Have the most hit points and spend the most magic points, and you win.Ĭombat is simply a matter of grinding enemies down using magic or the melee-enhancing "ring" abilities specific monsters are vulnerable to doesn't do much to alter the odds. In Lost Odyssey, rather than take a risk with a tweaked combat engine, Mistwalker created just about the simplest combat resolution system possible. In a combat system that wasn't so stripped down, wasn't competent yet so very basic, the wall system would be a lot more interesting. As the battle drags on and your front row gets torn up, the damage your back row takes gets worse and worse. The game's other main systemic twist is that your back-row characters are protected by a "wall." This represents the front row characters defending them, and the strength of the wall equals the starting hit points of your front-row characters. If you think that sounds an awful lot like Final Fantasy games, get ready to think that quite a few times as we discuss Lost Odyssey. Item customization is limited to a skill-granting item, the craftable "rings," and your weapons - that's it. Each defeated enemy, in general, grants one skill point toward mastering skills ranging from magic to swordsmanship. Mortal party members gain skills by leveling up and can use all of their skills at any time, while the party's immortals gain skills from items or from "linked" mortal party members and have a limited number of skills they can equip at a given time. There are four options for magic schools: black magic exploits elemental weakness white magic heals and protects "spirit" magic does unaligned damage and buffs and the combination school of magic lets you put together some neat Spell A + Spell B tricks. But combat is too basic to satisfy, the dungeons drive a half-hearted story, and it'll more than half-a-dozen hours before you get that full-sized party.Ĭharacters are, largely, either fighters or magicians. Once you have the five characters needed to fill out a battle party you'll have plenty of actions per turn, hit points and magic points to play with.
Save points are frequent enough that you shouldn't worry about plunging into a dungeon for fear of having to turn off the game (and lose some massive quantity of unsaved progress) before you finish.
The random encounters are spaced out well enough to give breathing room but also create tense situations as you try to hammer through a dungeon. Lost Odyssey is basically a competent RPG, with a few wrenching stutters. Fans of old-fashioned Japanese-style RPGs will doubtlessly find aspects to enjoy, but this is not the title that will vault Mistwalker to the triple-A status the studio's hype might suggest. Basic features and dungeon design are handled with the graceful hand of a master designer, but that doesn't compensate for numerous gameplay, storytelling and technical issues. While it's certainly playable, it feels like more of a relic than perhaps its creators intended. The latest project from Final Fantasy creator Sakaguchi's Mistwalker studio, Lost Odyssey aims to ape the style of classic RPGs.