LOST ODYSSEY.

God you posted the same thread at Gaming World. You should have warned us. Also, this is an example of why video game companies see forums and game communities as free marketing for their games. A marketing pamphlet could not have been more informative.

This is not going multi-platform because Microsoft funded its development and it's published by Microsoft Game Studios. It's the same way that Bungie is no longer owned by Microsoft but you will never see Halo 3 ported to PS3.

Anyway this is what I said at Gaming World:

I am personally really looking forward to this game. It's one of the first games that I've preordered for a long time (I do not anticipate retailers ordering a massive quanitity of copies). I couldn't really care less about the "emotional experience" that this game might might to provide or any sort of story it might try to tell because I am completely convinced that videogames will never really tell competent stories. I'm looking forward to the sorts of strategic gameplay, number-crunching, character customization, and exploration of exotic environments that Japanese RPGs and especially Final Fantasy games (let's not kid ourselves here) are always reliable for.

author=WIP link=topic=679.msg8942#msg8942 date=1202837482
I'll probably pick this up at some later point in my 360's life. It doesn't seem to enthralling to me right now.

But you'll buy 3D remakes of Suikoden 2 instead :(

Incidentally some of the people hyped for this game are dumbasses. Note this comment at 1Up:

If you don't like this game, your not a REAL RPG fan. Simple. You must prefer Halo or "Ass Ass ins" Creed. All RPG's have followed the same formula underlining the main game. Story and characters. I feel the game is a great move forward for Mist Walker, and I enjoy the whole experience so far. Remember, RPG's are about the "story", and "characters", and Lost Odyssey delivers with both.

author=brandonabley link=topic=679.msg8947#msg8947 date=1202840724
If you don't like this game, your not a REAL RPG fan. Simple. You must prefer Halo or "Ass Ass ins" Creed. All RPG's have followed the same formula underlining the main game. Story and characters. I feel the game is a great move forward for Mist Walker, and I enjoy the whole experience so far. Remember, RPG's are about the "story", and "characters", and Lost Odyssey delivers with both.

This is probably one of the most amazing comments ever. For the record, story and characters mean shit if your game is unplayable.

author=WIP link=topic=679.msg8961#msg8961 date=1202849873
This is probably one of the most amazing comments ever. For the record, story and characters mean shit if your game is unplayable.

Also the comment was posted by someone living in America days before the game was even released so he's such a fanboy that he'll basically pretend to have played the game.

author=yamata no orochi link=topic=679.msg8967#msg8967 date=1202855668
I'm a bit torn over this game, actually. It looks really good, but a bunch of reviewers are ripping it to pieces for being too derivative.

Everyone loved Final Fantasy 9, which was ridiculous derivative and was so even on purpose (actually I believe it's the highest-rated PSOne game ever). Maybe you should consider it.

author=demondestiny link=topic=679.msg9011#msg9011 date=1202938180
I never read what major game sites review all these games. To me, i will buy the game if i myself like it, not what others think.

How do you know if you will like it unless you read reviews? You can't honestly expect press releases to be fair and balanced in their assessment of their own product.

I played a couple hours of this game lastnight and holy shit it's so amazing. It's basically everything I was hoping Blue Dragon would be. Little details that I love:

- The game hits the ground running and throws you into a battle and a short dungeon before any long exposition. This is excellent pacing because when you first boot a game up you don't want to watch a long cutscene.

- The battles are really fun. They are challenging and move pretty swiftly. The animation and camera work is really cool and definitely feels like a violent melee sometimes.

- The skill-learning system is extremely novel and pretty bizarre but works and I like it. It basically amounts to a class system of sorts or maybe a materia system where the materia are underpowered party members and once you learn a skill you never forget it. Anyway it's fun.

- Graphics are excellent of course <3

- Random battles suck ass but the encounter rate is pretty low and the random battles are somewhat challenging so you don't get bored.

- You have a run button that lets you fly across the screen if you are say in a town that you have already explored and just want to get to the fucking train station

- The game is full of short story segments that you can optionally read. They are not grand literature but they are competently written and have cool text effects and nice music and impressionistic art in the background. I like those sequences a lot. You can skip them when they come up if you are illitarate. They claim to explore the main character's backstory, but really all they do is repeatedly justify why the main character is so morose; the past 1000 years of his life have apparently been a neverending string of tragedies and disappointments.

- Unlike Blue Dragon the game doesn't hide useless shit under every rock and tree stump in the entire game so you don't spend half of your gametime mashing the A button on everything so that you can get excited when you find Nothing.

- Unlike Blue Dragon you won't finish the game with an 80-hour file like I did and only have 30 achievement points (I already have 150!).

Things that I have noticed that I don't like:

- The loading times in battle remind me of Final Fantasy IX. It's not completely obnoxious, but the game definitely takes it time slowly sweeping across your party and then the enemy group while it's secretly loading things off-screen. You will notice but you won't have time to make a sandwich.

- It's kind of confusing the you press up/down to cycle between enemies displayed on screen left-right.

- Much of the character design is ridiculous and lame. For example the main character always has a strand of hair in his eyes and I HATE IT. Also he's definitely a fag. Both of the two people in your group at the start of the game look really stupid actually.

- After the explosive beginning there is a long string of outrageously boring cutscenes. I took this opportunity to get a light workout in front of the TV while politicians argued about a war full of names of countries I could never possibly be expected to remember. Political intrigue is cool, but the writers of this game don't understand that you need to start small and expand outwards. Final Fantasy Tactics is a great example of political intrigue in a game that starts small and expands outwards, and the result is that you manage to keep track of everything.



But seriously guys, this is basically Final Fantasy X but the depressed main character doesn't bitch about his problems like Tidus did which is awesome. It's one of the best Final Fantasy games I've ever played!

So is Lost Odyssey a contender against the massive Final Fantasy franchise, Him? I think that's what people want to know. The ShooterBox needs a strong RPG series.

author=prexus link=topic=679.msg9074#msg9074 date=1203039209
So is Lost Odyssey a contender against the massive Final Fantasy franchise, Him?

I don't know if it's like what you'd expect from Final Fantasy XIII, but maybe more like what you'd expect from the missing Final Fantasy XI. It's a really good RPG and one of the best I've played in a long time but at this rate I don't think it will end up being my favorite game ever. But if you like Japanese RPGs this is a must-play so far. It's sort of like Rainbow Six: Vegas, which is far from being my favorite shooter, but in my opinion is a must-play for anyone that likes shooters at all.

But I haven't finished it so we'll see what happens! Sometimes, you'll get something like Pillars of the Earth or Uncharted: Drake's Fortune that you aren't so sure about until you finish it. When you do, you might realize that the whole is sort of better than the sum of its parts. This might be a game like that?

author=Ciel link=topic=679.msg9088#msg9088 date=1203062403
There was this really lame cutscene

This game definitely has its share of lame cutscenes ala Japanese RPG standard. It seems even Japanese games without many cutscenes like Final Fantasy XII manage to make sure at least 1/4 of them are embarassing. So, really, you shouldn't judge a game like this because you see that it has a few terrible cutscenes. Also anyone that plays RPGs for the story needs to stop being 14 years old.

author=demondestiny link=topic=679.msg9117#msg9117 date=1203117811
Isn't the story one of the important parts in a game. People will tend to not play a game if the story sucks.

How old are you?

author=brandonabley link=topic=679.msg9133#msg9133 date=1203134741

author=demondestiny link=topic=679.msg9117#msg9117 date=1203117811
Isn't the story one of the important parts in a game. People will tend to not play a game if the story sucks.

How old are you?

Not sure how old you are but i'm 26.

To me, a game gets boring if the story pretty much sucks, whether or not the game has a fancy battle system or fantastic graphics etc.