It has been a while since we’ve seen a traditional JRPG on a console, they have been particularly rare on this generation's consoles at least, but when I heard Lost Odyssey was going to be released, I was particularly surprised to find that it was one of these traditional JRPGs. Although it seemed obvious, as I had known it was designed by some of the original designers of the Final Fantasy series, and what was advertised definitely seemed liked it could have been one, although it didn’t show any of the traditional battle elements. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a major problem, it was just assumed by many people that this type of gameplay was dying out, and so therefore, making it a little on the ‘old fashioned’ side. These types of games may put off a few loyal Xbox players, but if the Xbox 360 gamers enjoy in depth progressive storytelling, then they have no reason to be disloyal at all.

Now, this game starts with a ‘bang’, quite literally as well as you may find out. You are introduced to the game with a quite epic cinematic movie portraying two large armies fighting it out, on one side you have the Magical Republic of Uhra and the other side you have Khent. Half way through the cinematic it seamlessly transforms into in game graphics and before you know it you’re controlling the main character, Kaim. This then acts as a tutorial to the turn based battle system, and eases you into the rules of play.

After the main tutorial, and quite a long cut scene, you’ll find out that Kaim, and another key character, are immortal and have lost their memories due to a spell cast. We’ve all seen it before, to find out bits and pieces of your past you must slowly progress through the story for everything to make sense. Funnily enough though, this is partly what makes the game very good.

There is one problem I’ll pick out though before I get into the ‘nitty gritty’ bits of the gameplay, it's that the game is quite slow paced, it took me about an hour to find out what was going on story wise and how the missions worked. This is fine if you’ve played many JRPGs and you’re used to it, but many of us haven’t and have no idea what’s going on. After you get around the learning curve and the basic gameplay mechanics, the game flows through very nicely.

Gameplay:

There is something you should know if you don’t play many JRPG games, and that is they’re are generally very long games. JRPGs can be anything from 30 hours to, some of them, 60 hours long or even more. Lost Odyssey will take the average player about 40 hours to complete. There are four discs, so it’s very important that developers provide the player with some kind of gameplay element or game attraction to keep them interested. Lost Odyssey’s game attraction is its story.

You’re going to find the majority of your time will be taken up by either traveling and figuring out where to go, or watching cut scenes and character interactions, the latter fleshes out the game and really keeps you intrigued to see what happens next. The game itself is enjoyable as well, but I found myself wanting to get to the next trigger for a story rather than run about finding items and battling monsters.

JRPGs are also known for developing unique and lovable characters. In this game the characters are people rather than an odd bunch of creatures,humans etc, and you care to see what happens to them. You’ll really want that bad guy to get what he/she deserves, and you’ll really hope that he/she finds the person he/she loves; it’s like a good movie. The story is also quite remarkable as it deliberately gets you asking questions upon the situation, which you’ll know you’ll never find out unless you keep playing, although it takes quite a typical ‘exaggerated’ fantasy setting.

Putting emphasis on the character development and story progression, before the rant starts, this portion of the game is arguably the best part of the game. If you’re very much into epic fantasies and elevated storylines, then this alone is enough to warrant a purchase of Lost Odyssey.

Now the fillers of this game are, strangely enough, the gameplay elements. That is an overstatement and there are times where the true RPG gameplay elements come to life, it’s just a shame there really isn’t anything different or ‘next gen’ to most of it. The motivating parts are probably the leveling of the characters, equipping your characters and exploring the odd new environment.
The leveling of characters is the unique part of Lost Odyssey, this is because your characters don’t level stat wise, at least you don’t manually level them, they primarily level through skills. Your immortal characters (Kaim & Seth) don’t obtain new skills by fighting, but they learn them from your mortal characters by linking the skills. This was a decent approach, because it was new. Don’t misunderstand how I mean this as something new doesn’t necessarily make a game good; it just makes this game in particular good. Finding new items and equipping them is always pleasant in an RPG, as we RPG lovers always like working towards something and earning new items. And the environments can be quite nice to look at, it’s a shame the camera & character restrictions won’t let you look any further though.

What drags this game down in the gameplay area is the constant running around doing nothing but to get you to your next destination. Almost everything about it is trivial, from the smashing and opening of the same objects, to find an item, or the constant running into loading screens. The loading screens aren’t overly long; there are just loads of them. There are loading screens to enter buildings, go out of towns, moving out of corridors, there are loading screens just about everywhere.

