Lost Odyssey

7.5
Good

Gameplay	7.5	"Lost Odyssey looks and sounds great. "
Graphics	9.0
Sound	9.0
Value	7.0

By Sherrin English

If the latest three Japanese RPGs on the Xbox360 are of any indication, the PS3 seems to be losing its monopoly on the genre. But not only has the Xbox360 got the quantity, but the quality of its JRPGs is also something that Sony will have to watch closely if it’s hoping to launch any sort of competition. Lost Odyssey is no exception.

With Final Fantasy greats Hironobu Sakaguchi producing and Nobuo Uematsu composing, you could be forgiven for thinking that Lost Odyssey might be merely a Final Fantasy game wearing a different skin. But a Final Fantasy game it is not. And while Lost Odyssey does have its negatives, its positives far exceed them.

Using the Unreal 3 engine, Lost Odyssey is far from lacking graphically, and that becomes apparent immediately as the game begins. Two armies are in deadly combat and we see it all in vivid detail, from the armies' strangely shaped uniforms and weird headgear to the face of an individual soldier as he falls and is trodden into the mud.

Suddenly the ‘sky’ breaks open and molten rocks and boiling lava pour out over the battlefield. There is only one survivor: our hero, Kaim Argonar, who is an immortal.

Lost Odyssey’s story, although sometimes a little obvious, is rather compelling, and it’s told mainly through the interaction of characters, cutscenes of varying length, and a series of short stories entitled ‘A Thousand Years of Dreams’. Kaim’s ‘dreams’ are, as stated, a thousand years of his suppressed memories and their content is triggered by certain sounds and places.

The stories are told using a minimum of visual content, gorgeous background melodies and copious writing, but done in a decorative way. While some will undoubtedly find reading these allegories tedious, I found them a refreshingly unique way to get the point across in a medium that’s predominantly visual.

That’s not to say that the graphics of Lost Odyssey aren’t good; they are. Astonishingly so. From the scenery to the characters' costumes, everything looks gorgeous and is lavishly detailed, and the often-used split screen for close-ups is an excellent way to show off both views. Unfortunately, compared to their outfits, the characters' faces are somewhat static and bland and they have few expressions to convey meaning to their words.

Lost Odyssey’s sound is excellent. There is plenty of variety in the soundtrack and there were a couple of instances where the music, rather than the on-screen visuals, held my attention. The soothing panpipes when you pull up the world map is one of those moments, and I found myself anticipating when I would next get to look at the map. The voice acting ranges from excellent to mediocre, with Michael McGaharn as Jansen Friedh, the roughish layabout mage, being the pick of the bunch.

Lost Odyssey’s turn-based combat is a bit of a mixed bag, with both its good and bad points. While the five mortals learn skills as they level up, the four immortals can only learn skills and magic spells by equipping an accessory or ‘linking’ with a mortal.

This involves setting up a ‘link’ in the menu and then both mortal and immortal participating in battle together and earning skill points. Once the particular skill is learned it can then be equipped and used by the immortal.

There are four schools of magic: black magic inflicts status ailments as well as providing elemental attacks; white magic heals and protects; spirit magic supports your party and also inflicts status ailments; and composite magic is a combination of all three, which results in multipurpose spells.

Physical attacks can have special effects added to them by equipping an enhancement ring, which brings up an on-screen ‘aim ring’ when the character attacks. While the rest of the combat was straight forward I found the aim ring a tad confusing at first. However, once I figured out that the outer moving ring had to exactly match the static inner ring I found I often scored a ‘perfect’. But until I equipped a ring that actually did something, the use of the aim ring was essentially pointless as I scored as many hit points using it as without.

Lost Odyssey uses the front row of combatants with higher health points as a defensive ‘wall’ to shield those with lower health points behind – and the same applies to the enemies. The total health points of the front row members in both teams shows up on the guard condition gauge in the upper edges of the battle screen, and it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the gauge and to top up your first line of defence with health-point-increasing spells if need be.

Much has been made about Lost Odyssey’s loading times in United States version, but unless they’ve fixed the problem in the PAL release I didn’t think they were excessive at all – especially when compared to Magna Carta: Tears of Blood. But really, any loading time in this generation is unforgivable.

Aside from the loading times, I noticed a couple of framerate issues, but nothing unbearably bad. In fact, I found Lost Odyssey to be an enjoyable Japanese RPG and I’m looking forward to seeing more from Mistwalker and its partners.

NZGamer.com - Lost Odyssey Facebook