This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I wanted desperately to finish one more game by the end of the year so that I could hit 40 completed games for the year(a sadly lower number than I wanted), but I really sold myself down the river by playing this game (a 4-disc JRPG) and 2 other games that are somehow even grindier. However, here we are with only moments to spare and we can actually talk about Lost Odyssey. However, before I begin, I want to do a short PSA about anyone who wants to play this game now or in the future…. Play this game digitally at any cost. Whether you emulate it, buy it on an xbox storefront (if they are selling it), or some other option, do yourself a favor and avoid getting the discs. Why? Well Lost Odyssey in the U.S. has a reputation for having disc issues (particularly disc 4, but none are great), the way this game was packaged initially was 3 discs on a spindle and the 4 disc in a special sleeve inside the case. Whether it was through packaging or how the discs were processed there are some serious disc read issues that can happen in this game. Since this game uses the old save spot mechanic, any freezing or crashing is going to result in lost progress, but even if you get through minor hiccups, you might run into the dreaded aspect of having a full faulty disc which prevents you from moving on 30 hours into the game. So, take it from me (or from google), don’t be the sucker who keeps buying ebay discs hoping that you are going to get a good copy, and just save yourself the hassle and play this digitally.

For those not in the know, Lost Odyssey is a JRPG for the xbox 360 reminiscent of early Final Fantasy games. It might seem similar because it was created by Sakaguchi who also created the Final Fantasy series. I’m not great at doing a history lesson, so I won’t even really attempt diving into the Sakaguchi/Square/Mistwalker saga, but know that this game has its hooks in early RPG gameplay. For those keeping score at home, we are talking about menu-turn-based combat, designated save spots, random battles, character specific roles, etc. You play as Kaim who is an immortal that has lived for 1000 years but has no memory of his past. He drifts from war to war, battlefield to battlefield as a mercenary, but doesn’t really have a purpose or a desire in his life. As the game goes on, you know plot stuff happens: Kaim gets his memories back, you meet other immortals, find out why you are immortal.. all stuff that we will get to later.

In terms of gameplay, you are playing a 3d JRPG and everything that comes with it. Each ‘screen’ is a portion of an area that you can see on your mini-map that you navigate through like most games. You wander around talking to people you come across, opening up chests or rummaging in pots, as you look to progress to the next screen. If you are in a hostile area, you will be randomly attacked by a collection of enemies. The game then loads into a combat screen where you now get to control the action. For each character you have, you get to plot out what action they are going to take on that turn. Your choices are usually; “Attack”, “Magic”, “Skills”, or “items”. After you have made a selection for everyone, then the turn actually plays out. Now, when making the selections, you don’t actually know the order that everything is going to play out, because there are things behind the scenes playing out that affect turn order. For instance casting spells takes more time then just attacking, or some characters just have a higher stat that puts them closer to the top of the pile, factor into whatever the enemy is doing, and after all the selections are made you will see everything play out on screen. To make the game more active, when you are just attacking there is a timing section that will allow you to potentially hit for more damage, while prevalent in the early game, there is not a similar system for skills or magic, so you will be doing less timing the farther along you go in the game. Upon completion of said battle, you are given XP points which allow you to level up and SP points which allow you to learn skills (more on that later), before being whisked back to exploring the area you were previously.

Now, I can only speak for myself, but this game does make some subtle tweaks to the tried-and-true formula which are a welcome addition towards combat. The first is that it is hard to over-level for the part of the world you are in. Your XP earned is on a sliding scale after each fight, if the game thinks you are under-leveled for the area you are in, completing any fight will almost always grant your team a new level (regardless of how far away they were from getting one). If you are over-leveled in an area you go from watching your XP bar fill 50% to 25% to 1% after each fight, trying to actively dissuade you from sitting in an area and grinding out levels. While this may initially sound bad, the game is setup with an ideal level in mind for each section to make an area challenging but not impossible, so boss fights require some strategy and not just mashing the ‘attack’ prompt. This also helps to keep the game moving, you don’t have to guess if you need to level up before tackling the boss, the game will in its own way stop you from spending countless hours grinding. Now you can still technically do that, but you are going to add dozens of hours to your playthrough trying to gain levels where the game doesn’t want you to, instead of pushing forward to a new area and gaining levels instantly.

