Day 292 - Lost Odyssey
RPG, Dungeon Crawler, Text Adventure ·
Sam’s Take:
Hello everyone, my name is Sam Cain. You may remember me from the other 291 reviews on this website, Flash Forward Reviews. You may be thinking that since I’ve reviewed 291 other games (plus 365 other games for our last series) that I would be more than qualified to review any and all games. You’re sitting there thinking “this Sam guy truly is the Almighty Gaming Authority(tm), I trust him more than anyone else because he’s a REAL GAMER and he’s EXTREMELY ATTRACTIVE AND WELL ADJUSTED.”
I regret to inform you that I have no idea what I’m doing with Lost Odyssey. It was developed in 2007 by Mistwalker Studios. The team was led by Hironobu Sakaguchi (director of Final Fantasy 1-5 and then producer of 6-10) exclusively for the Xbox 360, and it was made for someone who isn’t me. I don’t want to imply that I had a bad time with Lost Odyssey, I just want to be clear that everything I don’t like about this game is probably someone else’s shit. So instead of reviewing this game proper, like I’m sure my other writers are doing, I will instead ask the question: who is Lost Odyssey for?
To answer this question, we must first discuss Jansen.
Jansen is a borderline game-ruining trainwreck of a character. If you replaced his character model with Bethesda’s default missing texture and all of his voice lines with antidepressant disclaimers, it would improve the game substantially.
Jansen is supposed to represent the trope of an uncaring playboy who learns to love his friends and find redemption. They got halfway there, but forgot about the redemption. He starts the game as a wise cracking pervert, and ends the game as a wisecracking pervert who put a woman to sleep with magic to kidnap her. He feels the need to mumble a shitty joke during every emotional scene, lest we get a little too invested. He’s just shitty comic relief that the writers give everything to. Everyone learns to love him, he gets the girl in the end, and for what? He learns nothing, doesn’t improve and we’re just supposed to not notice.
This leads me to my first qualifier, the ideal Lost Odyssey player, must be a capital G gamer. They must want to be loved and respected without doing the work. They want the love of women, but not think too hard about why women might love them. A smarmy pervert who gets everything they want? Gamer shit. Windlenot (who wrote a review below) just said out loud (sarcastically), “They always make characters for Chads, but what about me?” This is the mindset. This is the way. This is the Gamer.
Okay so we’ve narrowed it down to big G gamers, but to file it down more, we must answer the question: what the hell is Lost Odyssey, and why didn’t you answer this question before talking about Jansen? I will answer half of that question.
Lost Odyssey is a turn-based JRPG with a front-row back-row combat system. Attacking the back-row will do minimal damage until the front row has been sufficiently weakened. There are no limits on how many people can be in each row, though the level of back-row protection seems to be based on the total HP pool of the front. This is to say that for some fights, having a one man front row tank is viable, but for longer fights, it’s probably better to have a couple people to protect the back line.
This system really only works for longer battles where you have an actual chance of dying, but luckily for us the designers made this basically every fight. Enemies hit hard and almost every encounter will cost some amount of resources, even on normal difficulty. Lost Odyssey is the type of game that will actually make you open your items menu, and not just to use one of your 27 full restores à la Persona 4. Boss fights seemed to be designed around taking a loss, then re-formatting your items and team now that you know how the boss functions. It’s amazing how big of a difference some different equipment and a new formation can make in a boss fight. The turn based combat in Lost Odyssey is punishing, tactical, and rewarding.
To make use of this system to its fullest, you will have to navigate THE MENUS. This is where I have to make an admission, Windlenot actually played this game for the most part. We yelled instructions at him, but he held the controller, and I never had to truly dive into this default RPG Maker lookin’ menu. So when I say that I like that the immortal characters can learn skills from mortal characters (yes there are immortals, sorry we just don’t have time), keep in mind that I wasn’t the one who had to swap the skills being learned every three battles. When I say that I appreciate the difference items and equipment can make, please keep in mind that I didn’t have to change them after a long failed boss fight. The system had depth, but it requires patience.
