Lost Odyssey Finds New Fans

By Broadside Staff Writer Laura Hampton

What can gamers do on a cold, icy winter day when sledding just isn’t an option? They need a game that’s beautiful, challenging and requires some dedication. They need Mistwalker’s newest RPG title, Lost Odyssey.

Lost Odyssey, created by Hironobu Sakaguchi of the Final Fantasy fame, is a stunning RPG that offers gamers a fantastically epic adventure that spans an amazing four-disk length. The story revolves around Kaim, a man who has lived 1,000 years, but remembers none of it. Thrust into a war between countries during the Magical Industrial Revolution, poor Kaim only wishes to keep forgetting his painful past, but his memories slowly come back to him in the form of dreams.

The plight of Kaim and his fellow immortals is a continuing theme throughout the story and players can really feel the pain of what it would be like to be immortal. In Kaim’s dreams, all that can be seen is the constant loss of loved ones and the regret of never being able to join them in the afterlife.

Since several of the cast members of Lost Odyssey are like Kaim, cursed to be immortal, this introduces a game mechanic to the RPG genre that is rather new. The idea is that since these characters are immortal, they can’t die in battle. They are only knocked out for a certain number of turns, and then automatically resurrected, assuming that your team survives the number of turns required for the resurrection. If the remaining members of your team die before this can happen, it’s the game over screen for you.

This feature is very handy for boss battles, which are often challenging and require lots of strategy. Enemies are designated certain elemental attributes which members of your party can counter with the corresponding opposite attribute. For example, an attack with a wind element will be strong against a fire element, and so on.

Another new feature for Lost Odyssey is the Skill Link menus. Since characters that are immortal do not learn new skills on their own by leveling up, they have the ability to link themselves to the non-immortal characters and learn the skills that they have over time. The only other way for these characters to learn new skills is by equipping them with accessories that teach them new abilities. This adds a whole different dimension to the otherwise traditional RPG play. Micro-managing your immortal’s skill sets and rotating out what rings and accessories to use and when is an obsessive pleasure and vital necessity at the same time.

The dedication required for this game is enormous. Players need to concentrate on fighting constant battles to level characters up high and exploration and finding treasure to help you succeed in your journey is key. This game is a time devourer and sometimes the process of leveling can be a bit tedious, but the way the game looks more than makes up for it.

The environments in Lost Odyssey are jaw-droppingly beautiful. Each new town or environment you enter is stunning and each scene is dripping with painstakingly beautiful details that add to the nostalgia and deep engrossing feelings that the game brings out. You watch as Kaim wanders through areas he knows he’s been before, but feel both new and old to him at the same time. That sense of unknown familiarity seems to seep directly from the gorgeous surroundings themselves.

The music, composed by legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu, is hauntingly beautiful. Every new area has its own theme with a poignant feeling that hangs in your mind even after you’re done playing.

Overall, Lost Odyssey has a great depth of feeling to it not only because of the story, but because of every engrossing detail that Mistwalker has put into making this game. This game may devour time as if the player was just as immortal as Kaim is, but every moment is guaranteed to engross you fully into your journey. Lost Odyssey is a must add to any serious RPG gamers collection, which will bring them untold hours of pure enjoyment.