Monday, August 4, 2008

Lost Odyssey Reveiw

Lost Odyssey in review.

I have completed the game Lost Odyssey. Or at least that is what I am going to tell myself. I hit a snag in the game and I have gotten to a point where I was not willing to put in the required work for no reward.

I really enjoyed the game in the beginning I really felt like I was playing and rpg of old and that a company finally after years of trying once again got the formula down for a good role playing game. However there is a single aspect of the game they took to a level that made it extremely difficult to continue the game after disk 3. Boss Battles, do we really need 500 of them one after another. Not to mention the complete lack of save points before them. In the days of old as you got through the dungeon you knew when you arrived at that save point that you where about to hit a boss battle.

Well not in Lost Odyssey. Why should they let you know or give you warning? It just means your likely to die due to being unprepared. Not to mention that this game does not heal your characters at save points. I know everyone figured out the quit the game and reload thing but still why?

Anyway I reached a point in the game where I had 3 boss battles left. My party had extremely unbalanced levels which is really lame as they expected me to be prepared at all times that out of nowhere they will split my party up and make me fight 2 bosses at once.

Here is a small exert of the strategy needed to beat this boss battle.

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MINIBOSS: Generals Alpha and Beta

Sed adjusting the output of the magic energy nulls the enemy's HP recharge. It only works once per turn, so you'll have to choose which side should benefit from the delay.

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Sed will delay the enemy's recharge -- one side, one turn only!

If you kill one of the Generals, the next one has to be killed in the next group's turn. In other words, the Alpha group has to kill theirs before the Beta group can. If the Beta group needs time to whittle down energy, then group Alpha will have to wait a little bit. In that regard, it's best to have the group that deals the least damage be the one that receives the delayed energy output, and have the stronger group deal with the increases in the Generals' health.

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Keep using Powerus on the physical attackers to wipe out the Generals more quickly. Just don't go overboard or you might mess up the kill pattern.

After that, heal up and make your way back up to the Glass Chamber, where you'll immediately face another boss! A familiar one, at that…

BOSS: Magic Beast

Yes, the big thing you fought when trying to reclaim the Nautilus returns..Hit the Beast with everything you got, and protect the party with everything you got. Using Powerus and Mindus like last time is definitely a good idea. As long as your attacks are hitting with 1000+ HP, things should go pretty smoothly.

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He's not such a toughie this time around.

You have got to be kidding me...


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Thanks 1up.com for you awesome superguide. Anyway as I continue through the game I hit just one awful boss battle after another. So being supremely annoyed I looked ahead in my guide and studied the future boss battles I had to do. I then decided since there was not story development between these bosses besides simply beating the end boss. To simply cut my losses and watch the ending on youtube. It was alright this is a game for us out there who are starved for a decent rpg. Unfortunately it got to caught up in trying to add extra elements to its boss battles and in the end just created gameplay that was alot more frustrating then fun.

So in the end I traded the game in for credit towards pre-ordering Fable 2 which I know can't possibly let me down.

Over all here is my rating of Lost Odyssey I will be giving all aspects of the game a score out of 10 and I will not be adding lame categories that make no sense like "tilt" wtf?


Lost Odyssey: 7 overall
Battle System: 7 Just average.
Boss Battles: 5 Shifted in difficulty way to often.
Story: 7 It was alot better if you read all the lame dreams but they are way to long.
World: 9 Very beautiful and engaging world I liked almost having a true world map again.
Music: 10 Another amazing sound track. (cept. for the lame lullaby)



Saturday, August 2, 2008

WTF Mistwalker Studios what the hell where you thinking.

So Mistwalker is the geniuses behind blue dragon and Lost Odyssey. Powered by none other then former square-enix and father in final fantasy itself Hironobu Sakaguchi.
Now seriously that alone should make this game an icon and a shining example for all future rpgs to follow. Worse I have encountered an instance twice in the game that just seems like such basic game design at this point how could any company designing an rpg miss it. Twice, TWICE! I was rolled right into a boss battle unexpectedly without any sort of save point in place before the initiation.

