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Excellent design, poor translation

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 51
Date: February 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Given the low number of RPG's available on the 360, I've been anticipating this game for quite some time now. Suffice to say, I was excited when I first popped the game in. From the art design to the seamless transition between cut scenes and player-controlled combat, the introduction was impressive. Though I didn't have access to skills or magic yet, the combat system seemed to be enjoyable.

My problem with the game occurred shortly after Kaim arrives at Uhra. I was starting to get a bit worried while watching the cut scenes featuring the debating Uhra Council. The dialogue just seemed...wooden. I don't know if it was the voice actors or the writing itself that irked me. It was probably a combination of both. Come to think of it, the only voice actor I was truly impressed with was the one that played Jansen. But I tried to ignore it. After all, I've played decent RPG's that have had their share of wooden dialogue.

The situation became impossible to ignore by the time Kaim had his first flashback of the past. I was initially hopeful. The brief cut scene was intense and emotional. It worked. But then the game launched into a bloated short story. The next five minutes were filled with screen after screen of text that transitioned in and out like it belonged in a PowerPoint slideshow. That wasn't really the problem. It was the writing itself that rubbed me the wrong way. Do you want melodrama? Look no further, folks. This little gem read like the premise of a Lifetime movie, except it was written by an eighth grader. I'd like to think the blame lies on the translation of the game to English. Maybe the Japanese version doesn't come across this sappy.

But man, is this bad. They beat you over the head with an over-abundance of flowery adjectives and cliché metaphors, all but screaming in your ear, "This is beautiful and poetic! Feel bad for Kaim! NOW!" I am sure that some of you out there may know what I am talking about. It was the kind of writing that made me think of Christopher Paolini's Eragon novel. It read a little something like this:

"The nighttime dew glittered on the delicate crimson flowers like a thousand twinkling stars in the shadowy midnight sky, untouched by the bitter harshness of the cruel world. Kaim felt his very soul cry out in eternal pain and sorrow as he glanced at her and saw the shimmering pearly tears gliding down her beautiful milky cheeks...blah blah blah."

Do you get my drift? My friends and I groaned as we struggled through this tripe. We were relieved once it was finally over and the game resumed. But no more than ten minutes later, we were treated with YET ANOTHER flashback story that was even longer and more juvenile than the first one. Except this one didn't have the interesting cut scene before it. If I were in charge of this game's translation, I would have smacked the person that wrote this junk with a giant "Writing for Dummies" book. This prose needs some relentless red pen treatment. The emotion they are trying to pound into your skull would have been a hell of a lot more subtle and effective if they had cut out the melodramatic flab.

From what I've seen so far, they treat Kaim like he's the emo poster boy for Immortals. I understand the game is full of these "dreams" of Kaim's past. I don't think I could personally handle that, no matter how cool the other aspects of the game are.

I already know some of you may bash me for this review. You may criticize me for rating the game this low without playing it the entire way through. Save your breath. I am entitled to my opinion. I'm certainly not going to play this game the whole way through if I have to be bombarded with wishy-washy middle school creative writing projects that take me out of the story rather than immerse me.

What is my final word on the game? If you can stomach this kind of stuff without being instantly turned off, go right ahead and pick it up. I'm sure the rest of the game is really cool. As for myself, if I want a dramatic RPG, I want one that doesn't try this hard. I want one that conveys emotion without making me want to puke all over my Xbox 360. Thanks for reading.

Lost Odyssey lost the fun factor

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 14
Date: May 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It takes to long for the game to get off of the round, I think there needed to be more voice acting when roaming around the town " And the normal voice acting during the cut seens sucks, the things they say and how they say them seems cheesy a lot of the times", the dreams that you read through are fun to read but mean nothing in the story line of the game you don't even have to read them they give you no upper hand for events to come just good reading. During most of the game which I haven't finished because I keep falling asleep during the boring game play between the crappy cut seens is just that boring there is no spice in this game the story line is good but the game play just takes away from the excitement of what is going to happen next.

Thought I was going to love this game, but it wasn't meant to be.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: May 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a game I was very much looking forward to and was practically certain I would love based on the information and user reviews. I'm all about the story and the dream sequences sounded awesome, and the plot got great reviews from many people and sounded interesting. Also, I'm a fan of old school rpg's and even looked forward to the random battles and turn based combat. Unfortunately, this game just didn't do it for me and I have pretty much lost all interest in it.