The other aspect to combat that I found refreshing is working in the overarching story to the combat. Kaim is immortal along with some other characters you meet, it doesn’t make sense for a character who can’t die to be bested by the equivalent of a goblin. The game agrees with that, to a point. As long as you don’t get a full party wipe (everyone knocked down at the same time), any of your immortal characters will stand back up on their own within a couple turns. Armed with that knowledge you can adjust accordingly, you don’t have to have your mage drop everything to resurrect them, or use precious items to get them back on their feet. As long as you think your team can stay the course and in the fight long enough, the immortals will get back up on their own. Now they don’t come back fully healed or anything like that, but it does show that it was thought out what happens during regular combat.

I could drag on and on about combat, I think there is a fairly good variation of creatures that you fight (not just a lot of color swaps like other games). There are abilities you can learn that just display the HP, type (fire, water, etc.), items you can steal from the enemies, right in front of you for the whole battle, so you aren’t constantly casting ‘scan’ or any other useless spells. However, we need to talk about some skills and equipment before we get into that sweet story meat.

Like in any RPG you gather lots and lots of equipment throughout your adventure, and while some of that stuff is simply a better sword or staff, the main crux of your equipment are relics. This is where things get slightly complicated. All of your immortals, they don’t learn skills by leveling up like your non-immortal characters. They learn skills through both equipping certain relics, or by attaching themselves to a human (not literally). So, as long as that non-immortal is in battle with your immortal who is “junction-ed” together… your immortal will start to learn the skill you picked out. Each skill you are trying to learn, has a set number of SP points that need to be acquired to learn it, but on average you can learn new skills somewhere between 2-5 fights. Relics offer a similar approach, but have to be equipped to the immortal in order for them to learn it. So, you might have Kaim learning the ability to cast lvl.1 white magic from one of your other characters, while equipping him with a relic that allows him to cast lvl. 1 black magic. Now once the skills have been learned, the immortal has those skills forever, but to prevent your character from getting too overpowering you do have a set limit on the amount of learned skills you can equip. You can eventually raise that amount by finding precious ‘slot seeds’ in the world which grant you an open skill slot, or by certain relics that increase your limit, but you will have to eventually settle on what character you are looking to build. Now for the most part, the character types are already laid out for you when it comes to the immortals. Kaim is supposed to be your strong, front-row, warrior, but if you really wanted to you could equip him with only magic boosting relics and skills so that his magic hits harder. I can’t say if it is a viable strategy as I wasn’t brave enough to go against the norm, but there is nothing stopping you. I will say that this does add a lot of menu-ing if you are looking to constantly keep your immortals learning new skills. Between switching what skill they are learning from their relic to what skill they are learning from other party members you might find yourself going into the menu after every other battle. Once you know what you are doing, it is a relatively simple process to swap stuff around, but it can still be a pain if you are looking to just keep moving forward. My final note about equipment and relics, is that I love when a game actually does physical representation of said items on the characters, and this game does that, even for the silly cutscenes. So your relic might say that it is a pair of glasses, earrings, headband, etc. and you will actually see the character wearing them. There is nothing sillier to me then seeing Kaim say something serious while he has little cat ears on his head.

Ok, sorry, quick tangent while talking about how things look. I can’t talk about this game without talking about how sad the female character models make me. No matter how much I want to rave about this game (and I will in the story bit), I always have to point this aspect out. Do bras not exist in this world? Are there any characters that don’t have large chests? Can we get some armor to protect these woman at all? To say the least, I was playing this recently in front of my wife and her comments were: There must not have been any women on the character design team for this game. I don’t want to harp on it too much, but the character below is supposed to be an actual queen. We can argue that it was for a certain demographic and made at a certain time when video games were allowed to objectify woman without any blowback, but it won’t do any of us any good. The camera on some of the cutscenes as you follow these characters along might make you feel a little gross sometimes.

