves from the Mortals. The bad part about this is Mortals seem uninnovative besides having the ability to self ressurect themselves, you in the end abusing the mortal characters which are unique for spells/abilitys, then you kick them off of your team until you need to rob another move from them. Overall the game is a great package and a lot of old school role playing game fans will enjoy the feel of this game, it's very interesting and well polished.
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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?
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Remeber when JRPGs were this good?
The reviews for this game that I saw touted it as a moderately fun, but archaic JRPG. I did'nt expect anything special when I picked it up. I'm glad to say I was surprised.
Gameplay First off, this is a turn-based RPG in the style of the early Final Fantasies. Combat is purely turn-based, there are the familiar lists of spells and abilites. There are a few notable differences, namely the immortals and the ring system. You have 4 characters in your party who are 'immortal'- if they are KO'd, they will autorevive after a few turns. These immortals cannot, however, learn abilites on their own. They must 'link' the skill with a mortal character who already knows it and battle to earn a certain amount of PP. Therefore a strategic element in party formation is added, made all the more important by the fact that you cannot switch characters in and out during battle. There are also equippable rings in the game which, when equipped, add special effects to your attacks. There is, however, a catch. You must hold down the right trigger and let go precisely when the two rings overlap. This helps keep even random encounters interesting, and prevents the game from turning into an attack-spamming fest. Otherwise, gameplay is not notably revolutionary. The difficulty is well done- random encounters are fairly easy if you stay alert, but bosses are surprisingly, but not insanely, difficult. Mercifully, this game requires next to no grinding, provided you play cleverly. Storyline The story is average-ish. You are an immortal by the name of Kaim Argonar, who is a mercenary for the Uhran army. You have no idea as to where you have come from, or why you cannot be killed. The game takes place to a disappointingly cliched setting- 30 years ago, magic energy suddenly and inexplicably flourished in the world, causing nations to build huge machines and progress in leaps and bounds. The antagonist, in particular, is a fairly disappointing 'Hahaha I'm going to take over the world' type. While the plot is mediocre, character development is fucking phenomenal. Kaim's reluctant recollections of memory are brilliant, and even the most mediocre characters(Cooke and Mack) are deeply changed by the end of the game. Memories unlocked from Kaim's past are presented in the form of short stories accompanied by music and backgrounds, and this is one of the most beautiful things I have seen in any videogame to date. Sound As far as music goes, I have two words for you- Nobuo Uematsu. That's right, the same man who was famous for the Final Fantasy soundtracks has lent his skill to Mistwalker for this game, and the result is predictably awesome. The VA is reasonably good overall, ranging from brilliant(Kaim, Seth), to substandard(Ming, Cooke, Mack). tl;dr Overall, if you loved the older Final Fantasies, have some money to kill on an old-school turn-based jRPG, and are in need of a great storyline, this game is for you.
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instant classic
With so much hype going into Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey at the same time, it was hard to not get excited if you are an RPG fan. With the lack-luster performance of Blue Dragon, my expectations were drastically lowered for Lost Odyssey.
This may have actually been a good thing. Lost Odyssey was everything I was hoping it could be. Overall, the graphics are amazing. There are some frame-rate issues, but not too bad. One thing missing from many JRPGs is visual change of the characters based on changes in equipment. All accessories and weapons are actually displayed on your characters be it swords, glasses, or flowers. Possibly the best aspect of the game in my opinion is the game play. If you are nostalgic for classic JRPGs, you will feel at home with the turn-based game play in this game.
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Lost Odyssey is a very good jrpg.
Lost Odyssey at first glance appears to be nothing special. It looks like a 90s style console rpg living in the past. Generic. Boring. Frustrating.
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Quirky, disjointed, but mostly enjoyable
Let me start this review by saying that if you're not into traditional Japanese roleplaying games, you might not want to start with Lost Odyssey. The difficulty of the early parts of the game might be a bit rough for those not acclimated to level grinds and equipment hunting. But if you're willing to stick with this game for the long haul, Lost Odyssey is surprisingly enjoyable, if a bit rough around the edges.
Graphically, Lost Odyssey is one of the best looking traditional RPG's on the market. The world is beautifully detailed and fairly vast, though filled with traditional fantasy locations defined by the four elements, like ice & fire caverns. A little more originality would have gone a long way toward giving LO a sense of individualism, but as it is, it comes off as a well-done clone of Final Fantasy. And that's true of most everything in the game. The characters feel like rejects from a Final Fantasy game. They have some interesting moments - and there's one woman with a stunning design, and the male comic relief is actually really funny - but you won't find yourself gripping the edge of your seat to find out their fates. And don't get me started on the inclusion of my least favorite of all RPG cliches - children as heroes. For the most part, it's optional to use them, but still... give me an Auron or a Barrett over a child any day of the week over singing kids. Ugh. Gameplay, the game again owes a lot to Final Fantasy. It's traditional turn-based RPG fare, with the exception of the power ring system. Basically, by holding down a trigger, you can try to link up a visual cue to add more power to an attack. It helps soften the dull-but-flashy combat. The story is unique, though flawed in a few ways. First, though the concept is amazing, the idea of yet another hero-without-memory is overdone to the point of being stupid. Second, LO suffers from a traditional Japanese story-telling flaw in that something appears to be lost in translation. Parts of the story just don't translate well. Third, and the most annoying, is the continual use of RPG's as morality plays. Yes, we get it - love is great, power is in your heart, heard it a dozen times before. So why, with all these gripes, does Lost Odyssey score relatively well in this review? Because it's technically a sound game, and its depth is astonishing. There is tons of stuff to do and see. You can't fault the game for setting its sights on Final Fantasy's leve, but I wish the designers had tried to create something a bit greater. As it is, if you're looking for a decent JRPG to play, you'll be satisfied with Lost Odyssey. But you'll be left wondering what it could have really been.
