![]() ![]() For unknown reasons, Kaim and Seth remember very little of their lives and where they come from, leaving the council uneasy. The early stages of the game focus on Kaim being assigned by the council who governs the nation of Uhra to investigate the cause of a magic leak at a facility not far from the capital city. But as I set off, for the game’s first mission, I began to understand the charm of Lost Odyssey, and I’ve yet to experience anything else quite like it. I found these two to be annoying, but a welcome relief from Kaim’s monotone moping. My hope for the game’s potential dwindled further as Seth Balmore, the female pirate, and two-dimensional drunkard, Jansen Friedh, were introduced. ![]() My cynicism continued as I followed the protagonist, Kaim, through the very lengthy and slowly paced tutorial-esque first chapter of the game. ![]() It was the logical next step for fantasy games where revival magic existed and it was a beautiful reprieve to see a game address some more complicated implications of magic’s existence in the world. After each army laid waste to the other, bodies scattered the battlefield until mage upon tall spires reached down with magic and revived armies below, dooming them to fight and die again. Lost Odyssey opened with a cutscene of two clashing armies with inexcusably tall helmets destroying each other as large spider-like tanks rejected from the Terminator franchise dropped hammer like arms on the soldiers below. My only option was to jump in and get it over with. Once the title card animations ran their course, I was brought to a bland and unimpressive gray menu that simply said ‘ Lost Odyssey’ in a minimalist and underwhelming way. ![]() Reluctantly, I placed disc one into the slot and booted up my bad purchase. Weeks passed before I bothered to so much as tear off the shrink wrap, but when I finally did, I rolled my eyes yet again at the set of four game discs, knowing I’d never finish a game this long. I shrugged my shoulders, went to the counter, and bought a freshly sealed copy of some garbage JRPG that was sure to give me buyer’s remorse. I hadn’t even heard of it before, so how good could it really be? And yet, Blue Dragon just looked so childish. What fool wouldn’t want combat menus in HD? This grossly limited my options down to two games: Blue Dragon and something called Lost Odyssey which just had to be terrible. Of course I wanted to play something on the most current generation of consoles. Owning only an Xbox 360 and a Gamecube, my options were limited. I thought that it would be nice to find something more relaxing than another shooter so I began reminiscing over my favorite Final Fantasy games and I narrowed my search down to turn based JRPGs. Coming off the excitement of completing Bioshock and Mass Effect back to back, it was difficult to find anything of interest. There were certainly some good JRPGs that have followed the genius we got to experience on the original Playstation, but few could hold their ground against masterpiece predecessors like Chrono Trigger.īack in the summer of 2008, I found myself browsing through Gamestop for some rainy day entertainment. I longed for characters as quirky as the airship pirates of Final Fantasy IX, for villains as mysterious and menacing as Sephiroth, and for heroes as conflicted and noble as Cecil Harvey of Final Fantasy IV. But as years passed, this proved to be a double edged sword, as turned-based Japanese role playing games became outdated and stale. As a gamer, I consider myself fortunate to have grown up as a part of the generation that got to experience the golden age of the Final Fantasy franchise as it happened. ![]()
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