#39
Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360)
YoY: +1
The one game that back in the late 2000s had me considering actually buying a 360. Final Fantasy was in something of a slump at the time, and JRPGs in general were going through a difficult period, where a lot of companies had seemingly decided that the genre was no longer popular. More traditional games had especially seemingly fallen out of favour, and a lot of developers were experimenting with new gameplay styles with varying degrees of success. It was into that environment that Lost Odyssey was released back in 2008 (in the west).
I didn't actually get around to playing the game until a few years ago, because I simply couldn't justify getting an entire console for a single game. When I finally did play it, I can say that the wait was worth it. A lot of people complained about the game's very traditional gameplay at the time of its release, but to me it was pretty much perfect. The story, characters, battle system, music by Nobuo Uematsu, and the setting were all great. It felt like playing a classic Final Fantasy game, and that was exactly what I wanted from Lost Odyssey. The short stories found within the game, called A Thousand Year of Dreams, are also some of the very best writing I've ever encountered in video games.