By far the biggest disappointment for me is in the story. At first it really grabbed me and seemed intriguing, but unfortunately it lost most of it's mystery and intrigue quickly as major plot points and villains are revealed way too early in the game, leaving it pretty bland and cliche afterwards. I also found many scenes that were clearly intended to capture emotions forced, contrived, and just over the top, leaving me watching the screen with a sense of detachment from the characters. The dream sequences were also disappointing. While they are indeed well written and interesting to read, there is no real connection between these dreams and the game world, creating once again a sense of detachment. Also, the dream sequences frequently go into the same contrived and over the top attempts at emotion provocation, similar to the cutscenes. For me the story is where it's at with an rpg, and this one just doesn't do it for me.

I found the battle system to be ok, but that's probably because I like the old school style. I could easily see people not liking it based on it's simplicity, but it is what it is, and does the job. So in this regard the game is fine.

Music and sound left a lot to be desired in my opinion. None of the musical scores really clicked with me much, and the voice acting was so-so. One of the problems I also had was the continual reuse of the same music during the dream sequences, and how the tracks were always used during the same type of emotional setting during the sequence. After about 5 dream sequences you can almost know what's going on with the dream just by the music. To a certain extent there does of course need to be music to accompany a story, but the problem I am getting at is that after 10 dream sequences using the same set of musical tracks, it just gets predictable and grating.

Graphics are top notch, there is no denying that, the game is beautiful and the characters are gorgeous. Another point that I will bring up is that exploring cities can be pretty fun, with the multitude of hidden items and such.

This game has it's positives and negatives, but unfortunately for me the negatives outweigh the positives. I very much wanted to love this game, and expected to, but reality is what it is. Many people seem to enjoy the game, however, so if you're reading this review I wouldn't avoid the game simply on my opinions. Perhaps the game will connect with you, but for me it just wasn't meant to be.

Average old school RPG with a next-gen paint job

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 45
Date: February 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Lost Odyssey may be a next-gen game, but its roots are definitely in the old school world of turn-based, RPG gaming. Lost Odyssey follows the story of Kaim: a brooding immortal on a mission of self-discovery. Or something. The story is kind of hard to follow, with prolonged sequences that attempt to flesh out the game's story and characters. The characters of Lost Odyssey themselves are great and interesting on their own, but they're stuck in a run of the mill story we've seen in RPG's before, and will more than likely see again. The game's turn-based combat is where the real meat and potatoes of Lost Odyssey is to be found though, with some great animations and some excellent uses of spells and skills development. What really hurts Lost Odyssey though is that the non-battle gameplay elements are just plain boring. You'll feel as if you're doing a ton of backtracking throughout the game, which is nothing new to the RPG world, but here it just seems more noticeable than anything else. Also, there are some really long loading times that populate throughout the game and detract from the gameplay experience, along with some technical issues and frame-rate problems that pop-up from time to time. Flaws aside, Lost Odyssey is a mostly gorgeous, lengthy, turn-based RPG that long time fans of the genre should get some enjoyment out of, just don't expect anything real special here.

Familiar Territory

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 19
Date: February 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The turn-based RPG has been languishing for a long time, and fans of the genre will not be disappointed in Lost Odyssey. The game is an X-Box exclusive, but developed by Mistwalker and headed up by Hironobu Sakaguchi, who created the original Final Fantasy games. The result is that Lost Odyssey is extremely familiar - almost to the point of being derivative - of those golden games.

Lost Odyssey follows the 1001th year of Kaim, an immortal who's fighting to regain 1000 years of lost memories. Along the way he meets other immortals in the same situation and mortals who have been caught up in the immortal lives. Early on you discover that there's a mastermind behind the immortals' missing memories, and you pursue that mastermind for answers and revenge.

Lost Odyssey features 4 disks - 4! This isn't just graphics overload, there is a lot of story and content to go through in the game. The visuals are stunning, as to be expected, but you really need a high-def TV to appreciate them. I have a 32 TV, but it's not high-def, and I can barely read the menus or pick out pots and treasure chests in the landscape. All of the character designs are beautiful, apart from Kaim's, who has an annoying strand of hair in front of his face that I would love to take some scissors to. Kaim's 1000 years of history leave the doors wide open for writers, who oblige us with memorable short stories in text-only "dream" sequences. I actually found the English voice acting and script more engaging and suitable for the characters than the Japanese voice acting cast and writing. The orchestral score is top-notch, and very reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII and Radiata Stories (Nobuo Uematsu wrote music for both Lost Odyssey and Final Fantasy VII).

