| DragonLord said: Lost Odyssey is a really good game. My favorite "next-gen" RPG by far (although many on the ps2 are better--not graphically though). This game was really underestimated by reviewers that are just hardcore, shooter lovers. The story isn't LO's strong point though--it's the character development. The story stays fairly bland and slow and "non-epic" throughout, but you learn to love the characters which more than makes up for it. The graphics and art direction are great. Sure it has frame rate problems and often has "stutters" when loading battles, but it is still the most advanced RPG graphically by far. My biggest complaint is that there isn't really any power-leveling (which I love to do in FF games--hence, 185 hours on FFXII). You have a cap on each stage which limits the leveling up you can do (unless you're content with 1 experience point per battle!) Overall, if you own a 360, you need to buy this game for sure. An 8.25-8.5/10 from an RPG FREAKOID! If you have a 360 and like JRPG's you need to buy this game. Much better than Blue Dragon in my opinion (way too childish), and I actually prefer it over Mass Effect and Oblivion too. Note: I'm on Disc 4...could beat it, but I'm trying to get 1,000 achievement points first! MUST BUY IF YOU HAVE A 360 AND LIKE JRPG'S! |
The frame rate thing was a bit of a miscalculated error IMHO. Those 'manga' style scenes where they have up to 3-4 inset angles of the varous characters really bogs down the machine, and I don't think they're particularly needed.
I just wish that they had more faith in their in-game engine. Now, the engine has varying degrees of success; absolutely excellent when the scene is poignant and so the directors are there crafting the characters' acting every step of the way, yet lackluster when the scene doesn't call for great scrutiny and ends up being disappointing.
If they're willing to go all the way in each scene, there's no reason the in-game engine can't hold-up for many FMV scenes in the game. Granted, the FMV sequences are still beautiful, and for the most poignant of scenes I don't mind having a polished proper FMV sequence.
The frequent sequences (not length) of loading makes the experience pretty fragmented while the console switches from FMV to in-game back to FMV and so on. You'll notice especially in, Disc 3 and end of Disc 4.
Also, I think the lack of power-levelling is a great plus, actually. You don't have to worry about being distracted from the main storyline, and boss battles are appropiately hard as hell and epic.
But you still have to 'power-SP-level' for the skills anyway, especially to get the full 1000 points achievement.
EDIT: To illustrate my point about the inconsistent animation quality, here's a quote from the GDC 08 where Lost Odyssey was the subject of a surprise talk on cross-cultural game development.
He again pointed to prioritization as the primary error on cut-scene production. In contrast to the backgrounds, the game's 300 or so cut-scenes were broken down into FMVs, A events, B events, and scripted (in-game puppet show) events. In retrospect, he thinks that the FMVs were unnecessary, and that the B events were a mistake. A events got manual facial expression animation and custom motion capture, where B events used off-the-shelf mo-cap. Nakazato pointed out that by trying to use the cheaper B events for less key scenes, they generated an inconsistent level of quality for the player. Next time, they might just use A and scripted events.
