Lost Odyssey Review

Lost Odyssey, Microsoft’s bid to enter the RPG genre of gaming, is exposed to much biased criticism from old-time FF fans, but the style of gameplay and what it adds to the classical RPG system make it an appealing and fun game to play through like the RPGs of old. The game revolves around an immortal named Kaim Argonar, an indentured soldier-for-hire whose memories of the past thousand years have vanished. After being sent out on a mission, he begins to remember painful events from his past and becomes sidetracked from his duties, eventually leading him to a quest to discover who he was and why his memories were abandoned. Along his travels, he meets and allies himself with other immortals and mortals in a quest to answer the questions of his existence and -- ~SPOILER~ -- save the world from an as of yet unknown threat. While the story is typical for a modern day RPG, it doesn’t particularly stand out with a unique twist or make a greater statement about humanity or the characters portrayed in the game. On the other hand, the characters are enjoyable and play their roles well throughout the narrative. The people you run into each live with their own pasts, have their own desires, possess discrete personalities, and the story naturally unfolds as the threads of fate binding them intertwine. While not exactly at the level of the stories that unfolded in the golden years of Final Fantasy, the story crafted by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of FF, is one not to let gamers down.

In terms of gameplay, Lost Odyssey is somewhat similar to Final Fantasies VII to IX. Players progress through an area until a boss fight marks continuation with the story. Explorable towns yield items (some very useful), short side quests, inns, shops, auction sites, and mindless NPCs (the important ones stop you from just running away from the conversation, thank god). Battles are random so you can’t see the enemy on the map to avoid it, but battles typically take one or two rounds of beating on the opponent, and encounters can be few and far between, so while the combat is integral to the game, it is not over-emphasized and frustratingly repetitive as it can be in other games.

"Mmyesss...*strange noise*"

In contrast to the old things Lost Odyssey has taken from other games though, there are four major components to the fighting system that makes it more than a mindless smash-fest. The first would be the reactionary system reminiscient of Paper Mario and Final Fantasy VIII in which the character could press a button or fulfill a command in order to make his attack or spell stronger. By holding down the right trigger when the attack starts, a ring appears around the opponent being targeted. As time passes, a second ring shrinks to the size of the first ring, and when the rings are perfectly overlapping, the right trigger must be released to “trigger” (sorry) the effect the attacking character has on their equipped accessory. Accessories take on the form of rings that can be equipped by each character, giving them varying levels and combinations of elemental damage, extra damage, status ailment, enemy type exploit, critical hit rate buffs, and more. These dozens of special attack effects leads into the second component of Lost Odyssey that gives it a bit of flare. In addition to rings that can be found by doing the occasional side quest or by exploring an area, there is a Ring Assembly system where components dropped by and stolen from enemies can be forged together to create rings with certain effects. These rings can then be synthesized by a certain traveler to create some of the more powerful rings in the game and the combination of effects strongly aid in overcoming opponents.

"Yes, that ring houses the power of a thousand fiery volcanoes, Stranger. You'll buy it at a high price."

The third special thing that Lost Odyssey does is that it utilizes something called the Guard Condition to mediate the level of damage back-row members receive from an attack. Whereas RPGs of the past would have a front row and a back row with members in the back row receiving roughly half the damage of front row combatants, Lost Odyssey takes a different approach. The cumulative total HP of the front row members fills out the Guard Condition. The Guard Condition has 4 levels, and when a front row member loses HP, the Guard Condition will decrease accordingly. A full Guard Condition can reduce the impact of an attack on the back row by as much as 90%, and extra defensive skills placed on back-row members can even nullify remaining damage, but as Guard Condition falters, the damaged received by back-row members can skyrocket to near insta-kill levels. Though healing front-row members can allow them to get back on their feet and take more damage without dying, it won’t increase the Guard Condition. Therefore, unless the party is actually formed with special characteristics and abilities in mind, party formation can crumble much more easily than in past RPGs.