The gameplay features some new ideas. Your active party consists of 5 players arranged in a front and back row. The front row's hit points determine the "Guard Condition" of the party, or how much damage reduction is available for the back row. The enemies also have this advantage, so your tactics must be planned accordingly.

Immortals can learn new skills from mortals and accessories. Mortals only gain new skills based on level. It's very addictive to build skills for your immortals this way. You accumulate new skills quickly, and there's no limit to how many skills you can learn - just how many you can equip. Theoretically, your immortals can learn every skill in the game.

Parts for enhancement rings are scattered across the world. Ring crafting is the sole crafting mechanic in the game. Recipes for enhancement rings are automatically unlocked as you collect the required components. Equipping enhancement rings will give your melee characters the ability to apply status effects, increased damage types, and other effects. The ring system gives your character an additional action to time while attacking - you must hold down the right trigger as an outer ring contracts onto an inner ring, and release the trigger as both rings overlap. The better you are at this, the more effect your equipped ring will have.

Though there are some unique aspects to the gameplay, there are many turn-based RPG conventions that are used in the game, including all of the annoying conventions you hoped were dead and gone forever.

You only have 3 of the maximum 5 characters for most of the first disk, and the pattern-style boss fights are incredibly difficult and unbalanced when compared to the monsters you fight before each boss. I suspect that they specifically designed the game with the assumption that every player would have a game guide, and still want to make the game challenging for those players. The result is that the early boss fights are only conquered through perfect tactics and dumb luck. The game doesn't become enjoyable until you obtain at least 5 characters. No game should ever have a trial period that lasts 1/4 of the game.

There are plenty of in-area annoyances, including gathering, block-moving, guard-capture and maze puzzles - most of these are in areas that include random monster encounters. At one point in the game, there's a funeral, which is completed with three minigames. How tasteless.

The turn-based system and skill system leave much to be desired. You must enter all of your actions at the beginning of the turn, so they may be completely invalidated by enemy actions intermixed with your own, and there's not a lot you can do to plan for this or predict when your turn will complete relative to an enemy's. There is a big discrepancy in mana cost vs. effect for spells - you're usually better off using the lowest-ranked spells for maximum effect, since the higher-ranked spells are so expensive and only slightly more effective. The ring system is also a little ineffectual. As with most classic RPGs, status ailments still have a tiny percentage of being applied to enemies. (But enemies seem to have no problem hitting you with them all the time.)

Annoyances like this are tolerated for our favorite turn-based RPGs because we're rewarded with amazing story and character development. Lost Odyssey's commercials may feature "White Rabbit," but there's not a lot that's surreal or dark about this game. The immortals initially suffer from one-dimensional personalities due to their lack of memories, and it takes quite a while for us to sympathize with them. The dream sequences are hit-or-miss: a lot of them read like drippy, mediocre fan fiction, but some of them are quite moving. The characters are mostly adults, which is refreshing - no more rites of passage or whiny teenagers with identity crises. But many of the characters often fall into the RPG character paradigms - spunky thief girl, strong silent tank man, jerky sidekick type, a naive princess on her first adventure.

Apart from its flaws, Lost Odyssey is an artful, decent game. It takes a long while to get started, but you will be emotionally involved in the story and engaged with the few new gameplay mechanics. But if you're a fan of the genre, chances are you will play this game and be nostalgic for older releases that do the same thing, but better.

An Odyssey that should have stayed Lost

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 13
Date: March 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

When I first picked Lost Odyssey up, I expected to be swept up in an epic storyline involving heavy emotional and political intrigue--I was sorely disappointed. What you have instead is a watered down version of an otherwise good plot; the story itself is fine, but the presentation ruined it.

Take for instance the main bad guy: Gongora. Not only is he probably the least terrifying villain in the history of RPGs (complete with cliched evil laugh) but the overall difficulty of the game makes you want to laugh at him. Lost Odyssey is absurdly easy, I'm on the fourth disc and have only ramped up 21 hours of game time: compare that to something like Final Fantasy IX (at least 40 hours) and you have one short, easy yawn fest.