The battles are satisfactory; they’re everything you expect from a traditional turn based RPG. You attack in a random order of turns, this can depend upon a spell or an enemy, and you build up a selection of attacks until either side is dead. There is a nice twist adding some skill to the equation with a special ring, what this ‘special’ ring does is provide a benefit of damage, elemental or normal, in battle situations. Not only does it do that, but it also means you must hit the ‘RT’ button during the attack at the right time for you to do the maximum damage. This is good as it adds a bit more strategy to the otherwise luck & selection based battles, which can be frustrating.

There are some other little annoyances you may find with this game, and this is the inventory system. You’ll have to use this fairly often, and some of the menus can be a bit of a chore to run through. Not a major problem and they are no way as cumbersome as Mass Effect’s.

Another portion of this game I’d like to put emphasis on is its fluency, how the game ‘moves’ story wise and how it all strings together. You’ll have this game jump in and out of story cut scenes, dreams and character control constantly, the way this all holds together is very well implemented. You’ll never really feel out of place or if something shouldn’t be happening, not unless it’s being done purposely. The slow start to the game is quite necessary in proportion to how long the game is, and how the game seamlessly moves from cut scene to gameplay graphics really helps this game flow.

Graphics:

You may or may not know that this game uses the unreal engine, this is the same engine used in games such as Bioshock, Mass Effect and of course Gears of War. I was surprised to see how different it looks from the other games which use this engine, but if anything, it looks more like Mass Effect.

The game isn’t that startling graphically, it isn’t as ‘smooth’ visually as Mass Effect, but what makes this game shine is its art style and colourful fantasy surroundings. Even though we’ve seen it all before in JRPGs, it never seems to bore and it always looks beautiful. There is also a variety of different environments you’ll be traveling through, each one with a unique theme. It’s just a shame you have to travel through them and not explore them.

The game is quite ‘gritty’ visually, no way as gritty as Gears of War, but it’s heading in that direction. What stands out though is what this game focuses on, the characters. They’re all very well detailed and uniquely identified through what they wear. You’ll rarely see the same enemy either, every area has its own set of enemies you can fight, and they all look as well detailed as its main characters.

Although Lost Odyssey doesn’t compare visually to Mass Effect, the animations are as fluent as ever in cut scenes. The in-game cut scenes aren’t comparable however.

There is a downfall to the good looks of Lost Odyssey I’m afraid, there are way too many load times and the noticeable stutter here and there. They can affect the gameplay experience, but it shouldn’t ruin it for you.

Sound:

Lost Odyssey also has a positive/negative balance for its audio. The good points are that the voice actors for the American version of the game are very convincing; they all represent their in game characters very well and let the attachment to the characters possible. The soundtrack is generally suitable as well, quite expected for this type of fantasy, but its variant and uplifting in cut scenes. I must say though, the first few tunes I experienced were quite irritating and reminded me of some Final Fantasy online games I’ve played in the past, but except from that, it hasn’t put me off.

The bad points are the in-game one liners which many JRPGs seem to include, you’ll experience these most of the time during battle. When the battle initiates you’ll hear one of the characters say something like “I’m not looking forward to this!” or “bring it on!”, and then the battle will end with a pose or a weapon spin, not a game ender but quite unnecessary. I also experienced some cut scenes with no ambience or music, which isn’t as bad as cringe worthy music, but something definitely felt missing and that was it.

Longevity:

As mentioned before, this game will take you at least 35-40 hours to complete; it’s a very long winded game, mostly because of the long story, but there are side quests you can do as well. You’ll want this to last as much as possible though because there isn’t much replay value to this game, it’s very linear and all that is random are its enemies and items, so don’t expect any “Radiant” AI.

You may want to go through the game again to level up your characters in a different way, but there isn’t much choice on how you level your characters except what skills you want to experience. Or you may want to go back through the game and read all of those dreams you saw and have skipped, as some of them are the size of small books. Basically, this game is as long as you want it to last the first time you play it.

Overall:

Lost Odyssey brings back a traditional JRPG game style with some little additions, but nothing astounding. Whether bringing back the turn based RPG style is a good thing depends on your opinion of JRPG’s. Whether you’ve missed them and you want something to fill your nostalgia or whether you’ve had enough and said good riddance to them. This isn’t a game that will drag the Western RPG lover out of his/her Elder Scrolls shell, but it may give a general RPG lover a breath of fresh air from its current genre line up. However, what makes this game respectful for any RPG player is its in depth and encapsulating story within the game itself, but more so, the story and interactions between its characters.