And thusly we can narrow our Lost Odyssey player a little more. They must be a GAMER and an INTELLECTUAL. The patience to sit through menus, and feel the joy that in three fights, you will obtain the ability to use two items in one turn. The reasoning and resolution to lose a boss fight then calmly say “A-ha, we must move Seth to the back row, and spend all our buffs on Kaim to secure this victory!” The ideal player must, like our playgroup, possess huge and intimidating brains.
There is yet another element to Lost Odyssey that can help us out in our quest to understand its players, the story. Calling Lost Odyssey’s story a mess is both true and unfair. There is more shoved into this game than I could possibly hope to outline in a daily review. There are immortals that are sad because life has no meaning without death. There are mortals that are sad because they have to live in a world with Jansen. There are corrupt governments, wars, a thousand year past told via the medium of text. Sometimes our brooding protagonist Kaim will see something that reminds him of that time he bought shoes or some shit, and we’ll get a short story about the shoemaker’s pathetic life and the fuckin baller shoes they made.
These short story sections are all over the place. There’s one about Kaim helping a soldier in his army defect and escape the war that had our whole playgroup feeling that immortal sorrow in the depths of our soul. There’s another about Kaim being a prison guard where his boss calls all the prisoners “losers, not winners” like 14 times and I wanted to take a big ol’ nap. The story outside of these sections has a similar mixed quality. The old pirate leader seeing his much younger looking immortal mother and screaming at the top of his elderly lungs “MOOOOOMMMY!!!” is both genuinely touching and hilarious. The scene where Jansen kidnaps a princess and never explains why is so baffling that I spent the next five hours googling for answers. Multiple times the characters mention a really bad super evil threat 40 seconds before it shows up because they forgot to mention this very important threat earlier oops. There’s one time where 3 sea monsters appeared and the immortal princess Ming says, “It must be because I got my memories back.” I have no earthly idea how these things could possibly be correlated, but the fight was so sick that I’ll let it slide.
The highs are absurdly high, the lows are absurdly low, and so the ideal player must be forgiving of flaws. They need to see the best in something they like and be willing to forgive some extreme narrative jank.
So where do we find this forgiving, intellectual gamer? I think the answer is very simple.
If I had played this in 2008 (when it was localized in English) at age 15, I think my brain would exploded. I would have related so hard to every immortal edgelord moment, because I certainly felt like an immortal edgelord in 2008. I knew I hated the idea of corrupt governments, but I certainly didn’t know how to conceptualize it, so I would have fallen for all of Lost Odyssey’s narrative tricks. I would have thought about it hard enough to engage, but not hard enough to find holes. I was (and still am) a puzzle FREAK, so I certainly would have gotten a smug sense of satisfaction from solving the game’s boss fights. As for Jansen’s pervert gamer shit… I can’t think of anyone that was made for more than 15 year old Sam.
I hate 15 year old Sam. I don’t hate Lost Odyssey. I enjoy it differently than I am supposed to, from a more analytical outside perspective. I look at it now as an artifact. I’ll call it messy, ambitious, unique and valuable, but I can’t ever be in it because it’s not meant for me now. It’s a game that was made in 2007, localized just for me in 2008, and I totally missed it.
Thank you, and I’m sorry.
Recommend: To past me
Replay Percentage Chance: 1%
Time Played: 45 Hours
NOTE: Skeeter did not play this game. I lied to him and sent him some RPG Maker game with the same title. He doesn’t know we are doing this. Sorry Skeeter!
Guest Writer Julia’s Take:
How can I even attempt to review Lost Odyssey? That’s the question I kept asking myself as I tried to plan to write this review. It’s a mammoth of a game. Everything about it is maximalist, from the sprawling menus to the ridiculous amount of equippable skills for your party.
As someone who has never played a Final Fantasy game and whose primary JRPG gaming experiences involve the Persona and Fire Emblem series, I don’t feel like I have the background knowledge to write about Lost Odyssey in relation to the full history and context of JRPGs. I also feel a bit daunted trying to write about this game in any comprehensive way—it’s so overwhelmingly large and for the most part, the story is a confusing mess.