The rest of the cast isn't too memorable either. There is, most likely, only one line spoken that stood out--the rest faded into the background as melodramatic "imma gonna get chu!" or "imma gonna save u!" dribble. The line is spoken by Seth towards the beginning (you'll know it when you hear it). Characters are also often introduced too hastily or without reason, I can probably pick out at least 3 characters that, if removed from the cast, would not have any real impact on the story.

For instance, when Kaim meets his daughter for the first time in years, the whole thing suddenly breaks down into a tear fest for the next 2 hours of gameplay or so. The whole event comes way too fast--just as players are getting used to Kaim--and so we kind of just look on and say "well, okay, what the blazes does this have to do with anything?"

Humor is injected into the script at the wrong times, and often the constant jests become simply annoying and false sounding.

All this culminates into the fact that when the game FINALLY gets challenging enough you'll go from aggravation to mild disinterest in a short span of time.

It's not terrible, but, it just does so many things wrong.

I wouldn't buy it unless you are a very patient person...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 31, 2008
Author: Amazon User

First, I'll say that I do consider myself an avid RPG gamer. Second, I want to say that I've owned this game for about five months and I haven't played it in about 4 and a half... Usually, when I get a new RPG; I look forward to getting home from work and annoying the wife until she allows me to play the game non-stop for hours! This game, unfortunately, does not have that kind of allure. The graphics are great, the battle system is spot on... The game is just really, really tedious. You get sent on a lot of weird, boring, non-pertinent side quests whether you like it or not! FFXII was cool, because you were able to choose when you wanted to waste time on useless shenanigans, in this one you don't. I would even give the story a 4 out of five stars, but it is really lacking in something. I honestly can't put my finger on it, but the game should have been a lot better. It kind of seems nostalgic in the way it's put forth, which is cool, but it's got to be more than that to make it a great game. Hell, you might like it... I don't, though.

Impressions

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: May 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It had been awhile since I'd dug into a traditional Final Fantasy type turn-based RPG. The last was FF XII, which was an experience right up there at the top of the scale for video games. Naturally, then, I had high hopes for this "next-gen" game from the minds of the FF crew.

I turned out to be a little disappointed, though. Lost Odyssey has none of the polish that made FF XII what it was. Voice acting is surprisingly mediocre, the world is not as fleshed out (although it is still better than most RPGs, a la Final Fantasy), and the combat system is somewhat archaic. Much closer to FF X than FF XII. Why the creators should choose to abandon what was such a winning system is beyond me.

In truth, there is nothing at all next-gen about this game, excepting only graphics. They're very impressive, and beg the player to zoom the camera to take a closer look (which is always rewarded with high-res models).

But there is good to this game. The premise, which pits immortality against mortality, and illustrates the "blessing" of mortality (an ability to pursue specific goals and dreams within a finite amount of time - something this current culture kind of needs to hear) is intriguing, and the flagship character's struggle with this is meaningful. The dreams also, while possibly too much for some players, can be touching. This game tries to tug at the heartstrings and makes a theme of human nature, and at its best it does that well, making it powerful enough to remember. Unfortunately it doesn't always do so well, and some aspects are surprisingly unrefined.

This is a game which needed more work, pure and simple. Is it a meaningful piece of work? Definitely. Is it a little disappointing? Yes - unless your gaming standards are not very high. If Final Fantasy XII had not risen to shine over and above this game in almost every aspect, it could rest comfortably with my recommendation. As it is... play it, but adjust your expectations.

2 me the game is boring

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: July 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Way too many cut screens; the first two hours of the game are touture. The camera angles are horrible. You have to keep pressing the a button to get through all the blabbering just to get to the turn based fighting. bordem.

im so glad i rented from blockbuster. I wont give 1 star because that would be unfair. Its a great game if you like this style of RPG.

Getting Lost in an Odyssey

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 64 / 72
Date: February 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

One prominent feature of JRPGs is the emo male protagonist. Only a handful of games break this mold. One such game would be Lunar: Silver Star Story and Eternal Blue. While Lunar held to the same themes as most JRPGs by discussing the importance of friendship, the battle of Good versus Evil, it maintained a general sense of joviality. Even when things inevitably went dark, the characters kept their happy-go-lucky attitude.

