Leyviur.net

I finally beat Lost Odyssey this past weekend, over a year after its release. I stopped playing about half a year ago halfway into disc 3, then only recently picked it back up and continued. The reasons for my doing so were threefold. First of all, the battle system is slow as molasses, which is irritating because Lost Odyssey operates on a random-encounter type system, and escaping from battle is difficult as hell, so every time the screen flashed into that battle transition, I prepared myself for a 3 to 5 minute battle. This may not sound that bad, but picture doing it all throughout a dungeon. It would drive you nuts. Though, if the story were any good, I would’ve been convinced to suffer through the battle system, which leads me to my second complaint.

The story is absolutely insufferable – and this is largely due to the stupidly obligatory child characters that every JRPG just has to have. One of the main story events involves the two kids hijacking a train in the hopes of seeing their dead mother (yeah, you read that right – I don’t get it either). You then have to catch another train to go after them and stop them from doing something stupid. Of course, if the adults were doing their job then this wouldn’t have happened in the first place, but I guess common sense is lacking in JRPG worlds. There are child characters who are characterized excellently and that I personally actually like: Lymsleia from Suikoden V immediately comes to mind, as does Nanako from Persona 4. Even Karol from Tales of Vesperia can be likable thanks to his gung ho attitude. This disappoints me mainly because the story started off really great, then dropped like a rock from the side of the Grand Canyon when Cooke and Mack (the aforementioned child characters) were introduced. Fortunately their roles are downplayed near the end of the game, where the story picks up steam again, so it gets good, but it never gets great.

Another thing I found disappointing was the skill mechanic; the immortals can learn any skill they want, but all of them are shuffled into specific roles, with Kaim and Seth being physical attackers and Sarah and Ming being mages. Having a largely customizable skill/abilities list for the immortals serves no purpose if I can’t do what I want with them. Besides that, once they get enough abilities they become so powerful that there’s no real reason to use any of the mortals as anything other than cannon fodder, because they just don’t measure up.

Still, it’s not a total loss. The 1000 Years of Dreams sequences included in the game are great. Each of them convey the frailty of life as well as how the horrors of war can warp people; if the main storyline was written in this method then perhaps it would’ve succeeded. Instead it was generic JRPG tripe. Ah, what could have been…

The Good
+ The Thousand Years of Dreams vignettes are wonderfully written and incredibly well translated.
+ The graphics are pretty good and doesn’t require five minute long effects in order to show it.
+ Robust skill/equipment system allows players to customize characters for any situation.’

The Bad
- The music is surprisingly pedestrian, and a weak effort from Nobuo Uematsu
- The story, in stark contrast to the vignettes, is bland and uninspired.
- The battle system is way too slow, making random encounters drag on and on.
- Characters are cast in one of two specific, unchangeable roles: fighter or mage.

The WTF
?! Random encounters? Really?
?! Cooke and Mack. What were they thinking?