STORY 4.5/5
Kaim, for as long as he remembers, is a soldier who fought in many wars. He's been known as the immortal, thus lived through all the wars he has participated in. More recently, a war ends abruptly by a magical storm of lava spewing from the skies killing everyone on the battlefield. As expected, he emerges the only one alive from the battle and encounters a fellow immortal on his way back to report to the superior he works under.
He ends up teaming up with that immortal and one other [mortal] to check out happenings at a magic generator tower and ruh roh, something's fishy there. Where'd all the magic come from? Why's there so much magic here and what were they doing with it?
The story stood out in the beginning as something refreshingly different, but sadly it headed towards the cliche JRPG mid-game: save the world, hoo-rah. The "side stories" involving Kaim remembering his past were probably the best mini stories I've ever read (that's a pretty high claim). If only there were more! Those stories sold the game for me, despite the rest of the main story direction.
[spoiler]As for the ending, it was cliche to the max, besides the fact that one of the immortals get sent back to the other side. It was a fixed and timed final boss battle where you basically pressed enter to win automatically. Then basically everyone lived happily ever after.[/spoiler]
CHARACTERS 3.5/5
Kaim is the cool and collected guy who has the most annoying strand of hair in his face (until I eventually got used to it). His woman is less to be desired. The kids, the boy in particular, has the worst hair. Seth is great too, but (spoiler) why her! The wrinkly is so wrinkly and old.
The main boss of this game was a pretty boring dude with a pretty boring reason to take over the world so that was disappointing. He was extremely lenient with the hero's party which makes him seem hardly dangerous. Sadly there was nothing hidden behind the main boss.
SOUND 3.5/5
Voices... I had the Japanese track on the whole time but I realize I should've at least tried hearing the English track as well. But anyway - singers, talents, actors... it seems like the cast of most of the characters came from various places -except- the voice acting profession, which explains why the voices felt a bit inexperienced and awkward.
Music was composed by Nobuo Uematsu so you expect some good stuff, or so you'd think. There were two rock tracks (both for boss battles) that were excellent and the rest of the good ones were most of the ballads played during the mini stories. Overall, there weren't as many great tracks as I hoped. The vocal track for this game is ATROCIOUS. CORNY AS FUCK. 'Cuse the language but that's how much I hate it. Spit on it and throw it in a fire!
GAMEPLAY 3.5/5
K so they tried to make the player more involved by having this ring system where you had to hold and let go of the RT at a certain time to activate the ring's power you're currently equipped with. Yeah I suppose it worked but it made battles that much longer.
The whole system of A-1, B-3, etc (round and turn respectively) to figure out the character's required cast time was silly and close to useless. If you had more than one character with the same determined cast time, how do you figure out who goes first (when both of those characters also have the same cast delay)? Not knowing what the enemy's cast time makes this "strategy" further useless. Also if a character is delayed to a certain round (say the 2nd one), how do you know when during that round he/she is going to cast after you enter in more actions with your other characters who are going on the same round? USELESS.
Some other random thoughts: interestingly enough, there's no airship BUT you get two ships (one being a cruise ship); there were some unexpected minigames such as the cubic musical score which had you replay the notes listed in the description, an airship minigame where you avoided enemy attacks, chasing and sleeping giant monsters, and putting wreathes around statues; the treasure trove achievement is brutal (I didn't bother with it and it's my only missing achievement, minus DLC).
GRAPHICS 4.5/5
The in-game graphics vs the prerendered FMVs were pretty close. The graphics were pretty and pretty detailed. Though some of the cutscenes lacked the proper facial expression to match the voice coming out, which made it really weird.
OVERALL 4/5
The optional dungeon, optional boss fights (I ran into most of them accidentally), and the optional hardest boss in the game were all very challenging and fun.
I noticed the English subtitles and the Japanese dialog were quite different (though I think that's the case with most translated games just to fit the audience) but yeesh, they made Jansen sound like such a stupid douchebag in the English.
Disc swapping is so last gen. D:
For the record: I encountered two sound-related glitches, music tracks overlapping and music ceasing completely.
I can totally see a Lost Odyssey II. Mistwalker, MAKE IT HAPPEN.
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