Okay now that the unpleasantness is out of the way we need to talk about the story. I really like the premise of the story for about 3 of the 4 discs, and I won’t spoil really the big shift, but I like the idea of having a character who has lived 1000 years. How living for that long has beaten down your character, and how having no memory of the past makes his life so listless. Going on outside of Kaim’s life is yet again another war between countries and a battle between those that have magic and those that do not. There is political strife and warring nations, and blah blah.. most of that stuff is background to the telling of your character’s story. There is a big bad immortal who wants to rule the world and you have to stop him because you care for the little people. Its not really that different from other RPG stories, bad guys want to rule the world… only you and your crew can stop them. Now after about 3 discs you discover the secret about why you are immortal and what you really are, and it’s a pretty big letdown, at least for me (You are a stupid alien), but I am just choosing to ignore that because I want to talk about the truly memorable aspect of this game. So obviously when the game starts you are told that Kaim has lived 1000 years, but you obviously are just joining him now, slowly throughout the game Kaim starts to regain his memories, and you get these little flashback stories and they are magnificent. You will come across these stories at specific parts of your journey, whether by talking to a certain NPC, investigating something in a dungeon, or various other reasons. These are actually missable and I would encourage you, if you are playing this game, to at least pull out a guide so that you don’t miss any of these stories. When you do trigger one, you do have the option to skip it (if you are a monster), but should you decide to view the dream you get pulled into a storybook and get to read a snippet of Kaim’s life. Now the story doesn’t playout in some flashback cutscene and is quite literally text on screen, few pictures, even fewer sound effects and music playing in the background, but I can’t stress enough how good these truly are. These are just little moments in his life, they might tell the tale of someone he met in town on his way to a battle, or a time he was captured by enemies and held in a cage for months. What makes these so irresistible is that they are fabulously well written (written by Kiyoshi Shigematsu), scored by Nobuo Uematsu, and provide great world and character building. Now, I will state for the record that these aren’t necessary to the playing of the game or beating of the game. You could never view a single one of these and you would still get to the end just like I did, but I think you would be depriving yourself one of the best parts about Lost Odyssey. However, if you do dive into these you will gain a better appreciation for Kaim’s character and what he has had to live through and a small grasp as to what a blessing and curse being immortal would truly be. All of the dreams are available on You-tube, and you could technically watch them there if you don’t want to play the game, but I don’t know if that changes how these stories make you feel. Did I enjoy them more because I was already playing the game so the characters felt more real to me? Or is the writing and presentation so good, that I could get the same thing from just watching a You-tube compilation video? I don’t actually have an answer for you.

I don’t think my write-up did this game justice, because I really like Lost Odyssey and it is easily one of my favorite 360 games I have ever played, but part of that is because I grew up being a huge Final Fantasy nerd. I am an old man, and I will admit that Final Fantasy stopped meaning as much to me after X came out, and part of that was because I liked the old formula. Lost Odyssey, to me, was the last great Final Fantasy game, it improved upon what I liked about the old formula just enough without pushing it too far. Is it perfect? No, of course not, there are some quality of life stuff that can certainly be improved if they were to re-master or make it again. A save anywhere feature would have really saved my bacon when I had not 1 but 2 discs (3 and 4) crap out on me multiple times. Being able to link to a person to learn all their skills instead of selecting 1 at a time would have caused less menu-ing between battles. However, I can overlook that stuff and focus on the aspects that I do like. I like most of the overarching story, I like that the locations all feel unique. The music by Nobuo is some of his best work, and I would put it above of other Final Fantasy soundtracks. The writing of the short stories by Kiyoshi, was the first thing I wanted to re-visit when I fired up the game. It’s not quite the masterpiece that FF6 is, but it is certainly worthy of being a top 15 JRPG. Just for the love of Gorp, do not buy the discs.

Are these the greatest games of all time?: No, but its pretty good

Where does it rank: I love Lost Odyssey probably more than I should, but I really can't stress how great and moving I find the short stories "Thousand years of dreams." It also helps that I am a sucker for old school JRPGs and this is maybe one of the last big budget versions of a turn based RPG that will get made now. I have it ranked as the 17th Greatest Video Game of all time. It is sandwiched between "Thomas was alone" (#16) and "Legend of Zelda :Ocarina of Time" (#18).

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening