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Beautiful game with one huge flaw...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

To start off, I'd like to say that I loved Odin Sphere. I searched all over my town for a copy of the game and I was elated when I finally got my hands on one. When I first started up my game, I instantly fell in love with it, and enjoyed every moment...until Cornelius' storyline. In his storyline, the boss fights are great and there are enemies everywhere which happens to be the reason this game can't get five stars. The slowdown is AGONIZING. There was one particular boss fight that involves a dragon that spits out trash and sucks it back up. This fight was the reason that I gave up on the game and traded it back in, it is THAT BAD. I recommend that if you plan to buy this game, either get a PS3 or a boatload of patience, because you will need it. Otherwise, the game is great. The story is very intriguing, the characters are deep, and the music is wonderful. If you can deal with the excrutiating slowdown, I recommend giving this game a chance.

The most fun I've had with a video game in a long time...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Odin Sphere is simply a great game. This side-scrolling, hack and slash, RPG, is one of the best games for the PS2, if you like that sorta thing. The 2D graphics will take you back to the good ol' Sega Genesis days, and thats not a bad thing!

Its strengths are its gameplay (if you like side-scrolling hack & slash/Action RPGs), the music & sound in the game is very good. Odin Sphere is very original in many aspects and a very odd game, which is a good thing, its different and I like that. (example: During, after or before a battle you can plant seeds so they can grow into trees so then they can produce fruit for you to eat, which gains experience...) The boss battles are simply awesome, most of the bosses take up nearly the whole screen and are difficult to beat. As the story progresses, you'll eventually end up using 5 different characters, which have different skills and weapons. You can even make potions in the game, which will help you in battle.

I have only a few dislikes with Odin Sphere, which prevents it from being 5 out of 5 stars. At times it can almost be too difficult, and has no difficulty option. I consider myself pretty good at games, in general, and there has been times in this game where I would die nearly 6-7 times in the same stage, having to restart the stage each time. It can be frustrating to lose in a stage where there is a ton of monsters, because you'll have to restart the stage when you die, which means having to battle the same monsters all over again. My only other complaints are that I wish the stages were longer, that there were more stages/areas/levels, and more boss battles.

All in all this game gets 4 stars overall from me. I hope to see a sequel to this game.

Total garbage

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 13
Date: April 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

What idiot decided to label this abomination an RPG? Because it isn't. It's a mediocre 2-D sidescrolling beat-em-up with some RPG elements poorly integrated into the game engine. And by 2-D, I mean really 2-D. You can move forward and backwards, and jump. You can't move up and down, something that has been standard in beat-em-ups since the NES.

Sure, the graphics are good, but that doesn't mean anything when the game is monotonous and annoying. The game engine is hardwired for contradictory goals. To get more HP, you need to use healing items. But to get good items from a level, you must win fights without getting hurt, which obviates the need for healing items. I also never saw any results from levelling up my weapon.

The game was also shipped with what I consider a showstopper bug. Neat trick: Go into a tutorial that involves picking items up with a full inventory. Since your inventory is full, you can't pick anything up, so you can't progress in the tutorial. And since you're in a tutorial, you can't drop anything. You're stuck.

I played this game once, put it on a shelf, and traded it for store credit against Growlanser: Heritage of War a month later. I find the fact that Sony refused to publish Ys I & II Eternal in America because it was 2-D when it allows 2-D games like this, which are inherently inferior, to be an insult.

Great Old School Side Scrolling

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Odin Sphere is a great game, fun to play with AMAZING graphics. It feels like your playing a children's painting. The story is well written and draws you in. Even if it starts as the typical RPG fair. At least nobody is missing their memory. All in all a great game, works great on a PS3 too. If you can grab a copy definitely worth a buy.

Vastly Underrated

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This may be the most beautiful game ever made. The art is like none other and is so detailed it's amazing. There are less than a dozen areas to visit in this game, yet every time I returned with a different character, they never got old or repetitive. The same with the bosses. Each of the five characters are a different experience to play, although they are all in the same overall plot. Areas are set up as "stages" connecting together shown on the map as circles and are rated by difficulty from 1 to 5 as well as shops and bosses. I liked this set up because it was simple and told me exactly what I was getting into before I got there. The option to play using the original Japanese voice track was a big plus for me as well. I was skeptical of the growing and cooking food aspect of this game at first, but it is actually fun and easy. The only minuses are occasional long load times and slowdown. There is one boss battle where the slowdown is huge, but the battle is still doable on each character. Likewise when there are a lot of enemies on screen it can slow a little. It's a little annoying but is only a real problem with that specific boss. Odin Sphere follows a linear path so that you never have to guess where to go next which makes it easy to play and yet still challenging. It's a shame that this game hasn't gotten all the recognition it deserves.

Holy Crap!!! A great side-scroller!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the best 2-D side scroller since Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Talk about a welcome relief. When you get tired of all those first person shooters or huge combo-centeric 3-D adventures, this is the game for you.

Graphically, there hasn't been a better game on the PS2. I play this on my HDTV through my PS3 and it looks stunning. The gameplay is easy to learn, but surprisingly deep. It has those RPG elements to it, but the game doesn't get bogged down by these. All of this provides for some very smoothe gameplay.

Throughout the game, you play as five different characters whose stories are divided into five separate books. They do play in the same levels with many of the same bosses. This isn't such a bad thing as each character is fundamentally diffeent and this keeps the gameplay active.

I spent about 30 hours playing this game and found this to be time well spent. Playing this will evoke imagery and feelings of the games that were played in the NES era, but on a beautiful, sweeping scale.