What I do feel equipped to do is respond to a few reviews that were written when Lost Odyssey was released in the U.S. in February 2008. Thanks to The Video Game History Foundation’s Digital Archive (my librarian/archivist heart is so happy that this project exists), I was able to track down some reviews of Lost Odyssey from several video game magazines. Throughout my own reflections on the game, I decided to respond to the following reviews:
- “Lost Odyssey: Lost and found” from Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 227 (pg. 76-77)
- “Lost Odyssey: Immortal beloved” from Game Informer, Issue 180 (pg 92)
- “Lost Odyssey: The heart may be strong, but it needs a solid mind to guide it” from GamePro, Issue 236 (pg. 76-77)
- “Lost Odyssey: From here to eternity” from Official Xbox Magazine, Issue 82 (pg. 68-69)
A conventional game with “straightforward gameplay”?
I was honestly shocked at how many reviewers called Lost Odyssey a conventional game. Reviews mention that the game “doesn’t attempt to find a middle ground between convention and innovation; it sides with convention all the way” (Game Informer) and that it “doesn’t break boundaries” (Electronic Gaming Monthly). Reviewers also describe Lost Odyssey as having “straightforward gameplay” (Official Xbox Magazine) and “exceedingly traditional combat” (Electronic Gaming Monthly).
I haven’t played a ton of JRPGs, but to me, Lost Odyssey was far from ‘conventional’ and its combat and gameplay seemed pretty innovative. Managing the menus was certainly not a straightforward task (I’m sure Windlenot can attest to this the most as the true capital ‘G’ Gamer who controlled the game during our playthrough).
In terms of innovative gameplay, in Lost Odyssey, the immortal characters can adopt the skills of the mortal characters. I’ve never played a game where certain characters can learn skills from other characters in the party. I really liked this fresh take on combat strategy paired with character skill management. This gameplay mechanic also reflects one of the main themes of the game: immortal characters learning lessons from mortal human beings.
Throughout the narrative, the protagonist, Kaim, learns how to be more in touch with his emotions from his interactions with the mortal world, but he also learns silly battle skills from his friends. I liked to picture Kaim learning how to steal from Jansen, or how to do a combo hit from Mack. Instead of very overt character bonding through relationship link conversations à la Persona or Fire Emblem, Lost Odyssey offers a passive type of character bonding where immortal characters grow and learn new combat skills as they battle alongside their mortal comrades.
The game also does a great job of encouraging you to use all the characters in combat by requiring mortal characters to be active members of your party in order for immortal characters to learn skills from them, and by splitting up the party at different points in the story. These circumstances led to some challenging battles which were a mix of frustrating and rewarding for our group to tackle together.
The GamePro reviewer complains that “the periodic boss battles are challenging not because of particularly cunning design or strategic insight but because you didn’t equip the correct skills ahead of time.” But I would argue that losing the battle on your first attempt and then strategizing and figuring out which skills to equip in your second try is what makes the combat challenging and interesting. This type of strategizing was reminiscent of Persona 3 FES, where it’s almost expected for your party to get wiped out by the boss on the first try, only to regroup with a new team and strategy for the next go-round.
Honestly, two of the worst and least rewarding parts of Lost Odyssey’s gameplay were the ring creation system and the treasure hunting side quests. I strongly disagree with the Official Xbox Magazine reviewer who states: “[You’ll] find yourself chasing down every skill and accessory while combining materials into champ-making Rings. And Lost Odyssey’s Pandora’s Box of side quests and mini-games flings wide open on the second disc (why did they wait so long?!), baiting the hook for completists looking to scratch that Final Fantasy-checklist itch.” None of these ‘completionist’ elements hooked me to the game. The rings you get in random chests and by winning battles are much stronger than the ones you can craft, anyway, and the treasure hunting was a slog (that we actively avoided!) compared to the dream novellas.
The ‘dream novellas’
Reviewers were somewhat mixed on the ‘dream novella’ visual novel sections of the game. The Game Informer reviewer argues that some of the dream sections would have made better cutscenes than scrolling text sequences, noting that “the concept could have been much enhanced by showing (in addition to simply telling) these stories.” However, he also writes: “[T]he text is wonderfully written, and I love how it develops the characters.”
In Electronic Gaming Monthly, two reviewers wholeheartedly disagree on the dream sequences, with one reviewer referring to them as “lazy, noninteractive short stories that you read,” while the other reviewer writes an in-depth defense of them: “Further amplifying the storytelling is ‘A Thousand Years of Dreams,’ a collection of well-written novellas…I found them highly effective and exceedingly moving. Drawn-out cut-scenes detach players from the action, but the written word requires the use of imagination and introspection, forcing you to explore Kaim’s past experiences-stories that revolve around such diverse topics as unjust imprisonment, racism, and suicide.”
