Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360) Review

Posted by Rod Oracheski on 03.19.2008

With four discs to look through, surely we can find this odyssey around here somewhere...

If you're looking for a next-gen JRPG, the pickings to date have been pretty sparse. If Enchanted Arms, Eternal Sonata, or Blue Dragon didn't do it for you...well, what else did you have to pick from?

The selection expanded a bit in February, when Lost Odyssey hit shelves. Though it's a new intellectual property (IP), Lost Odyssey has a top-notch development team behind it, a team that includes Hironobu Sakaguchi [creator of the Final Fantasy series, along with several others], composer Nobuo Uematsu [Final Fantasy, King's Knight, Chrono Trigger], award-winning novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu, and well-known manga artist Takehiko Inoue.

Need more of a pedigree than that? Well how about having a good part of the team that created Shadow Hearts on board? In the end though, who created it doesn't matter - the game has to deliver a compelling experience.

Fortunately Lost Odyssey does that in spades.

Gameplay:

Often referred to as a 'throwback' JRPG, Lost Odyssey starts things off with the oldest of old-school traditions - no logo screens. There's no Microsoft Game Studio logo to sit through, no animated Mistwalker logo fade-in...it's straight to the title screen where you can start your game. From there you hit a quick configuration screen to set such options as text speed, captions, language (English, German, Japanese, French, and Italian), and camera/audio options - then it's off to the game.

After an action-packed introduction that's somewhat of a departure from the typical JRPG, Lost Odyssey settles back into the safety of familiar convention. You play as Kaim Argonar, an immortal who has no memories of his 1,000 years roaming the lands - apparently lost in the opening sequence.

The initial map acts as a training level, introducing you to the genre standards like hitting 'A' near a glowing object to interact/search, using the mini-map, checking inventory and status screens, and - bane of many gamers - random battles.

Yes, Lost Odyssey features those 'out of the blue' encounters that have made some gamers happy and others enraged since the early days of the RPG genre. Relax though, it's nowhere near as bad as in, for example, Final Fantasy 8's Deep Sea Research Center. You may even find yourself running in circles hoping to find an encounter at some points...more on that in a bit.

The tutorial zone also introduces a feature in Lost Odyssey that's not typical of old-school RPG's - the ring system. Equipping a ring (whether found, crafted or combined) enables a new combat element. With a ring equipped, during melee attacks the player will have to align two rings. One is static, centered on the enemy, while the other shrinks from offscreen to match - then expands again. The system is similar in concept to the Judgement Ring system from Shadow Hearts, no surprise as a large portion of the design team was part of Lost Odyssey's development as well.

Good timing is required to nail a Perfect rating, which grants maximum bonus from the equipped ring - whether it's elemental damage, improved critical rate, a percentage chance to steal normal or rare items, etc... Being slightly off in your timing grants a Good rating, which transfers only some of the bonus. If you miss the Perfect or Good ratings, you're stuck with Bad - no bonus for you!

Missing the bonus can be a heartbreaker in battles against foes weak to one of the four Elements, or if you have a [TYPE]killer ring equipped. The Elemental system is the typical Wind beats Earth, Fire beats Wind, Water beats Fire, Earth beats Water circle of balance, but it creates some bizarre situations. You'll fight Glacial enemies, for example, creatures actually made of ice, that prove to be weak to Earth damage - not Fire. There's no such confusion in the [TYPE]killer rings. If it's an Aerial creature, you use the Aerial killer ring - simple as it gets.

In the long run, the ring system proves a good way to keep players interested in otherwise typical 'click and wait' battle sequences, and switching out rings in battle (just hit left when it's the character's turn to choose an attack to find the Equip menu) adds a new layer of strategy to the proceedings.

The ring system isn't the only combat mechanic to be aware of, there's also timing and formation. Formation is easy - when you start a battle the characters in the front row give you an initial Guard Condition (GC) that acts as a barrier against damage to second-line characters. Damage to the front line lowers GC, though there are skills that can bump it back up. The struggle to keep your own GC high, while removing that of the enemy, provides considerable strategic value in some fights.

You can move characters between the front and back row at any point in combat, though it takes up their turn and can be prevented by a Status effect that some enemies employ. Generally you'll have two or three melee characters in the front with the magic-using support staff in the back, but you can be successful with a variety of formations.

Timing is far trickier to figure out, with attack and casting speeds factored in with character speeds to yield the end result. Standard melee attacks are generally the fastest, though Item use is almost always first. Spellcasting - especially the high level spells that affect multiple enemies - is generally the slowest. The casting time of spells can also be affected by damage inflicted, though there are Skills that can diminish the effect.

