Sunday, April 13, 2008

Lost Odyssey (360)

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Well, my mind isn't functioning, so no preliminary stuff here.

Story: You are Kaim, an amnesiatic immortal soldier. You are only of the few survivors of a massive magical energy explosion in the middle of the battlefield. Because of this you have been thrown into the middle of political intrigue. With the help of another amnesiatic immortal and a wise-cracking mortal, you are sent to discover the cause of the magical energy. It soon becomes clear that there is a lot more going on than you ever realized. There is a lot going on the story from character development, to political intrigue, to the dreamlike memories of the immortals you can find. 5/5

Graphics: This is an amazingly beautiful game visually. The environments are detailed and vibrant. The characters are realistic no matter where you view them (well as realistic as characters can be with crazy hair and outfits). My favorite visual thing is accessories. When you equip certain accessories, you can see your character wearing them in battle. You can also see your character wearing them in cutscenes. I am always impressed when there is a continuity in how a character looks. 5/5

Audio: Like the graphics, there was a lot of effort put into the audio of this game. The voice acting is well done with well chosen actors. There is not a character whose voice does not suit. Besides the wonderful voice acting, the background music is also beautiful. It is well done and suits the environments well. 5/5

Gameplay: There are a lot of things to discuss in gameplay. First, let's discuss the difference between immortals and mortals. The immortals cannot die, so if they are knocked out in battle they will revive in a few turns. The mortals can and will die, but they come back after battle. The mortals learn skills as they level up. The immortals do not learn skills for themselves, they must learn skills by linking with a mortal in their party or equiping accessories. While the immortals can learn all the skills, they can only set a certain number to use at a time. So you have to change out these set skills to fit the situation. You can also equip everyone with rings which you make through monster drops. In battle when attacking the ring comes up and you must hold and release the R-trigger to align the rings. Doing so increases the bonus of the ring. Failing eliminates the ring bonus. Rings are very important for doing extra damage to enemies, and came be switched in battle to suit the monster. Battles are turned based, and you can look at the bottom of the screen to see who is next in line. Generally the flow will go: Item using, Melee, enemy, magic users. Some spells take more than one round to cast, so the caster will sit out concentrating until the spell is ready. There are two rows in battle, back and front. Damage to the back row is severely reduced as long as the front row is healthy. But as the front row takes damage the protection of the backrow decreases. This can be seen with a bar on the top right of the screen. There is no world map, just a picture of a map with a list of areas you can go to. You can however explore the map slightly on the boat. There are a number of mini-games such as unlocking all of Kaim's dreams or treasure hunting. The gameplay isn't difficult to pick up, but it isn't so simplistic to turn people off. 5/5

Replay: While the game is amazing, there's no reason for replay. 2/5

Overall: I think by the scores and my tone you can tell that I really loved this game. I highly recommend it for any RPG fan. It might be slow at parts, but it is worth it. 5/5

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