Well it has been quite sometime since Microsoft has been shining about the father of the Final Fantasy series making exclusive games for their own console. Hironobu Sakaguchi’s effort in trying to make Microsoft feel right at home seems to have been met with both criticism and praise.
Their effort with Blue Dragon was received heavily with criticisms than praise. The problem was that there was a lot left to be desired out of a game like Blue Dragon. It could neither make you salivate nor could it make you cry. It was a half-hearted attempt to give the Xbox 360 a JRPG to deal with.
Lost Odyssey is another attempt to craft a game that tries to emulate the success of prominent JRPGs, best described as an effort to bring out a Final Fantasy to the Xbox 360, although it isn’t quite a defining moment since the game is aimed at – A). A hardcore JRPG audience, it is more of a region specific game than a game that would encompass more casual RPGish crowd, like a game like Mass effect did.
Kiam Argonar is an immortal who has no memory of his past. He wanders around a world that was infested by a power called “Magic energy”. He has lived through a thousand years and has traversed from one battlefield to another. He has been assigned by the Council Of The Republic of Uhra to investigate a project commissioned by Councilman Gongora called the Grand Staff and its relation to some unusual occurrences (a meteor crash) that may have been caused due to the Grand Staff.
The game plays out like any traditional JRPG of the past. Most JRPG addicts heavily fed on a diet of Final Fantasy, will feel right at home. The turn-based combat, the epic and somewhat disjointed story, the way the characters have been rendered, all in true Japanese style, although the dialogue has been carried forward beautifully in English especially the “Thousand year dream” feature.
This “Thousand year dream” feature is a collection of stories, since Kaim suffers from perpetual amnesia and cannot remember too much from his past. These dreams that were a part of Kiam’s past, are triggered off once he sees and interacts certain objects. The stories are pretty well written if you actually get down to read them i.e., since it feels quite taxing at times to read something that is 10-12 pages off screen that has no relation nor does it affect the plot of the game. Apart from the fact that you begin to understand your character much better and since I love reading stuff I liked it, although they could have made it more interactive. We are a part of the big next generation so a bit of interactivity wouldn’t hurt.
The gameplay mechanics are a little refined from the traditional JRPG, strategy is almost quintessential in most parts of the battle. Your party that consists of both humans and immortals are divided into two lines when you faced with opponents. Dubbed as the “Wall System”, there is a front line of defense and a secondary line, so you actually need to think a bit before jumping into every battle with the same formation set, because as the game progresses, the boss battles in particular require quite a bit of thought and before pressing the “A” button. Your characters can be equipped with all the regular items and jazz quite akin to a traditional JRPG.
The addition made to Lost Odyssey is “The Aim Ring System”, which are basically enhancement rings. When a party member equipped with a ring system attacks an enemy, a targeting ring appears around the enemy, pressing the right trigger causes the ring to shrink around the enemy. If this technique is timed right then the rings effect increases the damage inflicted upon the enemy.
Technically speaking, this game suffers from quite a number of frame-rate issues during the cutscenes based on the Unreal 3.0. Even the transition from pre-rendered to rendered suffers from frame rate drop outs. Certain battles also show a minor slowdown (extremely rare though). There is one very subtle element that has been missed out by most reviews so far, interactivity. Unlike most JRPGs of the last generation, this one actually has real time interactivity thanks to the use of the Unreal Engine. The park in the very beginning of the game for instance has swings and a round about that moves along like it would in real life.
Load times are also an issue, I have never seen these many loading screens this generation on any game so far and it does get a little annoying since it pulls you out of the action and immersion factor making the experience disjointed at most times.
The game does an excellent job with sound score composed by Nobuo Uematsu, chilling and dark at times to happy and joyous describing the heart-wrenching tale. The game wraps up in approximately 40-50 hours, which is again your staple diet for any JRPG game.
FINAL VERDICT:
The game is worth buying only if you have been deprived of your staple JRPGs for an eternity or have lapped up all the JRPGs on that appeared on your PS2, beyond that it’s nothing spark-tacular to die for this game.
-Neelesh Mukherjee