I thought the inclusion of the dream novellas was an innovative way to approach character development and storytelling in a JRPG. I never found myself wishing for more cutscenes since the dream sequences were unique and engaging and I felt like they allowed me to really immerse myself in the flashbacks. I did wish there were more dream novellas for some of the less-fleshed-out characters, like Sarah and Ming. I may be biased because I tend to gravitate toward games with visual novel elements (13 Sentinels, etc.), but I always looked forward to learning little bits about the characters’ pasts through these short story moments.
However, I do agree with the GamePro reviewer that Lost Odyssey has noticeable issues with pacing and often feels like it is trying to be a bunch of different games at once. As this reviewer aptly sums up, “Lost Odyssey can’t figure out if it wants to be a mildly interactive film, a collection of short stories, or a tradition-bound console RPG.” As much as I enjoy the dream novellas, they do throw off the pacing at times. You’ll get like three short stories back to back, and then a dry spell with no novellas during multiple dungeons and side quests. I did enjoy that you randomly get hit with the dream memories when talking to some rando in the street though, and I’d rather have these visual novel snippets than more fetch quests and treasure hunts any day.
I am also grateful that we did not have a single dream novella related to Jansen.
Jansen (derogatory)
I almost focused my entire review on why Jansen sucks as a character. I would have delved into how other video game characters with this ‘womanizer’ archetype are written with so much more complexity and care (e.g., Junpei from Persona 3), but alas, I only had one day to write this review and not enough Jansen screenshots to illustrate everything that is wrong with him.
At least the reviewers were mixed on Jansen, with the Game Informer reviewer writing an excellent caption that reads: “The biggest problem here isn’t the dinosaur headbutt. It’s the fact that Jansen is in the party. You should ditch that Dork of the Year candidate as soon as possible.”
But sadly, one of the reviewers from Electronic Gaming Monthly was clearly a Jansen fan. I threw up in my mouth a little when this reviewer referred to Jansen as “a scoundrel with a heart and a weakness for women, any woman.” Too many things about Jansen left a terrible taste in my mouth (like vomit, because I’m still throwing up thinking about him), from his questionable motivations for kidnapping Ming to his overt lack of even an ounce of character growth. We were all rooting for you to be redeemed, Jansen! We thought you had potential, and that is what makes it all worse!
The only time I actually enjoyed the terrible sound mixing in the game, with all the obnoxious whirring machinery, was when Jansen was talking. Thank you, Lost Odyssey sound designers, for at least drowning him out most of the time.
“Enjoying this epic takes actual work”
When it comes down to it, Lost Odyssey is all things. It is the most. It is a beautiful mess. And as the GamePro reviewer puts it, “Enjoying this epic takes actual work.”
But I honestly like that this game made me work to like it. I like that this game made me “a passive observer for extended periods of time” (GamePro), with its weird short story novellas and, often, ridiculous cutscenes featuring random singing moments. But mostly, I like that my friends and I embarked upon and made it through this epic together.
Bonus: What the reviews failed to mention
1: How busted the spell “gamble” is
Gamble deals a random amount of damage to the enemy and it is hilariously overpowered. Having everyone use gamble is how we beat the game, honestly.
2: How silly the characters look with their equipped gear during cutscenes
3: Kaim’s toned lower back
4: How you can figure out Ming is immortal from a menu screen
Because immortal characters can learn skills from mortal characters, we were able to tell Ming is immortal from her skill management menu before we learned about this detail in the story, which is hilarious.
5: The ridiculous amount of tutorials
There is a tutorial for everything, including a tutorial for escaping the sewers, a tutorial for paying respect to Kelolon statues, and at least five separate tutorials for piloting the various ships you acquire throughout the game.
6: How much the experience of playing this game is improved by playing it with others
Thanks for playing it with me, boys! I doubt I would’ve finished it without you.
Recommend: I honestly don’t know. Give me at least a year to think about this.
Replay Percentage Chance: Maybe in 10 years?