"Lost Odyssey: Like football with magic, monsters, and no ball. Also, player 98 is NOT cupping 22's balls, stop looking."

The fourth interesting aspect of Lost Odyssey is Skill Linking. Like Final Fantasy IX, immortals equipping accessories with benefits like Anti-Petrify, Turn-Tail, Steal, etc. will integrate those abilities into the repertoire of skills available after going through a number of battles with the accessory equipped. Immortals then have a certain number of skill slots where they choose what skills will be active when they enter battle. In addition to immortals, Kaim recruits mortals as the story progresses. Unlike the powerful immortals, mortals are weak, easy to kill, and uncustomizable to a large degree, though they learn skills as they grow. These skills are typically helpful or important skills that are either crucial for the point of the story that they are learned at, or they can be learned in no other way. Though immortals are strong and generally comprise the best choices for the roles that the gamer might wish for in a battle, they are utterly useless without a healthy balance in skills. In order to learn unique skills from mortals, immortals choose a skill they wish to “skill link” and then as long as both the immortal and mortal are actively participating in combat, the immortal will gradually learn the skill much like the mortal was an accessory.

"Dude, I'm learning Holy"

In addition to the combat system components, there is a level wall that each area has, where experience gained after a certain level is dramatically decreased (the same battle can give a full level up, then just 1% for the next level) in order to force the player to reason out how to get through the area more than just grinding on the weaker enemies to blindly trample over the boss like in other RPGs. Something else that is appreciable is that each character has definitively different stats and some fit much more easily into the role of being a tank, a front-row combatant, a healer, or a fast buffing mage. Lastly, each boss in the game makes a name for themselves as each encounter with one will be different from others. The variety of team setups and ways the player can approach a battle are needed when bosses come around. While a strategy may have worked on one boss, it will be ineffective or detrimental to play on others because the best setup to neutralize their damage and dish out your own before getting consumed in a hellfire flurry of Armageddon-up-the-ass varies greatly with the boss’ strengths. For example, setting out one super-tank in the front row while maximizing offensive magic spells and healing might work against a boss with extremely high physical defense/power, the same setup would be devastatingly powerless against a boss who permanently silences the party or a boss who can afflict each party member with status ailments up the wazoo (the damage from which can ignore GC). Each boss fight is unique, fun, and challenging, so even with preparation there is potential to screw up a few times before finally getting that sweet victory.

"The Preparation"

"The Epic"

"The Fail"

Overall, while Lost Odyssey isn’t a game one would probably play for the story, the gameplay is fresh and fun, making the game an entertaining playthrough. The battle music is really catchy for the normal and boss battles, and the music really clicks at other points in the game like the final fight area or the hidden village of frog-people. For that reason, I’d give music a 4.5. The graphics were pretty good for this generation, but not ground-breakingly so. Therefore, graphics would be a 4. Atmosphere isn’t much of a component in classical RPGs, but the areas that the party progressed through were unique and fitting with the history of the locale, so atmosphere is a 3.3. The story was alright for an RPG. Though it had the necessary components of a story, the main character wasn’t focused on very much and the plot twists weren’t very well-hidden before their big reveals. On the other hand, there were long, well-developed mini-stories that are unlockable throughout the game as part of the main character’s background, and while not part of the main story, the narration in these is quite good for their short story aspect. As a result, narration would be a 3.8. Gameplay overall was quite good for an RPG, especially considering most other RPGs just have you mashing the attack button or moving from one slow battle to the next with no real feeling of progress. The GC, character customization, character growth, exploration, and boss fights made the game fresh and fun to play through for the entire game. Gameplay gets a 4.5. Overall, Lost Odyssey is a great title for Xbox 360’s entry into the RPG market, and hours of fun are guaranteed for fans of the RPG genre. Even though the overall score is just a 4, since RPGs are different from other action/adventure games, it is difficult to analyze the fun potential of the game through each of its components alone, and I recommend this game to readers not just as an editor, but as a fellow gamer.