Hey Duders,

Here is the latest Baby Deep Look! My usual Deep Look videos focus in on a cool gameplay mechanic or story element from a game I have played the heck out of, in the hopes that I can share what makes that mechanic so cool. This Baby Deep Look is just as deep as a normal video, but I focus on a mechanic or ability that is so small that the video is much shorter than usual. I aim to keep Baby Deep Looks around 5 minutes long. These videos should be small little observational nuggets that hopefully give you some useful insight into a game's design that you might not have noticed otherwise.

In this Baby Deep Look I take a look at Lost Odyssey and examine the unique way that characters level and gain skills. I talk about the different ways the mortal and immortal characters aquire new skills. I also explain how these different skill systems serve to define the lives of the two groups and their relationship to one another. Turns out there are some more cool things to learn from this old game.

man this game seems so cool, I wish more RPGs explored different ideas on progression like this.

I totally missed out on Lost Odyssey since I've never been an Xbox guy. Nice video Thatpinguino!

This was a really great leveling system until you get to the point in which all of your mortals are being skill farms towards your immortals, but by then you are getting near the end of the story. Still a really great game. Really one of my favorites of all time.

@oscar__explosion: Yeah at the end of the game the mortal characters kind of become batteries for your immortals since the immortals can be so much stronger. But like you said, by then you're at the end of the game. I think one way to combat this problem would have been to give the mortals some abilities that the immortals just couldn't learn. Like Ming shouldn't be able to become a better black mage than Jansen, a character who can't be anything else. Maybe the top level of each magic tree could be reserved for the mortals or some other strong abilities could have been reserved.

@slag:It has a bunch of cool ideas, but the main narrative is poorly paced and cliche. I love everything going on with this game besides its main story, which is kind of a big problem for a 50 hour game. The game feels like it has this expectation that people want a "save the world" story and so it has to have its party defeat some big bad; but, all of the best content is in side stories and interpersonal moments. The game is so close to greatness, but its adherence to mind-bending plot contrivances and cliche just hurts it so badly.

Lost Odyssey is great and my one regret is not having finished it when I had a 360. I was really hoping that the rumored PC version would have came out but unfortunately it never it did. My new hope is that this will come through on the backwards compatibility if they get multi-disc working but man I really liked this game even if the VO can be a bit rough at times.

I will agree with you that the main story is a bit meh but I think it has some great character interactions and moments.

@zirilius: There are a bunch of great moments in Lost Odyssey, but the main villain never felt compelling and the main party didn't seem like world savers. I would much rather have seen them adventure around and see the world, rather than save it.

I've honestly never finished the game either. I got up to the final dungeon and got lost because that dungeon looks like the same room over and over again. I got trapped in random battle hell and gave up. I'll have to give it another playthrough some day.

@thatpinguino: Yeah I vaguely remember much of the main story other than Kaim being the prototypical JRPG hero with amnesia. I believe I got to the start of Disc 3 before I got distracted doing other things and really don't remember why I never went back but can't recall any of the characters motivations.

I really liked the leveling system as well and thought you hit all the cool points in your video with the mortals vs immortals. The amount of random encounters did seem pretty high for that game but I enjoyed the combat for the most part. Without a 360 i'd be hard pressed to go back but like I said maybe they'll fix the multi-disc stuff and I can go back to that and ME3.

@zirilius: The real sad part is that the Kaim in the Thousand Years of Dreams and the Kaim in the main story are so different. In the main story, Kaim seems like a dollar store JRPG protagonist. But, in the short stories, you can really get a sense of some of his range without the melodrama. I think I just want the Thousand Years of Dreams turned into their own spinoff game.

The random encounter rate was what made me put the game down. I couldn't walk more than a few steps in the final dungeon without running into enemies and that made navigating all the more frustrating. I think it is really worth playing, but 50 hours is a hard ask nowadays. Also get on ME3! That game is dope!

@thatpinguino:

Yeah I agree and I think the Thousand Dreams stuff is really what kept me going. I really don't know if I could play it again but I'd give it the good college try. JRPG's are hard for me to play as an older family man. I generally get between 10-12 hours a week to play but that is generally in 60-90 minute spurts. Which is not ideal for the beginning of most JRPG's as I have sometimes not even reached the first save spot in some games.

And don't worry I've played ME3 and own it on PC as well but all my MP progress is 360.a It's incredibly frustrating leveling again once you've had nearly all classes unlocked. ME is probably my favorite franchise of last generation if not my favorite franchise of all time.

This was actually the game that I saw and wanted to play that made me buy a 360 back when this came out. The Thousand Years Of Dreams was really cool and very interesting and had some cool things to say about what it might be like to be immortal and the effects it would have on you and the world etc. Really cool battles with great graphics for a JRPG fan too.

@tiny_tank: Yeah the short stories took a potentially boring conceit and made it into an amazing tool. It turns out that professional short story writers can put out some darn good work, especially when they aren't limited by a "save the world" narrative.

@zirilius: Learning how to speed run FFVIII and IX for the community endurance run was partially to have something cool to contribute, but also partially about learning how to get through those games in a reasonable amount of time. I honestly feel like I need to learn speed run tactics for some of these longer running games because I don't have the time for 40-50 hour games anymore. If I can make a 40 hour experience into a 10 hour experience, then its a bit more manageable.

The skill system in Lost Odyssey was an interesting take on how that progression worked in FF IX with the added twist of mortals and immortals. I really loved this game, even though the main story was kinda weak. Kaim's backstory was by far my favorite part, like the end of Disc 1. That was probably one of the most emotional moments I've ever seen in a JRPG, much more so than Aeris' Death in FF VII. And of course A Thousand Years Of Dreams. Too bad they kinda wasted the unique setting on a fairly cliche world rescuing plot otherwise.

This game is really the only 360 game I've ever missed and wanted to play again since giving away my system. Might just impulse pick one of on the cheap someday to replay it.

@paulunga: I never made the connection between FFIX's system and Lost Odyssey's, but you're right. Where FFIX used equipment to draw the connection between what you wear and who you are, Lost Odyssey uses the same system to connect immortals to the mortal world.

If that game had let the players experience half the stories in the written segments, it might have been better than mediocre. But that story was pretty dull, and all the game's best narrative moments would have been better suited to an actual book.

Plus, kids as RPG party members are terrible.

@sparky_buzzsaw: As soon as I saw the kids I was amazed. They were the third version of Palom and Porim that Sakaguchi made (with the second being Vivi and Eiko). That character archetype has been beaten into the ground. At least make the kids something other than mages for goodness sake!

I wish the guy who wrote the short stories just wrote the whole game. If only to see what a short story specialist would do with a game narrative.

@thatpinguino: Exactly on both counts. That's sort of what I love about Witcher 3 in particular. So much of it feels like bite sized short stories tied together with a good overall narrative.

@sparky_buzzsaw: That is the exact thing that I loved about the Witcher 2. The troll sidequest was my favorite part of that game because of how self-contained and different it was. I cared more about a drunk troll than I did about most of the humans in that game.