Sakaguchi knows them, however. And that's why it hurts a little bit when the game dishes out the clichés and slaps us in the face with obtuse gameplay and frustrating mechanics. Lost Odyssey really is a paint-by-numbers RPG in a lot of ways, and that's a heartbreaking truth. By sticking to established traditions, Mistwalker played it safe; in doing so, it also negated its own chance to stand out and feel like less of a Final Fantasy clone.
With a touted 1000 years of backstory to gradually fill in, there's no shortage of exposition and room to move within the world of Lost Odyssey. The central character, Kaim Argonar, is one of a handful of immortal beings who are stuck in the middle of a conflict between nations over the rise of Magic-Industrial power. He treks from one battlefield to another as an indestructible mercenary-for-hire. Kaim is so unlovable and bland for such a cool looking character; he gradually softens, but the first dozen hours, you'll really only get to feel for him as you read about his past in unlocked memories. These tales attempt to fill in the backstory and give the long-lived lead more personality – which they do – but if you're the kind of gamer who likes to skip through reams of text in order to get back into the gameplay, be forewarned that a lot of his personality is reliant on reading these memories.
In the epic opening moments of the game, a torrent of lava falls from the sky, wiping out tens of thousands of troops on both sides of the conflict – and it's here that the game begins. You're immediately tossed into a couple of battles shortly before the fiery deluge – a warm-up battle against a handful of soldiers and a heavy tank. This is where we start to see the gameplay groundwork laid out; the traditional menu system has been lifted almost directly from Final Fantasy – Attack, Skill, Spell, Item, Defend – and you simply choose your desired action and the target. Turns are cycled through, eventually ending back with your first character, where the process begins again. There is an element of timing involved in casting more complex spells (as you unlock higher levels of Black, White, Spirit and Composite magic, a higher number of turns are required). It's all classic JRPG staples, so veterans will feel right at home. There's a tutorial system built into the game that appears every time a new feature is introduced too – though most are logical and therefore the walkthrough can be sidestepped.
Mistwalker has definitely tried to innovate direct-input action in the combat phases with the adoption of two systems that govern attack and defence. The first and more subtle of the two changes, The Wall System, is all about building up your front row of characters, so that your cumulative HP (health points) are as high as possible. This total HP slowly gets chipped away when you're under attack, but the back row (lower HP characters and generally spellcasters) is protected from the bulk of the damage from a direct attack while there's still some wall left. An indicator on the top-right of the screen keeps track of your wall, as well as the wall of your enemies. This is arguably the most innovative element in the combat, since it takes what is essentially the established front/back strategic placement and gives it something more mainstream players can easily understand – a tangible bar that is depleted on-screen, rather than just an intangible stat boost or damage reduction running in the background. In other words, we like.
The second, The Aim Ring, is a new take on interactivity inside the turn-based gameplay, requiring you to hold down the left trigger as your character runs at the target. You must then release the trigger as the ring zooms in towards the central stationary aim-ring on the screen. Timing is critical; you must line up the ring's edges exactly in order to get a 'Perfect' rank and the damage bonus. Otherwise, you can get the slightly reduced damage effect from a merely 'Good' attack or a default 'Bad' damage attack if you miss it completely. It took us a while to find the sweet-spot, but after nailing 'Perfect' a few times, you'll get a feel for the timing involved. It certainly is more involving than simply punching in commands too.
The Aim Ring system hinges on creatable, assignable rings that cause different combat altering effects when assigned to a character. You collect various base compound materials either in the field (hidden in the various crates, pots, chests and nooks throughout the towns, caves, mountains, beaches and byways) and combine them in simple formulas to create new rings. These rings can then be combined with scarcer substances to form higher ranking and more effective rings.
In effect, it means you need to really be paying constant attention to using your physical-attack characters. Timing your Aim Ring and gaining the damage bonus isn't essential, but crafting rings with the right effects is. The only major drawback to the system is that it's limited to physical weapons only. Therefore, your non-physical characters (your healers, spellcasters and defence-based characters that join your troupe later into the adventure) gain no such bonus. In its defence, the magic-based characters definitely have the edge throughout much of the early game.
That's a genuine balance issue and an example of poorly thought out encounters that leave your initial team of three (eventually expandable to five members on-screen at once) to menial healing tasks while your main spellcaster has to bear the brunt of the attacking.
Actually, let's delve into one of those encounters. A fair way into the first disc, while you're still flirting with low-level enemies and gradually building up a fair repertoire of rings, skills and magic, you're confronted by a Bogimoray and five Magic Insects. The Bogimoray, essentially a fanged serpent that draws magical energy from the Magic Insects, is the main damage dealer. It has a magic-charge bar that fills up every round that he absorbs from his insect underlings. In essence, with three characters, you need to limit the amount of magic he draws as much as possible by eliminating at least two of the five insects. If the bar fills (which it will, at least twice during the duration of the battle), he will nail you with a blast that leaves your characters significantly damaged and confused.
Once you've taken out the two bugs (and that will take two hits with your physical characters or a single spell from your caster), then you can start nailing the Bogimoray. Unfortunately, the badly balanced system starts to make itself more and more apparent as the boss starts regenerating support bugs, fills its bar and blasts your crew. Then the tables turn and you're on the back-foot for the rest of the battle, constantly healing and reviving your characters, while desperately trying to keep your weak spellcaster alive in the back row, since he is still your primary damage dealer. The game favours spellcasters like this, you see. Their spells (all elemental and strong or weak against certain elemental creatures) can turn the direction of a battle – but you're screwed if they die and you can't revive them (or, if the cheap AI repeatedly knocks them out on the next turn with a hideous counter attack).
The solution? Either backtracking and level grinding (oh god), or absolute strategic perfection that is far beyond your average player this early in the game. The AI is punishing at times; it loves nothing more than to kick you when you're down. Oh, and if you get past Bogimoray, there's a second one to fight immediately after the first, followed by another significant encounter with a small army. And no save point until all of this has run its course. It took us three hours.
Before you jump in with 'well, he's obviously crap, then', we made sure to do all the random battles, plus a few more, just to ensure we were on track for the encounter in terms of level. We also equipped our characters with weapons that had elemental Aim Rings attached and healed them all before battle. It's just one of many painfully tricky encounters that are made that much harder with the necessity and overemphasis on magic casting.
There are other nuances at play in the background that we should delve into – particularly that of your main character's immortality. He and his kind cannot just learn skills with each level-up, as your human characters can. Instead, he must 'Skill Link' to a human character – that is, choose an ability from a list that his human allies already know – and leave it 'cooking' in the background. Once that skill has gained enough experience, you can select it in your skills / magic menu, and then move on and choose another skill to link.
The gameplay does its best to mix things up a little bit. There are elements of stealth gameplay, some basic timing and platforming games, auctions to participate in, fetch quests to complete, items to collect and even a cute Moogle knock-off that devours Seeds. It's the stuff of traditional Japanese RPGs – and we've seen most of it before – including the circumstances in which these elements appear.
The source? Final Fantasy VII through XII. The game is a checklist of things you've seen and done before. For example, the areas in the game traverse locations that are reminiscent of things like the prison in FFVIII, the enormous defensive gun, Mako production facilities, snowfields, mining areas (and a lot more) from VII, the opulent cities and streets of XII, and the characters run the gamut of generica.
Such traditional development is a problem for two reasons. One, it keeps happening and players keep buying into it, which means that it'll continue. Two, every time I have to play as a stoic lead character with no past who is out to save a dying world, it makes me want to cut someone – and it just might happen. It gets to the point where you can start picking the twists just by looking at the character design. That's bad. By the time the loveable rogue meets the rambunctious princess and they start to fall for each other, you'll either reach for your copy of Final Fantasy IX or go all gooey because you've never played an RPG before.
A lot has to be said for the presentation, which is almost impeccable. The bad? The framerate can suffer during massive environments filled with glittering effects and a lot of characters. There's a bit of screen tearing too, and sometimes the world just doesn't feel as populated and bustling as it should. The good? When Mistwalker's art department render just about anything, it's done with the attention to detail and care that only a company like Square Enix themselves bring to the genre. Animations are motion-captured or hand animated, depending on the circumstance. It's a stunningly designed game in most respects. The colour palate goes through the neutral and realistic muted tones and HDR lighting, while later in the game you venture through forests and seas that are lit with glowing neon highlights, lush and oversaturated in a delightful way. The cities of Numara and Uhra, the town of Tosca and the seas of the world at large all look spectacular and varied, injected with fictional culture. All of this is complimented by a semi-fixed camera perspective that you can tweak slightly with the right thumbstick.