Lost Odyssey

So, I recently Completed* this game. I will say that I liked it, overall. However, if it wasn't for the Thousand Years of Dreams sequences, the game would have been utterly ... well, bog standard JRPG. Bog standard JRPG is fuck boring, nowadays, and has been done for 15 years.

So, what are is Thousand Years of Dreams? Okay. The basic plot point for the game is that you play as Kaim, an immortal. He's been around for 1000 years, unaging. However, he's lost his memory. Over the span of the game, you can unlock 31 memories of past events. These sequences are entirely text, with backgrounds, music, and sound effects. The backgrounds and audio accompaniment are there for effect and such and work well. The stories told by these dreams, however, are amazingly well written. The author of these dreams wasn't a stock JRPG writer (thankfully), but a Japanese short story author, and it SHOWS. These stories are moving. There was more than one that caused me to tear up, more than one that caused me to actually consider life and, to use a bit of a trite phrase, the human condition. They were the best part of the game and some of the best writing I've ever seen in a game, ever.

The rest of the story? Fairly mediocre. None of the characters are really anything new. None of the characters, aside from one, Jansen, are terribly amusing and a handful are even annoying. Jansen, however, is a well done comic relief character. Sed, also, is interesting, though he only shows up about 80% of the way through the game, which is disappointing. He's also a clear Cid-from-Final-Fantasy expy. But, well, given Mistwalker's composition, one can hardly be surprised.

Really, my biggest disappointment with the plot is that ... Well, the only thing that really indicates that you're playing immortals is the odd age difference between Seth and her son and a few other character interactions. The ending felt hollow, too, because of this - It's a standard ending, everyone's happy, yadda yadda. Which doesn't really work for immortals. Dreams aside, that you're playing immortals becomes mostly unimportant for most of the game. I wish they would have really used that as an important part of the plot - Show the characters truly move through time. But, well, then it wouldn't be a standard, boring JRPG, and we can't have that, now, can we?

Sigh. But onto other things.

The music, well. The music was done by Nobuo Uematsu. The man is a great, great composer. The standard battle theme for this game is damned well done, as is the miniboss, boss, and HolyShitThat'sABoss music are also great. I was generally impressed by the music. The graphics... Shrug. They work and they work pretty well. Fairly pretty.

The combat system is a general purpose turn based system, add in a decent spell casting system, a different take on rows, and timed hits. For spells, each spell has a casting time. So, depending on the spell's casting time, it can go off before anyone goes, after, anywhere in between, or even the next round. Getting hit while casting slows down casting (for you *and* the enemy). Which is where the row system comes in. The damage reduction for being in the back row is much more significant than just half damage - It depends on the amount of HP the people in the front row have. Having one person in front is less effective than 2. It's pretty neat. The timed hits are standard things. Time it right, you deal more damage or add effects to your hit. Don't and you don't. The effects are based on the ring you're wearing. Which brings me to the amount of customization this game does and does not have.

The rings! They're fuckall pointless! Okay, no, they're not. However, what you can do with them, in the end, is. Ring component items make up 90% of the items you'll receive in this game. They're all mostly worthless. The difference between just having a basic damage up ring and an element ring is negligible. It would be nice if you could really customize your rings and put what you wanted onto them, but you can't. You're allowed a small set of rings that you can make and that's it. It's annoying, really. To make a ring that has more than one effect, you take the two rings with the individual effects to a ring maker, who combines them. Why couldn't *any* combination work? It would have been nice.

Skills! Here's the best thing about the game, mechanically. All the immortals you have (4), can learn skills off of accessories and from the mortals in your team. Of the skills they know, they can have an amount equipped, which can be increased with items you find. So, you can fairly heavily customize your immortals. However, due to this, mortals really... suck in comparison. So, it's a bit odd, endgame, when your immortals are horrifyingly good and can do everything, but your token included mortal is barely functional in comparison. It'd also be nice if you didn't get enough skill slots to include literally every ability worth having, and if the abilities were a bit more interesting or smaller. I'd like if I had to actually make choices and make people specialize.

Overall? Fun game, worth it for the Dreams, but not amazing.

*Okay, to be honest, I didn't get all the achievements, but I don't give a damn about achievements in most anything. So, I didn't have to find every treasure in the entire game, which is the most retarded achievement known to man, anyway. Further, I didn't get all the seeds, as, well, see above. I did all the major sidequests and killed all the optional bosses. So, I think that suffices.