Lost Odyssey Review

When I was your age we used to walk for two and  half miles through the snow to buy our video games...

 That about sums up Lost Odyssey, a dying genre from a dying age. I guess what they are calling this type now is  Japanese Role Playing Game, or JRPG for all you acronym lovers out there. We needed a way to differentiate between this type of RPG and the Mass Effect kind of beautifully done RPG with much more interaction. I purchased this game longingly remembering the "good ol' days" of power-houses like Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger. It had been so long since a good 'JRPG' on a console that I owned I thought this is what I really craved to play.  I thought I wanted a rich really long story. I thought that a four disc game would be amazing. I also once thought that eating play-doh would be enjoyable.  The simple truth being, sometimes we don't know what we really want. 

The game follows the character Kaim Argonar who is mysteriously the only person left alive after a massive meteor crashes in the middle of a battle between two countries, killing thousands of soldiers, who I feel I must add, wear the craziest looking helmets I have ever seen. Seriously, I understand that need to create a fantasy appeal, but those guys just look ridiculous. Early on in the game you discover that you are an immortal being who has lost all of his memories, and you spend the first disc trying to get them back. The first disc is about ten hours long and it's safe to say that you spend at least 7 hours of that in cut-scenes.

Lost Odyssey to me can be summed into one simple word "mediocrity".  No aspect of the game is terrible, but no aspect of the game really excels. The game play is average, the storyline is average, the graphics are average, the score....you get the point. To spice up that battle sequence a little bit more, the game adds these rings that you have to line up while fighting something. It really doesn't do much. Nothing in this game really excels to make it anything more than slightly noticeable.

I do have a slight confession to make. I did not actually finish the game. I am hung up on a certain section of the game about 27 hours into it, when all of your party splits up and you are forced to play with nothing but mages and people who I haven't had in my party since the very beginning of the story and thus are worthless. Now I continued to play even after the "plot breakthrough" failed to impress me at the end of the first disc(10 hours in) just because I felt there must be something more to this game. I was wrong, terribly wrong. It took me another 17 hours to realize the game wasn't really getting anymore enjoyable. There wasn't going to be some magic moment where that game says "surprise, we've been showing you this halfway good game just to hide this actual amazing game that begins now!" Perhaps my Final Fantasy VII expectations were just too high? This is a definite possibility.

  When it comes to video games, you will usually find me repeating the age old phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" again and again, but this time, they have gone too far. I'm sorry, but the video game world has just advanced to far for me to still be forced to put up with the same random battle sequence every two seconds when I'm walking around the over-world map. What made those age old 'JRPG' classics work? The first important element was that we didn't expect super fast loading times, so we accepted the new screen for battles. Gaming back then wasn't about the pace, it was about the story. Well that is no longer the case, it has to be a combination of the two. Game like Mass Effect have now adapted with adding great story lines as well as more interactive battle sequences. I know that not every game can achieve the sort of interactive cut scenes that Mass Effect had, but when Lost Odyessey tries to fake interactivity by having you move three feet only to be launched into another cut-scene.  That just doesn't fool me. 

Bottom line, this is not a terrible game. The story line is interesting, but can be at times hard to relate to, and to me it's all in how connected you feel with the characters. Even once Kaim opens up, you really aren't sure who he is. The most captivating moments are when you are forced to read through a story instead of watching anything take place. The sad truth is that JRPGs are dying out, and they were hard to come by on the 360 to begin with, so if you want to pick this title up to remember better times, I really can't blame you. I really would warn anyone against spending a full $60 on this though, there are just better games out there. Save your money and wait for the new Ninja Gaiden, that's my advice. 

Rating: 6/10