Lost Odyssey - First Impressions
We’re well aware that Lost Odyssey is a game now several months old, but XboxMASS missed it altogether on its release. This Play Journal is a way to make amends. Why bother? Lost Odyssey may have launched and faded with a whisper, but its significance in the Xbox 360 library is not lost (excuse the pun) on us. This is a game that had the hopes of breaking the Japanese market pinned upon it.
Clearly, it was ineffectual in that regard.
This is not to say that the game isn’t worth a look, however - it has been met with mixed reviews, and thus a prime candidate for XboxMASS to weigh in on. Although this play journal is well after the fact, it comes at about a time when used copies of the game will start to trickle into game shops, and a price drop may materialize from publisher Microsoft itself. At any rate, it’s been a while since we’ve played a classic Japanese RPG, and Lost Odyssey at least appears to fit that bill nicely.
What’s immediately striking right from the opening moments, is that Lost Odyssey is a beautiful game. Employing the Unreal Engine III, developers Mistwalker and Feelplus have squeezed quite a bit out of the engine. Indeed, an RPG with very linear and confined level design is likely the kind of game the suits Unreal Engine III the best, and it shows.
Opening with a rousing cut scene introducing our lead protagonist Kaim, Lost Odyssey shows some very nuanced techniques at play here. While the cut scene is pre-rendered (this game comes on four discs, no doubt due to generous heapings of HD video), it matches the actual in-game visuals quite well. And with a bit of slight of hand, the cut scene segues into real-time action almost seamlessly, showing off a well developed sophistication in design and presentation.
The presentation within the first hour of play speaks to a steady and thoughtful guiding hand. While you’re unable to freely control your camera, you do have some modest yet impressive influence on the view. As the camera trails behind Kaim, or sits at a pre-set angle, the right stick allows you to position your point of view to a degree, and the right trigger is sensitive to an impressive amount of zoom. This gives for a limited but effective way to appreciate the environments.
Even this early into the game we’ve been treated to several cut scenes, and thankfully the load times are quite minimal and acceptable. The cut-scenes, as mentioned, are impressive, but do tend to highlight some clunky dialogue and less-than stellar voice acting which is pretty much the bane of every Japanese to English translation. It was pretty odd hearing Kaim utter “Like taking candy from a baby” after a successful battle.
The combat is typical turn-based fare, exactly as you might expect it to be. It is very simplistic at this point, with only an “attack” and “defend” option to combat, as well as an item option populated with only a handful of healing potions. But we were introduced to an additional and significant feature of the combat too: the ring system.
Rings can be found about the world of Lost Odyssey and equipped to allow for certain attributes. The first ring you’ll come across is the bruiser ring, which simply improves the amount of damage of your attacks. But beyond simply equipping the ring for effects in battle, it takes on a real-time gameplay twist. As you initiate an attack, you activate the ring equipped by holding the right trigger. At this point a ring appears around your target, and a larger ring rapidly closes in around the target ring. By releasing the right trigger just as the two rings match, you will increase the effectiveness of the rings attributes. If you do poorly, you won’t get any effect. If you match the rings up perfectly, you will maximize the effect.
The rings are also upgradeable, and there appears to be a healthy amount of customizability in this aspect alone. By picking up certain items in the game, they can be combined with certain rings to create upgraded or different rings altogether. Thankfully, the menu system lays out what items are needed to upgrade what rings, so you won’t have to mindlessly combine elements with rings like a blind alchemist.
So far, so good. We find Lost Odyssey an intriguing bit of fantasy thus far. The question remains whether it can hold up in the long run, and whether there’s enough variety to liven up what many consider a dead genre to begin with.
We’ll be putting up a few more play journals as we delve deeper, and a piece on the Seeker of the Deep expansion downloadable content. Stay tuned…
peachey @ July 12, 2008