Time Played: 45 hours (Thanks for grinding those extra 10 hours, Windlenot)
Skeeter’s Take:
Sam linked me to an RPG maker game called Lost Odyssey. It’s all in Spanish, of which I know very little.
So, instead of wasting any more of my already dwindling life on trying to remember words I learned in 11th grade Spanish class, I just looked at more funny Boxer Arcade machines from primetimeamusements.com:
Complete with FREE X-Box Kinect advertisement:
Lose all your money on the slots? Don’t worry, they’ve got just the thing for the gambling addict as well:
In fact they’ve got a whole selection no matter the occasion! You are guaranteed to find a Boxer Arcade machine correct for you!
Lastly, there’s the collection of creature-esque boxing arcade cabinets for all the freaks out there:
And last, but not least! In the Blue Corner, representing Fort Lauderdale, Florida and weighing in at 254 pounds - You know him, you love him. Pull your punches together for BOXER DOG:
Wait, is that fucking Puss in Boots??
Recommend:
Replay Percentage Chance:
Time Played:
Guest Writer Dicegame’s Take:
There are three worst-case scenarios for an immortal: being trapped underground, isolating yourself with self-obsessed existentialism, and becoming god. Lost Odyssey explores all of these. Seth is left for death in a cave and experiences a christ-like resurrection. A spirit appears and gives her the strength and clairvoyance to escape. Kaim develops the personality of drift-wood. He sells his mercenary labor out of boredom. Work that is constantly underpinned by his un-likeness to those around him. He becomes an agent of shadow only until a plot surrounds him that directly confronts his immortality. Gongora desires god-dom, but unlike the Good Queen Ming (who’s 1000 year reign is never questioned), he uses his powers for . . . what was it again? Unlimited control of the mortal world? So he can play Civilization 7 against himself? It probably has something to do with that goatee.
In any case: it’s probably good that we all have some form of term-limit in this life. I think the only immortal that had any fun was Seth, who became a pirate. And what deliverance was given to her? She was put in the cave like Christ, or Plato, or Odysseus.
The Immortal Sorrow Language Of Lost Odyssey is explored mostly by Kaim, who’s lost memories are activated by conversations and actions in the world. Most memories explore some kind of conflict amongst mortals, of which Kaim becomes involved. Although his actions typically affect some change, they are subverted by his internal monologue. Kaim is obsessed with his own immortality. He waxes poetic about his inability to truly empathize or understand mortal lives. His life loses saturation as actions are reduced to drops in an ocean of experience. He becomes unable to exert agency, lacking real motives or goals. He “finds” himself in situations.
While Kaim is busy with his Skyrim Rogue build, the immortals around him amass power. Lost Odyssey begins within the crescendo of Gongora’s life. As his rise to power presents an existential threat to all mortals, it also presents a solution to Kaim’s immortality. Of course, this solution, no matter how you cut it, is death. Kaim’s death wish isn’t even granted to him within the mechanics of battle. After reaching 0 HP, Kaim simply lays flat for 2 turns until resurrecting. Without spoiling things, Lost Odyssey’s plot attempts to color Kaim’s life in a way that may give him real meaning. It forces Kaim, The Thousand Year Drifter, to confront his existentialism and create meaning within his own life. I’m thinking he could’ve just learned an instrument or something!
Recommend: If you have 3 lovely die-hard rpg players in your life. This game is a perfect reason to hang out with each other.
Replay Percentage Chance: Maybe in 1000 years.
Time Played: 45 hours.
Guest Writer Windlenot’s Take:
In the first play session of Lost Odyssey, the four of us were mostly sold on the novelty of playing an Xbox 360 exclusive JRPG in the year 2024. I was invited to this group containing a friend I had known for 10 years, a friend I had known for 5 years, and a friend I had known for less than a year. While I had completed some single player games in groups before, the prospect of completing a full length, 4-disc epic exclusively during group sessions felt unlikely! I figured at most we would hang out a few times before finding some other new hotness to focus on.
Six months and 55 hours of gametime later we were rolling through the credits cheering, celebrating, and praising the game for captivating us during it all.
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Lost Odyssey begins with the introduction of Kaim Argonar. From the start it is unsure if Kaim has a personality past “serious.” In the first hour, he wipes out a military squad who look like musical notes before explaining that he’s an immortal that’s lost his memories and is working as a hired gun for the city. The setting is a world that is amidst a “magical industrial revolution.”