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Lost Odyssey still stuck in the mist
Mistwalker
Despite its impressive graphics, Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Lost Odyssey still doesn’t tick enough boxes to make the 360 exclusive a must-play game. It’s still a solid RPG, but odd camera control and stale combat systems hold the game back from its potential, despite small attempts to freshen up the latter. Sakaguchi, of course, shot to prominence on the back of the early Final Fantasy games, and with new studio Mistwalker, he’s still churning out quality, albeit by-the-book, JRPG fare. Sakaguchi’s previous epic for the 360, Blue Dragon, leaned towards cartoonish imaginings of the characters and enemies, and the whole design team has turned almost completely in the other direction for Lost Odyssey – characters, sets and cities are beautifully realistic, although still stylised just enough to avoid a downturn into the uncanny valley. You play the game as the amnesiac immortal Kaim Argonar, caught in political intrigue between two nations as a magic-industrial revolution changes the world around him. Sakaguchi worked with Japanese novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu to write Kaim’s backstory, which is revealed in fragments throughout the game, and is collectively entitled A Thousand Years of Dreams. These text-only story elements are skippable, but they add immeasurably to the emotional heft of the game, which probably has one of the most engaging storylines I’ve seen in an RPG for years, even if it borrows tropes from sources as varied as Tolkien and the later Final Fantasy games.
The game’s spread over four discs, primarily to compensate for the amount of cut-scenes, which apparently take up about a third of the data spread across the discs. It took me five or six hours to get a full party together, by which time I’d reached the end of the first disc – the whole game clocks in at around 30-40 hours, a not-inconsiderable chunk of which is spent waiting for the enemy battles and cut-scenes to load. It’s worth the wait, though; the cut-scenes are beautifully rendered, and character design is fantastic, just as it was in Blue Dragon. Battles, though, are randomly placed in the wilderness maps, which means that trying to get anywhere in a hurry can be very quickly bogged down by loading screens. During battle, it’s interesting to note that mortal and immortal characters in your party have different styles of play, and how you pair the two styles will have a great impact on your party’s effectiveness. Mortals, for example, level up normally and can use skills at any point once they’re unlocked, whereas immortals must be ‘linked’ to mortals in order to learn skills. There’s a lot of depth available in linking the two types together, and it’s also rewarding to play around with different combinations. Twitch gamers will appreciate the addition of the combat ring system, which adds a timing-based bonus to any attacks, but this does little to make up for the incredibly slow pace of the rest of the game. It’s what you’d expect from long-form RPGs, to be sure, but if Lost Odyssey didn’t have such an appealing story, the pace would be a killer blow. As it stands, you’ll need at least a week without distractions to crack the main story.
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Familiar but long-lasting and enjoyable.
Lost Odyssey is everything you would probably expect from the man behind the now infamous Final Fantasy series. Whether or not this is necessarily a good thing or not relies solely on your opinion of said series, and whether or not you can make-do with what is largely a repackaged FF game with a different title. That is not to say that Lost Odyssey lacks anything remotely new or interesting, but rather that the time tested gameplay associated with the FF series makes a dominant role here, and not much has been done to alter it. Random encounters are just as random and annoyingly unwelcome as ever, and all combat is largely dealt with through turn-based mechanics. Seeing as these factors (along with overlong cut scenes) are what often deters gamers from the FF series in the first place, Lost Odyssey isn’t likely to attract any new customers, but for those who enjoy such fare, this should be a familiar and welcome treat. Seeing that you spend upwards of one third to half of the game’s impressive 50+ hour duration, the quality of both the aesthetics and the writing goes a long way into making an enjoyable experience. Thankfully both elements are as strong as you can expect from your average Fantasy game, and while those familiar with the series will feel at home here, repetition of themes and motifs are plentiful (magic energy again plays a large role) so things can get a little tiring from time to time. The graphics, along with Uematsu’s score (another Final Fantasy veteran) are far more consistent in terms of quality over all four disks resulting in an emotive experience that does well to grasp the senses regularly. Overall, the general feeling when playing through Lost Odyssey is one of deja-vu, despite being the first of what is hopefully going to be a rival series to Final Fantasy. Nevertheless, for those who enjoy the standard RPG formula regurgitated in many of the big-one’s releases, such deja-vu will be mostly enjoyable. With lots of play value, a chunky, layered and at times engaging story, along with some decent additions to the standard battle system, Lost Odyssey is an RPG for RPG fans who don’t necessarily need something new to keep them entertained.
Story & Game Modes… 8 Gameplay & Control… 7 Graphics & Design… 8 Sound… 9 Balance… 9 Lifeline… 10 Originality… 5 Fun… 7 |