I like Lost Odyssey a lot more than Blue Dragon for some reason. Even so, the difficulty scaling is kinda of whack and brings to question all the fanboys that complain about heavy random encounters in a game. There simply are not enough in a natural play through to win some of the battles along the way. For example the flower garden battle. I lost the first time over and over at level 17, a level I made it to by naturally following game events and winning key battles. However at 17 the foot soldiers successfully block and the horse people do 300 damage from a Rush move. Nice.
So I went to the Crimson forest and I shit you not, ran in perfect circles until a random battle appeared. After a few of those I made 19, went back. I lost again. The cavalry units Rushed almost non-stop that match, and since they are behind the wall, precious little can be done. Stone? Petrify? haw haw, those never work! Dont waste cast time.
So I consult the strategy guide and it tells me to keep attacking and if someone dies dont bother to rez them cause you need to keep attacking. I KNOW this game can do smarter battles than that. Eventually I won not because of any deep strategy, but because on the 8th attemp, the cavalry units just didnt feel like using their Rush move anymore.
Fancy that.
Im past that now and back to the stuff I like so its not a huge knock. But anyone who bitches about frequent random battles needs to realize that if things arent done right, me running in place to get a random battle is actually more ridiculous than fighting tons of random battles. The solution is of course to create respawning fixed encounters that players can choose to engage.
I wont comment on the story, it is what it is. And what it is, is more interesting than FFX-12 and probably 13. The emo stories are well written and the dialogue is funny. Whatever, its a fukin RPG if I want good writing ill read the most excellent Halo novels.
