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IGN has posted a 6 hour hands-on impression with the game. He is not overly impressed with the game at this time, reporting techincal mess and bugs amongst other things. Hopefully this will be adressed in the western release.
December 6, 2007 -I still remember the wonder of seeing Lost Odyssey demoed live for the first time at the Xbox 360 press conference on the eve of last year's Tokyo Game Show. As producer Hironobu Sakaguchi lead main character Kaim in a battle against an army of mechanical foes, concluding with a meteor strike which set the battlefield and all its warriors -- the mortal ones, at least -- ablaze, I was so entranced by the slick presentation that I forgot that I was supposed to be live blogging from the event.
Of course, everyone who got their hands on that very demo a bit later learned the secret. While the interactive opening sequence was a remarkable pairing of cinematics and gameplay, what followed might as well have been a first generation PlayStation 2 game in high definition. Just as the opening of the demo left players wanting Mistwalker's second title before their first (Blue Dragon was due for Japanese release in three months), the latter half of the demo left us prepared to wait a thousand years or as long as necessary for polished final product.
The wait turned out to be about a year, but we now have Lost Odyssey in its final form. The game arrived at Japanese retail on Thursday, with its four disks requiring a case the size of a VHS tape. It seems that one year of extra development above last year's demo may not have been enough. The final game opens up exactly as the demo does, with Kaim in the middle of a fierce battle. One year later, and this sequence is still impressive-enough to sell someone on a 360. But you'll still have to stop playing right after the meteor strike and before you start taking full control of Kaim, because like the demo, the final game engine starts falling apart right there.
In the six hours that I've played so far, Lost Odyssey has been a technical mess, with framerate problems in just about every cinema and on most maps, an animation system that looks like it was ported straight from a PS2 engine, and frequent, inconsistent load times accompanied by visual stuttering as new data loads in.
Although it came from a different developer and used a different engine (Lost Odyssey uses the Unreal Engine 3), Blue Dragon had many of these problems when it made it out to Japan just in time for Christmas last year. I presume Mistwalker and developer Feel Plus were pressured into a release before all the kinks could be worked out.  Barring a dramatic shift past the six hour mark, Lost Odyssey isn't going to blow people away with its visuals or presentation. But, aside from a few cliches here and there, all signs do point to an otherwise solid Japanese RPG.
Since Lost Odyssey's unveiling back in mid 2004, much of the attention has been focused on its storyline. To help flesh out the core concept of a character who lives eternally (or 1,000 years -- whichever comes first), Sakaguchi asked Japanese author Kiyoshi Shigematsu to write a set of short stories which would serve as Kaim's dreams and recollections, presumably of his years long gone.
In the game, you encounter these passages as you play. Kaim may find himself in a situation that makes him recall one of the passages, or he may run into a character in town who says something that triggers a memory. He experiences other passages in haunting dreams. The passages are presented in the game like a digital novel, with a mix of background imagery, background music, a few sound effects, and lots and lots of text to read. There are no voice overs, but the presentation is solid. You're free to relive these sequences from the title screen, or whenever you rest at an inn for the night.
I'm not sure if I'd personally want to read the passages on a television, though. For the past couple of weeks, I've been reading through One Thousand Year Dreams, a published collection of Shigematsu's short stories, released to Japanese book shops prior to the game's release. I've read through 15 of the 34 stories so far and am slowly working through the rest (you have to pace yourself with this book, as it can be a bit on the depressing side).
Reading the book prior to the game appears to be the way to go, assuming Microsoft has the book published internationally to coincide with the game's release outside of Japan. When Kaim has a memory triggered in the game, I find myself considering the situation that caused the flashback, and imagining which of Shigematsu's stories will be shared next. In a sense, you could say that this is similar to Kaim's reaction, although I think Kaim is supposed to be tortured rather than amused over these vague remembrances of the past.
The Kaim I pictured from Shigematsu's book is markedly different from the Kaim introduced in the Lost Odyssey game. I always pictured the book version of Kaim as being wise and kind, yet with a hidden pessimism brought on by his hundreds and hundreds of years of experience. He's unaware about much to do with his past, but at the same time, he's confident in that unawareness. The videogame version of Kaim, on the other hand, is angry and confused. He's the archetypal RPG hero.
 That's the sense I'm getting from the storyline in the Lost Odyssey game as well -- your typical RPG storyline. In the game, Kaim's goal is clear from the start: to figure out the mysteries behind his past. The game also offers up a pretty obvious villain. The book, on the other hand, was more a general reflection on mortality without getting into the specifics of Kaim's situation. It also does that very bookish thing of having Kaim be his own personal villain. That would make for a strange final boss in a game.
Also different from the book, where Kaim is a lone traveler (at least through the 15 passages I've read so far), RPG conventions require that he have a party for battles. This requires some accompaniment, initially in the form of a bungling mortal man and an immortal character like himself.
I'm not sure if having other immortals around him makes Kaim's immortal situation better or not. The three other immortals introduced in the instruction manual are all hot chicks. But, one of them has really bad hair.
I'll have to play to the end to see if the game's storyline can match the brilliance of the short story collection. At the very least, the game's story has grabbed my interest, in large part due to the hilarity of Kaim's early companion Jansen, voiced enthusiastically by Michael McGaharn. There have already been a number of awkward, juvenile dialogue situations, however, that I hope will be avoided as the story develops.
Going along with some of the unique concepts central to the story, Sakaguchi and crew have made a few twists to what would otherwise seem to be a standard menu-based battle system. Character positioning, both for enemies and allies, is important due to a "wall system" where members who are in the front row block off members in the back row from attack. The amount of protection you get from your wall is determined by a "Guard Condition" point value which is the sum of the current HP values of the members in the front row.
The game's magic system is tied in closely to the premise of having immortal characters. Kaim and his like don't actually learn new magic abilities and skills on their own. This ability is reserved for mortal characters like Jansen, who earn new spells and forms of magic through use. You can set the immortal characters to tag along on one type of magic (black magic, white magic, etc.) as a mortal character masters it. The immortal character will eventually be able to use the magic freely for himself.
In case you were wondering (I certainly was), despite having an immortal protagonist, it is possible to see a game over screen in Lost Odyssey. Kaim and the other immortal characters don't actually die. When disabled in battle, they'll automatically revive themselves, with a small percentage of their HP, after a few turns. The game ends only if all members of the party are disabled at any given time. This actually happens quite a bit, as the game can be pretty tough as far as RPGs go, especially if you don't properly use the wall system and the pay attention to elemental properties of your foes.
Even with these new systems, and auto-reviving heroes, Lost Odyssey feels like a traditional Japanese RPG. There are dungeons to explore, hot spots to touch for hidden treasure, weapon shops, item shops, inns, and occasional side quests that no one really wants to do. If you've played a PlayStation 2 RPG before, you'll be on familiar ground.
It's probably fitting, but Lost Odyssey's success will be determined not by its fantastic opening sequence, but how everything comes together at the end of Kaim's quest. We'll let you know how it all turns out closer to the game's US release early next year.
A note to those who are considering importing ahead of the international release. Lost Odyssey has both Japanese and English vocal tracks, selectable from the main menu. The English vocal track has been superb so far, but the Japanese version of the game does not include English text to accompany it. The game might be difficult to navigate without Japanese reading ability, so we'd suggest waiting for the official English release. Source |