Ah yes - the Skill system, another JRPG standard, though the name fluctuates from game-to-game. Humans get new Skills by leveling up, though Immortals don't learn via leveling. Both Humans and Immortals can gain new Skills by equipping Items, though Humans will lose those Skills if the Item is unequipped. Immortals can permanently learn Skills via equipping Items, though they must wear them during battles to earn enough Skill Points (SP) to retain the Skill.

That mechanic can cause some inventory shuffling, as you try to get important Skills around to all your Immortals as quickly as possible. There's also an element of roster shuffling, as you can only field a five-person party in combat and there are nine characters acquired over the course of the game. Simply stacking your party with Immortals seems the obvious choice, but proves counterproductive.

Only Humans learn Skills via leveling, after all, and Immortals can pick up those Skills by using Skill Link on any Human in the party, though there's that SP-gaining requirement once again. So there needs to be a balance set, where Humans and Immortals are shuffled in and out of the active Formation, if you want to maximize the potential of your Immortals. You also need to consider that Immortals, per the name, can't actually be killed in combat. If they're reduced to zero hitpoints they fall - but rise again in a few turns with a percentage of their hitpoints back. It makes sense within the context of the game, and as Jansen says at one point, "They're immortals. I know they gotta be alive! I mean, whoever heard of a dead immortal? Let's go look for them." It also represents a marked saving on Revive spells or Angel Plume potions...

Learning Skills is one of those times where you'll wish for more random battles, so you can get that Anti-Paralysis Skill before fighting a Paralysis-using boss, for example. There are a number of places that are good for that, if you're into grinding out battles - Numara Atoll, for example. The game doesn't let you simply grind out levels, however. Sit around an area farming experience for too long and you'll find that you're earning less and less, to the point that it's simply not worth fighting to get 1 point of experience.

You'll need to keep track of Skills, as boss fights in Lost Odyssey can be fairly taxing if you're not prepared. It's nice to see a JRPG that doesn't shy away from challenge, though it can be frustrating to be defeated time and again because you weren't ready to fight that particular boss due to neglecting equipment or Skills.

Over the course of the four-disc adventure you'll experience a storyline that's full of twists and treachery, surprisingly good from a genre grown stale. There's no sullen hero with spiky hair, a comically gigantic sword, and inscrutable motivation here. While Kaim might be sullen, the reasons for that quiet nature become quite clear, and his motivation is never in question.

The villain is also identified early on, kicking off a storyline filled with political and military plot points that brings to mind the early days of 'mutually assured destruction' or 'nuclear deterrence' - a pair of phrases that I never imagined using in a video game review - as opposing sides vie to replace the traditional forces of war with magical energy.

The villain's motivations and history prove to be as swaddled in mystery as your own. Slowly, as your memories and those of your companions are regained, it all becomes clear. It's a compelling way to drive gamers forward in the story, unrolling the narrative piece by piece to build towards the grande finale.

That narrative is delivered in a few ways, from the standard conversations with other party members to the impressive cutscenes that pepper the game. While these are certainly functional enough, there's a far more interesting storyline delivery method - A Thousand Years of Dreams.

In these 31 segments, Kaim regains memories from his past in the form of narrative delivered onscreen solely by text, with musical accompaniment. It's difficult to describe in a way that makes it sound as completely engrossing as it is, with a variety of text effects that tie in to the story. In a story with tears or rain, for example, there might be a blank portion of text with letters falling down the screen to lock into position.

The presentation of these sequences is extremely well done, though - as with the cutscenes - there's an option to simply page through them quickly, or skip them altogether, if you desire. You can also choose to revisit any unlocked memory simply by sleeping at an Inn or other location. This side of the game got a fair bit of discussion before the launch, and I have to admit that I was a bit leery of the idea of stopping mid-game to read a bunch of text - but it really works. There's a good pacing to the delivery of the Dreams, and the pacing of the stories themselves is also excellent. If you were suspicious of the 'effort' you'd have to put in, don't be - and if you hate them, you can just choose to skip them instead.

When you're through with the storyline, or simply feel like exploring the world's nooks and crannies, you'll find a slew of special boss monsters to fight - each offering up special gear only available by defeating them. Some of these boss monsters aren't particularly difficult fights, though some will test your ability to create Skill and Equipment builds that are effective against them. This exploration angle adds quite a bit of length to a storyline that will already take 40-50 hours to get through, at the bare minimum. Personally, I hit the fourth disc at 45 hours played and very few sidequests done, while a friend has over 100 hours into the game - without beating it - but has gathered far more Skills, defeated almost all the special bosses, and finished a number of the sidequests.

