allright finished lost odyssey with 1000/1000 i was expecting a fanfare,a parade,at least some party poppers but nothing...
total GS is now 2470
but anyway a while ago i said i didn't think much of FF4 but maybe i never explained why... the reason for why i don't like FF4 that much it's because ultimately the whole game feels bland and slow which doesn't make it bad in itself but it doesn't make for a good experience either,and ultimately lost odyssey feels like that too
the premise of the main character being immortal was probably the most interessing thing about the game but it's really never used... it's like they went "okay! the main character is immortal! let's hire a good writer to give him a nice backstory and then think of the rest after!" and then they proceeded to write generic plot RPG 2436246# and while it's a pretty standard plot some part of it are cringeworthy namely
spoiler (click to show/hide)
- cooke & mack: GAAAAAHHHHHH i haven't been so annoyed by a character since anise in tales of abyss,they serve no purpose to the plot other than they can sometimes watch the camera and go "BLA BLA BLA MOMMY!" or so that kaim can go "OH NO MY GRANDCHILDREN!" they are basicaly drama mcguffins,the worst kind of stunt a JRPG can pull
- speaking of kaim,i understand that he's supposed to be the stoic silent hero but he's barely there! i'm pretty sure that any other character other than sarah or that at least jansen has more lines than him,compare that to lighting,she might comes off as bitchy and unfriendly but at least you notice she's there!
- the way gongora is introduced as the villain is a little ridiculous,first you meet him and he says he has a relationship with kaim... okay... then later he's seen giving a pearl to jansen so he can erase kaim memory,maybe there is a good reason for him to want kaim without his memories? then he stages a fake attempt assasination toward tolten... i'm not even sure why since tolten already loves him to death so.... then he raises some evil doll while doing an evil laugh and that's where you start losing your shit,then he murders the leader of the council... how does he do it? does he stabs him? does he uses henchmans? an unfortunate accident? no he does so by way of FUCKING GIANT EVIL SNAKE! good thing the council leader didn't know how to summon a giant mouse (or a giant eagle) or his whole plan would have been fucked! then kaim regains his memory and at that point he's pretty much teleporting around donning a black armor... it's like they had to raise some villain quotient with each following cutscene! heck i'm pretty sure that after that there was at least a scene where he ties someone to a railroad but it got cut for some reason.... again compare that to FF13 villain,you don't even see him before half of the game and after the hero meets him,he doesn't pull off any evil laugh,nor does anything particulary villanous other than long-winded speech and the idea you get of him is "crazed god-like entity" which is not very good either but it's still more competent than "the villain"
- the game tries to make a big deal out of when kaim daugther die and i don't really have anything bad to say about that... but then right after that it sends you to a fetch quest! and then it does it again! and after that you play a funeral minigame! it's just kind of ridiculous and i don't think i would have been able to use the words "funeral" and "minigame" together in a sensible context
- lastly the whole bit when gongora takes control of uhra is stupid stupid stupid stupid,he just goes on a stand and goes like "KING TOLTEN IS DEAD!" and nobody bat an eyelash,making a coup d'etat in the lost odyssey universe has to be the easiest thing ever! this is twice as stupid when tolten returns home and everybody is like "THERE IS A TRAITOR THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE OUR PREVIOUS KING!" and becomes thrice as stupid when you consider that he had only a thousand chance to kill tolten but he didn't because.......
and it becomes four time as stupid (DERP COMBO X4) when you realize that the guy has the power to make puppet that look like real people so all he had to do was to make a puppet that looked like tolten!
ultimately i have seen some game diddle with the concept of generation passing (like saga frontier 2) and i'm pretty sure that premise alone would have made a muuuuuuuch better plot,maybe you could have it so that your party of immortals would be permament but your mortal character would change over the course of generation,that would be how you bank on such a premise
in fact some of the stories told in the thousand year dreams describe much more interessing places and event than what actualy traspires in the game,as i already said scattering them trough the game wasn't a very good idea (you are there searching for treasure,when suddenly *WHOOOSH* you trigger a dream,and after the dream you return to your treasure hunting... it just kind of break the pace) and even if they are really well written,quite a bunch of them boil down to "kaim meet someone,that someone dies,but kaim will never die!" the thing i found especialy puzzling is that you have 3 other character to work with and one of them is a freaking pirate! really? the pirate only deserve a small bit of backstory? the one about ming was cool so why we couldn't have more about like that?
spoiler (click to show/hide)
tough it basicaly goes completly against the character that the actual plot feeds you
but anyway so far i bitched about the plot but i still said nothing about the game,himuro said that he love the customization that's available in lost odyssey but personaly i think that the game never reach the sweet spot about it,when you start the game your character barely have any skill slot avaiable or any skill to choice other than "steal" and "attack up when critical" which barely make any impact in battle and by the time you reach the end of the game,your character have 30 skills slot and in fact you have so much of them that you don't know how to fill them and your character are also now immune to every status effect and also to every spell and they have 9999 HP and in fact are so powerfull and broken that they make the 8-hit wonders from FF5/FF6 almost reasonable
and yea that's a pretty apt comparison,when you reach the game end,the game gives you a boat and then it makes you go into lot of places where you fight not-so powerfull optional bosses for reward you really didn't need (other than for that very particular broken power-up) in really boring looking place's (i swear between the story dungeon and the optional area's i counted at least 4 caves) one of them even hold the best white magic and the best black magic! sounds familiar? too bad they didn't put it inside a tower!
it wasn't exciting when they did it in final fantasy and it's sure isn't exciting here either
some of the system used to spice-up the battle feel half-assed,adding timing works in game like shadow hearts and paper mario because it's added to EVERY action of the game,when it works only when pulling off normal attacks,it just feel like a tacked on addition... the CG idea too could have been interessing but between the fact that the game is piss easy and that your back row probably holds your reject character (or maybe it would be best to say your reject mortal's) that idea too never comes into full circle...
the fact that battles just feel slow between loading times and running animation just add to the blah
tl;dr version
it wasn't bad but it was very averagish,easy,generic looking and it had sort of a stupid plot,in short i feel a little bad when i think that i skipped disgaea 3 and atelier pantsu to play this and this also put's blue dragon pretty much on the bottom of the list of 360 game i'm going to play