Lost Odyssey is the antithesis of Lunar.

Kaim is your typical tortured soul protagonist, except that, unlike most others who write bad poetry while metaphorically slitting their wrists and bemoaning their wretched life, he actually has a reason to be. He's an immortal, apparently cursed to live forever and has already lived 1,000 years. So, when the game begins with a climactic battle involving a meteor, he's had many lifetimes of sorrow, guilt, death and tragedy that would obviously make anyone's existence incredibly dour. If you're a sucker for sad stories, Kaim's tale will undoubtably tug at your heart strings.

Basically, two stories are going on at once in Lost Odyssey. There's the current story that I'll get to in a bit. There's also the back story that comes flitting through in written form every once in awhile. You see, Kaim suffers from another JRPG staple: the amnesiac hero. He, and other immortals like him, don't remember much about their past for some reason. And so, as Kaim continues his quest, events will trigger memories and you have the option of reading them. These little vignettes are written by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, an award-winning Japanese novelist, and it shows.

These 34 stories, in fact, often overshadow the main story line. The main quest involves discovering why Kaim and the other immortals are amnesiac and they quickly become embroiled in a political landscape more polarizing than the current times we live in. A few different countries eye each other ominously and one of the main points of contention comes down to technology and magic. Add in some political backstabbing and enough emotional baggage to sink the Titanic and you basically have the very interesting and mature story in a nutshell.

The combat is typical JRPG; turn-based and random. Eschewing their previous game's encounter system (Blue Dragon), Lost Odyssey has plenty of random encounters. Fortunately, with the exception of a few areas, the encounters aren't as frequent as they have been in some games. A couple additions to the combat and leveling system add to the thrill. For instance, taking a cue from Shadow Hearts, you can equip various "Rings" on characters which will add various abilities to their attacks. The twist is that you have to trigger these additions by holding the right trigger and releasing it as a big circle perfectly shrinks to match a smaller circle. This little homage to Shadow Hearts should be expected since Feel Plus, a studio working with Mistwalker on this title, is comprised of some ex-Sacnoth employees who had created the Shadow Hearts series.

The leveling system is also pretty interesting as you have Immortals who don't learn skills when they level and Mortals who do. Consequently, you can "skill link" an Immortal to a specific Mortal Skill and learn it eventually. This creates an interesting dynamic where you want to have Mortals and Immortals in your party to gain their knowledge and also to have them level up. The one complaint I have is that members not in your party don't automatically gain experience. And due to the fact that you'll want your mortals to level so you can learn more skills, you'll constantly be flipping your formation around (you can have five members in your party at a time).

From a sound perspective, Lost Odyssey surprised me. The score from Final Fantasy mainstay Nobuo Uematsu is familiar and different, bringing to mind some of his excellent compositions from Final Fantasy. Meanwhile, this is one of the few JRPGs to offer a Japanese vocal track if you'd like to listen to that...and it's one of the only games where I don't want it. The English vocal staff is excellent for the most part. I really, really like it and the dialogue is (mostly) written well.

So there's obviously a big elephant in the room. Lost Odyssey is very reminiscient of Final Fantasy which is to be expected since you have Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of the entire Final Fantasy series, and his cohort in musical crime onboard. Then you add in the fact that Feel Plus is made of ex-Sacnoth employees who were, in turn, former Square employees...and you have the recipe for a game that's pretty close to Square's long-winded series.

Along with the aforementioned party-swapping to level, a few other complaints bring the score down. For one, there's a lot of load times. And load times during cut scenes which is a huge no-no in my book. The frame rate does take a few dips every so often and while it's not a deal-breaker, it is noticeable. And the beautiful graphics are often marred with aliasing issues, resulting in what's called "jaggies." Combat also takes awhile to load into, as the game shows you various images, then the main characters are introduced before finally showing the enemies and the battle starts. All of this is to hide the load times, I'm sure, but it slows combat down a lot.

Ultimately, though, the complaints are minor nuisances in what is a great addition to the JRPG line. It's fun, mature, dark and sad, sometimes all at once. Unfortunately, Lost Odyssey seems to be taking a beating in the mainstream gaming press who have said it's "soooo old fashioned," a claim that probably wouldn't be made if you switch the words "Lost" and "Odyssey" with "Final" and "Fantasy" with some roman numeral...maybe with a dash and a number.

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