Epic JRPG Journey!
Page: 1/2
Supplier: MS
Reviewed By: Rogue5
Price: $59.99 360 (MSRP)
Untitled Document
Lost Odyssey tells the story of a thousand year old immortal named Kaim Argonar.
Lo and behold, at some point, Kaim lost his memory and has been aimlessly touring
around as a mercenary for an undetermined amount of time. After returning home
his last battle, a fight that ended in the mass destruction on both sides of
the conflict, Kaim has a dream (nightmare, perhaps) that is so real to him he
believes it was a lost memory.
Being immortal and having been the sole survivor of the recent conflict, Kaim
is tasked by government officials to find out who, or what, had caused such
devastation on the battlefield. From here things snowball rather quickly; you’re
introduced to your core party members almost immediately, you set off on a journey
for answers (which unveils an eviler plot), and Kaim does his best to regain
his lost memory (which affects the story in various ways.)
When it comes to the story you’re going to have to deal with some ‘lost
in translation’ issues. Not necessarily ‘engrish’, just lapses
in story development that probably wouldn’t have happened had the game
been created, from the ground up, as an English title by a western developer.
Certain conclusions are jumped to, some parts are predictable, and other story
elements come out of nowhere to ultimately solve an otherwise unsolvable story
thread. It sounds worse than it is simply because a lot of it has to do with
the fact that the main characters in the game have memory issues, often remembering
important details that haven’t been so much as alluded to previously.
So while it may work, it definitely breaks storytelling conventions (in a bad
way) and still doesn’t get around the fact that at times story progression
just isn’t articulated all that well. On the other hand, when comparing
stories to a lot of other jRPGs (any of the ones I’ve played, anyway)
Lost Odyssey is, generally speaking, better than what you’re used to.
Power-ups come in the form of different amulets and jewelry. These power-ups
can be learned so that you can take off items for other party members to use
and learn from, but when you remove the power-up you need to assign the associated
skill to one of your characters skill slots. Fortunately, while you only start
out with three, each character is given an upgradable amount of skill slots
that the new skill can be assigned to. You can also learn skills from other
party members using ‘skill link’, which is incredibly important
for maximizing your characters.
