Lost Odyssey

Sakaguchi's opus under the spotlight

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Just in case you weren't aware beforehand, the first thing you see when you pick up Lost Odyssey is the phrase 'from the creator of Final Fantasy' emblazoned across the front of the case. This is a good thing. Riding on the coat tails of past glories may not always be the subtlest selling pitch but when the glory in question is Final Fantasy, a series that converted many, me included, to the charms of JRPG's, it's more of a statement of promise than a reminder of the past.

Lost Odyssey is the latest in a slowly growing number of quality JRPG's on the Xbox 360, joining the wonderful Eternal Sonata and Hironobu 'Creator of Final Fantasy' Sakaguchi's own Blue Dragon from recent(ish) months. The story centres around Kaim, an immortal warrior with an unfortunate case of amnesia, and his quest to discover his past in a world being torn apart by political upheaval and the recent discovery of magic-powered technology. It's not the most original story in gaming and it's certainly not in any rush to move itself along over the course of the game's four disks but it more than manages to keep your interest throughout thanks to the quality of the writing and the intriguing, well realised world it's set in.

Kaim himself, at least to start with, is anything but a charismatic lead (who's also saddled with a daft looking stray strand of hair that you'll spend the whole game wanting to cut off) preferring instead to go the moody monosyllabic route through life. However, the game is blessed with a well written cast of supporting characters and the relationships between them keep things interesting while you slowly uncover more about what in Kaim's past made him the way he is.

Throughout the game Kaim will witness things that uncover fragments of his locked memories. Refreshingly these flashbacks are shown not via elaborate CGI but through the written word. Each memory is a short story written by award-winning Japanese novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu and is presented using an evocative blend of semi-animated text, music and imagery. This unusual approach turns out to be far more effective than it probably sounds and thanks to the quality of the writing these interludes soon become something to look forward to rather than rush through.

As important to the overall mix as the story in a JRPG is the battle system, for Lost Odyssey this remains a resolutely traditional, turn-based affair, but with the addition of a few new ideas to spice things up a little. First up and probably least interesting in the long run is the guard system. This takes the existing notion that characters at the front of your party act as a barrier to reduce the effect of attacks on characters at the rear and introduces the idea that this barrier gets less and less effective as damage is inflicted on the characters at the front. It feels realistic and it does make you pay a bit more attention to party layout and healing but that's about it. Potentially far more interesting however is the rings system. As you play through the game you'll be able to craft and equip different magic rings which offer a variety of attack bonuses. The catch is that you need to trigger them in real-time by holding down the right trigger and releasing it when a large on-screen ring has shrunk to the size of a smaller one surrounding the character you're attacking. The closer you get to achieving a perfect hit the better the effect of your equipped ring. This brings a welcome degree of interactivity and skill to battles although the results of a perfect hit never seem as significant as perhaps they should. Having recently come from spending a lot of time with Eternal Sonata where the mid-battle interactivity was in the chance to block incoming attacks with a well timed button press, I have to say I prefer the chance to avoid loads of damage than to inflict a little bit more. Of course, a combination of the two systems would have been great.

Lost Odyssey is at its most innovative when it comes to acquiring new skills and spells. Kaim, and any other immortal you have in your party, are unable to learn new skills on their own like RPG characters normally do. Instead they're restricted to learning the skills of whatever mortals they battle alongside in a system called Skill Link. Once an immortal has linked to a desired skill it can take a few battles to be learnt which poses some interesting questions about who you take into battle with you with weaker characters having to be risked at times so their skills can be learnt.

Lost Odyssey runs on the Unreal 3 engine which does a great job of bringing the world and its inhabitants to life. Characters look superb and the line between what's CGI and what's in-game grows ever more blurred throughout the numerous cut-scenes. It's not flawless however, and some odd frame rate issues do crop up from time to time but these are never bad enough to seriously irritate. It's also worth pointing out how beautiful the art design is throughout, everything down to the smallest detail has been lovingly designed to create a believable world where every aspect of life has been affected by the new magical technology.

Now comes the time to have a moan, while everything so far has been largely positive there are niggles to be found. Considering the pedigree of the developer, the power of the 360 and the scope of four whole disks full of content there's very little real innovation here and more importantly some of the age old problems with JRPG's in general seem to have been brought into this new generation without much thought. Random battles can still irritate because you can't see them coming (Eternal Sonata showed how it should be done by simply having the enemies visible). Only having one character on screen for all the walking around parts looks silly now consoles are surely powerful enough to render the whole party all the time. Looting every location under the watchful gaze of NPC's who don't seem to mind you stealing their stuff feels as weird as ever. Preset save points should be banned, why oh why must I leave my console turned on overnight just because I'm twenty minutes past a save point and can't stay awake to reach the next one? All of these are old moans could be applied to loads of JRPG's over the years so while it's hard to point the finger and criticise LO too harshly for doing exactly what every other game has done, it's still worth noting that we should be expecting a bit more when it comes to the basics rather than just accepting things because that's how they've always been done.

To bring things to a close, it seems like a bit of a cop out to end on the suggestion that if you like JRPG's then you'll like this otherwise don't bother, but it's genuinely the best advice I can offer. This is a beautiful, involving, epic example of its type but those for whom the genre holds no interest aren't going to be converted by a game that rarely offers the innovation you may have been expecting and conforms to more of the old frustrations than it probably should. Speaking personally I loved it, which explains the big score, but I understand there will be those of you who fail to see where the attraction is and nothing I can say will change that.

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By Paul Newcombe