Graphics

Lost Odyssey can lay claim to the title of 'best looking JRPG' - at least until the latest Final Fantasy comes out, when it'll become a battle. The game has top-notch texture work, especially on the main characters. There are a lot of fine details to be seen in the character models, including faint blue veins on Ming's breasts - the talk of many forums. Now that's next-gen detail! In terms of less salacious material, Kaim casts a shadow as he runs that plays across the terrain - it's a small detail, certainly smaller than Ming's breasts - but it caught my eye on a number of occasions.

You also get to see some of the Accessories that you have equipped, from earrings to glasses to small cat ears - a nice touch, and the source of a great deal of unintentional humour during the more serious cutscenes done in-engine. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time taking a guy seriously when he's wearing purple earrings, a pair of Elton John's old glasses, and a set of miniature cat ears...

Even the enemies get a fair amount of attention, with some really inspired creations. It's almost unfortunate that many of the designs for 'common' enemies are seen only a few times over the course of the game - they could have been included in required battles instead of lost to random battles that some gamers may never see.

There are a variety of terrains to plow through, including city streets, icy wastelands, and lush forests. Each is nicely detailed and there's a broad range of colours used here - none of the 'brown and more brown, with a little gray' colour palette that you find in many next-gen games. There's also a wide range of spell effects, including some pretty wild ones at the high levels. In addition, if you add elemental damage to your weapon via an equipped ring, there's an accompanying elemental effect - different with different levels of rings - that's nicely done.

Cutscenes are used to move the story along at key points, and they're well done. There are a substantial number of cutscenes, and it's apparently the high-definition FMV storage that made the game require four discs, though including five different languages couldn't have helped. These scenes are well composed, with dramatic angles and good use of focal depth to highlight different characters during scenes. It's similar to what was seen in Blue Dragon, though far more subdued.

Sound:

With Nobuo Uematsu on board, you'd expect aural bliss and Lost Odyssey, by and large, delivers on that promise. From the trickling piano tune as you explore the Old Sorceress Mansion to the main theme, the music is excellent and, to a degree, familiar. You'll also get good sound effects, though it would have been nice to hear more power behind the spell effects. If I flash fry someone with fire, I want to hear those flames crackling!

It's a bit strange, but there's also a Sheena Easton tune or two in the game. It's a bit jarring to have the game suddenly turn into a musical at one point, but it's a momentary stumble.

There are also a few stumbles in the voice acting, though whoever voiced Jansen was amazing. Very few characters have grabbed me the way Jansen did, and his comments - particularly the muttered ones when he's put out - were a big part of that.

Lasting Appeal:

If you're obsessive about collecting every item and gathering every Skill, you'll get a lot of play out of Lost Odyssey - a lot of play. Getting every Skill requires having every Human at level 52, along with gathering every Seed in the game - so it's not a task to be undertaken by the faint of heart.

The non-obsessive-compulsive among us will be treated to a roughly 45-55 hour adventure with a lot of optional sidequests to do and bosses to fight if you choose.

Fun Factor:

Fun Factor is kind of a judgement call. If you like the JRPG genre, particularly the classic games where developing your character and the story meant more than lengthy summons and cutscenes, you'll probably have a ball with Lost Odyssey. While it's a serious story, there's a great deal of comedy here, mostly coming from Jansen, and a decent plot that can be read into a few different ways, if you want to draw real-world comparisons.

The 411:

If you're a JRPG fan, Lost Odyssey should be a no-brainer. It's an amazing looking JRPG that has a stellar development team doing what they've done best for years - creating a compelling gameplay experience around a solid storyline. The collection of 'A Thousand Years of Dreams' is a real step up for 'video game literature' and worth checking out.

If you're not a JRPG fan, there's probably nothing here that's going to sway your mind. The combat is a bit more player-inclusive than the standard JRPG, with the addition of the ring system, but it's still a far cry from...well, from something like Far Cry with its constant action. There's a solid story starring great characters (maybe minus the children) and great artwork - backed by stellar music by one of the industry's best...but it's still a JRPG. If you're a fan, you should already have given it a chance. If you're not, you probably never will be.

Graphics	8.5	Outstanding character and enemy designs, and a great variety of terrain to fight in.
Gameplay	9.0	The Ring and Skill systems add a great deal of depth to the bog-standard JRPG conventions, while having a nine-person roster and five-person formation means there's some tactical decision making to be done.
Sound	8.5	The soundtrack is perfect, with the possible exception of the Sheena Easton tunes, and the voice acting is just as strong - minus perhaps the annoying children.
Lasting Appeal	8.0	You'll range anywhere from 40-50 hours up into the triple digits, depending on how obsessed you get.
Fun Factor	8.5	Fans of the old-school JRPG, rejoice.
Overall	8.5   [ Very Good ]

Screenshots
All 7 Lost Odyssey Screenshots