Beautifully Clumsy and Overrated

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: February 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

While I give this game points for the absolutely beautiful -and unique- graphics, I just can't bear to slug my way through the entire game.

Let's take a moment to talk about the game's most distinguished merit: Graphics. Now, just because the graphics are my favourite part of this game doesn't mean that you should expect the most "advanced" visuals. What is great about what you will see is that you probably haven't seen anything quite like it.

Sure, you've played sidescrollers and seen Japanese-style cartoon characters but screenshots just don't tell the whole story here. The characters have a motion that somehow allows a 2D cartoon character to come alive. Beyond that, there is just an enormous amount of detail poured into the environments that you just don't see in other 2D realms.

That said, there are just a number of flaws that bring this would-be giant to its knees. I'll only focus on the most important: Gameplay. Be prepared to be frustrated. When you first start out, you will be puzzled by seemingly unresponsive button presses. As you play you will learn that presses just don't register while the character is carrying out the current action. What this amounts to is slowly and carefully timing your buttons with the animations, which is incredibly counter intuitive and clumsy- especially when you have five to ten bad guys bum-rushing you at high speed. Your natural tendency is to mash away, which will ultimately result in your demise.

In the end, this game may be worth the bargain price, but only as a whimsical (and short) diversion for those dry spells between major new releases.

Summary:
Beautiful art meets clumsy controls

Pros:
-Absolutely wonderful art and animations
-Unique concept of combining action and RPG elements (albeit not masterfully executed)

Cons:
-Frustratingly clumsy controls
-Repetitive level design

Repetative yet Rewarding

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: January 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

With the raving success of Disgaea, a score of similar RPG-infused action and tactics games were seen fit to localize by Atlus and other game developers. But success of these hand-drawn, anime-reminiscent, high-fantasy games has been spotty at best. Odin Sphere is a solid action-RPG release, hearkening back to classics like Valkyrie Profile. It's a beautiful, story-rich, side-scrolling crafting game disguised as a battle between fairies and demons.

I say it's a crafting game, since a good 50% of your time will be spent crafting food and potions and otherwise managing your inventory. Your character has two channels for character development: weapon level and hitpoint level. The monsters you kill yield phozons, which you can absorb to level up your weapon. Or you can leave the phozons floating around, and they will be absorbed by seeds you collect and plant. Your planted seeds become fruit (and sheep!) trees. Eating food is the only way to level up your hit points. Later in the game, you can collect different types of food and bring them to the pookas - a rabbit-like people. For a small fee, the pookas will make your food into delicious meals with better stats.

The battles are a little tough, and require some coordination to fight in every point of the 2-d plane. Monsters will come at you in enormous groups and they won't conveniently stop, split up, or take cover. You do have to manage your power - if you attack too frequently, you can run out and become exhausted, which renders you unable to fight or act for a short period of time (and those monsters won't stop coming at you while you're exhausted). Leveling up your weapon gives you new magic skills in addition to making your basic attacks more powerful. You must gather phozons to cast spells, so dedicating all your phozons to growing food isn't a great idea. Battle actions aren't instantaneous, so if you need to heal or gather in the middle of a battle while the monsters are coming at you, it's generally a good idea to run a good ways away first. How well you do in battles determines what treasures drop at the end of each level.

There are 5 main characters in Odin Sphere. All live within the same world and time period, and their stories meld together nicely. Each character has their own special weapon and different kinds of attacks. Every character moves differently, too: some characters have wings, some fight solely in melee range, and some have special jumps. The stories are compelling and grand, though a little humorless. I appreciate that the characters aren't always the most noble or heroic warriors. It's often the case that a boss you fight within one story becomes the next character you play.

The major criticism that can be leveled against Odin Sphere is repetition. For 5 characters and 5 story lines, you visit the same areas with the same monsters over and over again. New game mechanics are not introduced in subsequent characters - you learn them all with your first character. This is a great way to develop cheaply and focus your resources on the story and art. For Odin Sphere, it's pretty obvious that this is where all the time and care went into the game. However, your characters are different enough that the game remains fresh between the stories. You get new food and potion recipes all the time, and the recipes you learn don't vanish when you start playing through another character and story.

The result is that by your second or third character, you know how to control your character and the best way to defeat certain monsters, so the game becomes a kill-and-collect fest, regularly interrupted by stunning art and story. The combat may be a bit too shallow for some. The collection may be too tedious for others. But I appreciate eliminating a screen full of poisonous frogs with my fairy-gun in three seconds flat, and being rewarded with lamb chops and a story of treason, dragons, wizards, and intrigue.

Overrated

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: January 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

"Odin Sphere" has garnered a LOT of acclaim. Indeed, it's graphical design has made for a unique game, as the colorful 2-D images come to life like no other I (or anyone else, judging by the stellar reviews) have ever seen. The game has a deep story.

Unfortunately, it's not very fun to play. Moreover, it is incredibly difficult. Now, difficulty isn't a bad thing in a game, but this one really takes the cake in that regard. Some bosses are absolutely murderous, forcing the player to power up incessantly (both to increase strength as well as garner funds for powerful items). Moreover, running back and forth on a 2-D plain, slashing at enemies attacking in the air and on the ground, isn't exactly an original idea.

I don't want to spoil any of the story, as it was strong and often helped an otherwise poor offering. But all in all, I would wait for this game to hit the twenty dollar bin. At fifty bucks, it just doesn't deliver.

odinspheare

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: January 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

tHIS GAME HAS GOOD GRAPHICS AND IS FUN TO PLAY. BUT IT REALLY NEEDS A STRATAGY GUIDE OR SOMETHING TO USE TO GET STARTED.

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