Xbox Focus - Clarity Awaits You

Lost Odyssey

by Alex Yusupov March 16th 2008 3:06 PM EDT3 Comments

Oh Lost Odyssey, the flak you’ve received for not being innovative or having a story that’s much too complex for the feeble minds of Halo-driven reviewers! It’s time, my friend, that you receive the credit you deserve!

Alright, enough of that. Lost Odyssey really is an amazing game. The Xbox 360 rarely finds itself a good RPG anymore. After the disgrace of Oblivion, a few originals like Eternal Sonata, and the sheer brilliance of Mass Effect, there’s really nothing left to see except countless shooters and racers, making any RPG fan bored out of his or her mind.

Luckily, there’s Lost Odyssey to whisk that boredom away. The game begins with one of the most epic cut scenes in history. Two rival nations duke it out on a huge wasteland as the protagonist, Kaim, persists to dish out a can of whoop-ass as he annihilates anything he comes into contact with. His comrades, however, do not share his fortune. Most are quickly decimated by odd-looking machines and countless devices that propel huge swords (think Cloud’s Buster Sword huge) through the air. From the looks of things, it’s not fun being impaled by them.

After an easy boss battle, the game takes away control from you and decides it’s time to make all your efforts pointless. Within seconds after defeating the boss, a massive meteor hits the wasteland and kills practically everybody. Lucky for Kaim, though, he’s immortal. The game puts you back in control as you traverse what’s left of the battlefield and fight hordes of weird, mutated zombies.

Eventually, of course, you are rescued by a few of your surviving allies and engage in a story so wonderfully eloquent that you won’t be able to put down the controller ‘till you’re done.

Controls are fairly simple in the game, and anybody that has played a turn-based RPG in the past will instinctively know what to do here. The only odd aspect is the character control on the field. It is very difficult and awkward to maneuver Kaim throughout his journey, and the odd camera doesn’t help.

Battling in the game is simple enough. Like I mentioned before, it’s all turn-based, but there is no ATB Gauge (meaning it’s not in real-time or any sort of pseudo-real-time). The battling is actually very reminiscent of Final Fantasy X. Dealing damage is a huge variable. Sometimes you dish out a whopping 300, while at other times it’s a mere 50 points. Of course there are elemental weaknesses and such, and a “ring-system” where you need to time and aim directly at the center of a ring around your enemy to achieve a “perfect” attack, which dishes out more damage and special effects. All in all, battling is fairly simple and takes maybe an hour at most to master.

Any simplicity found in battling, however, is not at all present in character building. In terms of making your characters stronger, leveling and equipment management are very important. In addition, however, is a little thing called skill-linking, which you will find to be very aggravating and unnecessary.

When all is said and done, the gameplay introduces absolutely nothing new. At first, you’ll think it’s bad, but then you will realize that it’s better to take a tried and true technique and make it better than introduce a completely new idea that could possibly screw up an entire game (leveling up in Oblivion, anybody?).

What really stands out in Lost Odyssey isn’t supposed to be the gameplay, anyway. What make it really shine are the beautiful graphics and the superb musical score, the latter of which is created by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu himself. The music fits the game perfectly, and makes everything flow more smoothly. The graphics, in turn, create beautiful landscapes and lush cities filled with hundreds of interactive NPCs. As always, though, the folks at Mistwalker decided it would be better to have the main characters sport some of the wackiest clothing you’ll ever see. Our protagonist Kaim has some very feminine armor that will make you begin to question his true gender.

Transvestites aside, the game is written beautifully. From the witty banter, to the hilarious antics of some of the characters, this game has it all when it comes to a brilliant script. Throughout the campaign, Kaim gets flashbacks and dreams that trigger a wonderfully written short story called “A Thousand Years of Dreams.” While finding and reading these is completely up to you, I found them to be very enthralling. Besides, finding all 30 lands you an easy achievement, if you enjoy whoring out for those things.

Speaking of achievement, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an RPG with ones easier to obtain than those in Lost Odyssey. Good thing, too, because nobody wants to detract from their playing experience to find 1,000 pieces of a puzzle or something like that.

A game like Lost Odyssey is one in a million. While the gameplay has nothing new to offer gamers, the storytelling is completely unique, and developers elsewhere should take an example from Sakaguchi and his team at Mistwalker as to how accomplish such an amazing feat.

• Send to Friend
• Digg
• Newsvine
• Del.icio.us
• Read Full Story