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AKA: War! HUH!! What is it good for?
This is the second game brought to us from Mistwalker and the second time they have disappointed me. The first time was with Blue Dragon. This is a studio made up of former Square employees, and I honestly expected better from them. That’s not to say Lost Odyssey is bad. I actually really enjoyed the story, and there is a lot of it. But there is a lot of reading as well. At times it almost felt like more of a homework assignment than a game. What I really didn't care for was the actual game part of the game.
The story is centered around an immortal named Kaim, a man who has lived for one thousand years. Somewhere along the line he was robbed of his memories, and also his family. He's not the only one, as there are three other playable characters who are also immortals with lost memories. They do eventually find out the truth. I'm not gonna say what it is, cause that would ruin everything, now wouldn't it?
Those memories come back in the form of short stories. After talking to random people in towns, Kaim might hear or see something that triggers a lost memory. They are very well written, and often HORRIBLY depressing. I could count on one hand the number of stories that had a happy ending. Now I'm not saying that they all should have ended that way, but come on, almost every story ended with Kaim either watching someone die, or realizing that he will never grow old but everyone else will. There were some that made me want to put a gun barrel in my mouth afterwards. The game is such a downer. Most of them also describe the horror and tragic loss of war, hence my tagline up there. This game wants you to know that war is bad.
Now let’s get on to my least favorite part of the game: The game itself. The combat system is fairly traditional. Pick a command then pick a monster. Repeat till one side is defeated. There is a little something extra thrown in. When you chose to attack, a ring appears on the monsters. You hold the right trigger, and another ring closes in on it; time it just right, and you do extra damage. It's an ok system. The problem is, combat is just dull, and often times feels like it drags on too long. At least there seems to be significant time between random battles, yet they always seem to happen when you don't want them to, or at least they did for me. There were a few interesting boss battles, but overall, I found combat to be boring.
This game does shine visually, though. It is all around a very pretty game, and one of the best looking RPGs on the 360. It does come from former Square employees, though, and if there is one thing Square does do right all the time, it’s make games that are very pretty. There are some really beautiful backgrounds, and the character models are also well rendered.
The audio is also another good point of the game. The game has several voice tracks. I mainly just listened to the English and Japanese ones, though. There is also French, German, and Italian. I Didn't really care for the Japanese track. It sounded like everyone mumbled their lines. The English one was much better in my opinion. A few voices were kinda annoying, but overall it was a decent dub. The score was pretty good too. If you are a Final Fantasy fan, then you're no doubt familiar with the works of Nobuo Uematsu. He works his usual magic with this game. There were a couple songs I swear almost sounded like they were lifted from Final Fantasy VI. Not that there is anything wrong with that. So I'm actually really torn about this game. It has some really good qualities but I just can't stand the actual game part. If it was just a movie that had a collection of short stories that went with it, I'd love it.However, it’s not, it’s a video game, and not a very fun one at that. So much that I actually didn't finish it. I got near the end, got frustrated and quit in the last dungeon. I just watched the ending on Youtube. Like most other parts of the story it was well done. The ending was pretty kickass. Sadly I couldn't bring myself to play any farther to get there.
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System: |
Xbox 360
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| Genre: |
RPG |
| Experience: |
Almost completed the main story, gave up at the end. Couldn't go on. Put over 40 hours into the game, though. |
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