How can this happen I ask you? Whose big idea was it? Where they just designing the game and two guys smoking crack were all "hey, you know what would be a gas? What? Just leaving out the save point before a couple bosses. Ya know, to leave the player feeling confused and frustrated."

So why get so annoyed? Why lets this get me down? I mean the first time I simply died and started over. Where as the second time it happened I was able to survive the battle by the skin of my teeth.

You know what else has made lost odyssey just plain the most annoying rpg I have ever played? The first disk is really hard at first. This caused alot of players to simply quit the game and not move on. The second disk is alot easier and the boss on the third disk was literally the easiest boss fight I have done in a roll playing game in years. However the 4Th disk just sorta hits you like a ton of bricks. Personally I am not a big fan of side quests. I find them to be pointless half the time. Unless I need this specific item to beat a game I see no point in going to great lengths to acquire it.

Take two today will be status effects. I mean why! just why?! Why make every little minion random battle and boss have some annoying status effect to give you a head ache and waste your time. I know they want there to have to be a strategy in order to be able to defeat your enemy but seriously why does a boss have to turn all my characters to stone every single time I DE-stone them, just plain tedious.

Other then that I was playing some city of heroes today. I got about 4 more bars towards the next goal level which is 37 for my katana/willpower character at the moment. The going is very slow and the lack of feeling of progress after hours of play is very discouraging.

I am thinking of creating a new villain or hero today just to give myself some change of game play for a bit.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Boss battle Irony, the party member poltergeist.

Odd Adventures in Gaming.

So I am playing Lost Odyssey which is a Role Playing Game for the Xbox 360. I am fighting three tanks two minion style and one main tank that has the boss inside of it. The two minion tanks steal mana from my characters and transfer it to the main tank which has a huge cannon on the top of it. The canon has an energy bar and as my mana is stolen the bar fills and once full the canon lets out an attack that basically one shots all of my characters.



This is where the oddity starts. It one shot all all of my characters but one. This particular character for no reason that I can deduce with logic is completely healed for an insane amount every time the boss uses his main attack. So I sit in front of my television with a stunned and annoyed look on my face not sure if i want to throw the controller through the TV cause 4 of my team of 5 has just had their asses handed to them. I am also enthralled with the character that lived and as i started using him to to res the other characters thought internally how they need to thrown him a freaking parade for saving their sad lives. So anyway right as I res the other characters BAM! the boss levels all my resurrected characters and once again heals the single character leaving me happy as hell and completely pissed off!

So I say to myself new strategy! I am just going to use this character to beat the two tanks that steal my characters mana allowing the ass boss to level my other characters like a bull dozer on steroids. So he starts with his little attacks on the other two tanks. Each has about 5400 hp and my character can only hit them for around 400 an attack so I am pretty settled in for a long and annoying battle.

When low and behold my fallen characters just start standing up and saying thank you. I am sitting there about to lose myself as half my party is now back in action. You would think this would be a good thing but its really not as the boss just one shot them again the next attack anyway. The only time I have ever seen anything else like this happen was one time when I was fighting the last boss in final fantasy 9 for my sister. I had already beaten it but she was having trouble with the boss. Particularly an attack where he hits all her party members with a very power attack and kills them. When he used the attack on all of the characters killing them when I was playing. They all simply stood back up for no reason and I was able to finish killing the last boss and watch the sad ending.

So you can see how in a way its similar a boss with a powerful one shot and random character resurrects. In the end I was able to use the single character Kaim by name to kill the tanks that stole the mana and use him to resurrect my fallen party owning the boss in the end with all 5 party members standing and receiving their well deserved end battle bonuses and experience points.

I am currently on disk 4 of Lost Odyssey and about to enter Grand Staff. I look forward to owning Gongora's face!

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Your thoughts on Lost Odyssey.