Never let a good review go to waste: Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360)
(I recently started playing through Lost Odyssey, probably the first great Japanese RPG on the Xbox 360, again and was satisfied to note that the game is every bit as awesome as I remember. Then I recalled that I wrote a review of the game for my local game store’s newsletter back when the game was released. The review wasn’t used – the newsletter focuses on tabletop RPG’s and they felt that videogame reviews didn’t really jive. But hey, that’s what blogs are for, right?
So here you go – my review of Mistwalker’s Lost Odyssey.)
Lost Odyssey, the latest RPG from Final Fantasy mastermind Hironobu Sakaguchi, is equal parts genius and madness. That’s the only way to put it. On the one hand, the game is every bit as revolutionary as Sakaguchi claims – at least insofar as the plot and tone are concerned. The mechanics, however, are firmly rooted in the long (some might say ‘long-in-the-tooth’) tradition of Japanese RPG’s.
Without a doubt, the best reason to play Lost Odyssey is for the storyline. It’s every bit as deep and rich as its’ predecessors and will leave die-hard JRPG fans waiting for each plot turn with baited breath. The player is cast as Kaim Argonar, an immortal warrior with no memory of his past. Though Kaim initally comes across as a run-of-the-mill emo/androgynous warrior that litter the Japanese videogame landscape, Sakaguchi and Japanese novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu (whom Sakaguchi tapped to co-write the storyline) play his immortality to the hilt. While one would think immortality to be a blessing, it very quickly becomes apparent that Kaim suffers no end of trouble because of his condition – the worst of which being his aforementioned amnesia.
Punctuating his loneliness are intermittent interludes which arise through your actions in the game that illustrate one of Kaim’s lost memories rising to the surface. These interludes are not interactive – in essence you are treated to a short story that plays out before you through text, images, and music. It sounds dull, and if you are not the reading type you’ll probably just skip past them, but you’d be doing yourself a vast disservice by doing so. Like Mass Effect, in which the conversations are the high point of the game, these memory sequences serve as an anchor for the rest of the game. They are completely optional, however – should you bypass them you’ll not impact your game whatsoever.
Speaking as an adult gamer, I can honestly say that the game’s themes of loss and the transitory nature of life are powerful stuff. I don’t know if younger gamers will be able to relate, but it definitely struck a chord with me. Watching your parents age and your children grow is a stark reminder of your mortality and it’s this pathos that Lost Odyssey mines so deeply.
Joining Kaim on his journey are the requisite coterie of sidekicks straight from Japanese RPG central casting. There’s the buff and beautiful ex-Pirate Seth Balmore, Jansen, an alcoholic and misogynistic spellcaster, Cooke and Mack, a pair of magically-adept children, Ming, an exotic queen who shares a past with Seth, and several others. Each of them is fleshed out and provide plenty of back story to involve yourself in. In all honesty, Jansen steals the show with his drunken (and often offensive) witticisms, although they all bring something to the party.
Gameplay-wise, Lost Odyssey is a fairly by-the-numbers affair – disappointingly so. You’ll spend a lot of time wandering around small environments or navigating a world map, talking to NPC’s, and dealing with random encounters and boss battles. Compared to recent efforts like Oblivion and Bioshock, Lost Odyssey feels positively ancient. Thankfully level-grinding is kept to a minimum thanks to area-dependent level caps that prevent you from achieving character levels past a certain point, but that doesn’t make the random battles any less annoying. The boss battles themselves are great, though, and require some thought before you wade into them. Lost Odyssey contains an interesting ring-crafting system, which is actually pretty simplistic, but effective. Each ring confers special abilities that affect your character’s combat performance in some manner, making them do more damage or adding an element like fire or water to the attack. Again, it’s simple but it works.
Equipment is extremely scarce in Lost Odyssey, which is a bit of a disappointment. One of the things I like about RPG’s is the ability to kit out my PC’s any way I want, and Lost Odyssey offers precious little gear to do so. The skill system is pretty bare-bones as well; your immortal party members can learn skills and spells from the mortals, or from magic items they wear, while the mortals can only learn a pre-determined path of skills, and don’t retain the ones that come wtih magic items. It’s kind of a let-down, really. Hardcore RPG tinkerers will probably be a bit disappointed with this aspect of the game.
Graphically, Lost Odyssey is gorgeous, harnessing the capabilities of the Xbox 360 to great effect. The environments, while not staggeringly good, are attractive – and the cutscenes are amazing…which is good, since you’ll sit through a LOT of them. Lost Odyssey is a 4-disc game, and it uses every spare kilobyte of storage on those DVD’s, I’m sure.
Composer Nobuo Uematsu once again joins Sakaguchi to bring Sakaguchi’s worlds to life, and it goes without saying that his work here is exemplary. Mixing classical tones with techno and straightforward rock, Uematsu shows he is still at the top of his game. In a way, Uematsu’s music serves as the most apparent touchstone for fans of the Final Fantasy series, giving the game a welcome sense of familiarity for those following Sakaguchi and Uematsu from those titles.
I’d be lying if I said Lost Odyssey wasn’t a great game. It is exactly what Sakaguchi intended. If you find yourself pining for a good, old-fashioned Japanese RPG on the 360, Lost Odyssey delivers in spades. If you’re expecting something that takes the genre in new and unexpected directions, this game is most assuredly not it.
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