Kaim walks past a family sitting on the bench in the magical monorail station and is given the option to recall a dream. The station fades away, and the four of us sit, mostly in silence, as we read through a ten minute text excerpt recalling a distant memory of Kaim. We’re given a story of his past. Despite knowing very little about Kaim, we’re presented with a man simultaneously empathetic and understanding yet also making incredible generalizations of humans.
Human beings are the only animals that lie.
Lies to deceive people, lies to benefit oneself, and lies to protect one's own heart from the threat of crushing loneliness and sorrow.
If there were no lies in this world, much strife and misunderstanding would surely disappear.
On the other hand, perhaps it is because this world is a mixture of truth and lies that people have learned how to "believe."
We read this in a dark basement on a fall night and are overloaded with excitement. This Kaim is different than we had been exposed to yet it felt completely in line with his stoic personality. We know Kaim lost his memories, but now we know that he’s a man that has experienced change. We’re presented with evidence of who he had been and a menu that suggests there are dozens of these stories to find.
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Lost Odyssey was released in the west in early 2008. If I had played it then, I would have never gotten past the first disc. It would have been too slow and had too much reading for my 14 year old brain. At this time in my life I completely stopped reading books for fun and hadn’t played any game with a meaningful story. My favorites were Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 and Guitar Hero. At the time, I played games with flashy gameplay and fast action. I played games I could be good at mechanically. Later that year I would buy my first video game with my own money: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
My dad played a JRPG before me. Around this time, a student in his speech class constructed such a successful persuasive speech urging the classroom to play Final Fantasy XII. At the time, nobody had impressed upon me that this genre would be something that I would enjoy. I had no idea what these games had to offer because I had no interest in them. I saw them in stores and advertisements, but I didn’t have any connections with anybody that wanted to expose me to this world. For a long time, I believed JRPGs just weren’t my thing.
By the end of the first disc, maybe twelve hours in, Kaim is introduced to having a wife, a daughter, and grandchildren. He regains memories and openly expresses warmth to the family he’s discovered and sadness for the family he’s lost. A character I expected to carry the unwavering coldness of a man with nothing to lose for the majority of the game was expressing an emotional availability surprisingly quickly.
Maybe this shouldn’t have been a surprise. We had seen maybe a half dozen stories of past memories via unnarrated text stories. Stories where he’s the experienced one showing the compassion he amassed through lifetimes of relationships contrast stories where he’s unfamiliar with the concept of human emotions. One story will talk about his participation as a mercenary fighting for a country he has no allegiance to alongside soldiers marching into their deaths. One story talks about the familiarity and comfort of a single shoemaker making the best shoes for but a narrow percentage of Kaim’s life.
Kaim is a vessel undergoing constant change and growth. Each story represents a valuable experience gained through human connection, but even this theme is also reinforced in the mechanics of the game. Kaim’s abilities in battle are techniques learned from other mortals in the party. Kaim canonically learns abilities from his grandchildren.
While he has primary motivation throughout the story to protect his loved ones and stop the guy that wants to take over the world, all these additional stories contribute to a person acquiring experiences in his life without necessarily having a primary objective. What are the aspirations of a person who can live forever? What is it that Kaim wanted to do with his life? For years Kaim was a man without a clear motivation yet still accumulating bits of knowledge and memories of significance.
Ten years after the release of Lost Odyssey and now in my early adulthood I found myself less invested in purely mechanical games and more interested in games that told stories about people. I sought after things that would feel like they would enrich my understanding of something. I wanted things that helped me understand where my motivation comes from. I played Persona 4 and Dragon Quest XI. I read Clannad and White Album 2. I powered through the by-the-numbers mundane beat-em-up gameplay of Sakura Wars (2019) just so I could unlock the right to hang out with the squad.
I wanted to feel close to fictional characters.
Some of these are games that could be described with slow or no gameplay. During some games I would get annoyed that the gameplay was getting in the way of just being able to hang out with the characters. I began to desire rewards from emotional releases through character moments instead of any execution-based accomplishments.
I started to look for games as vehicles of character journeys instead of mechanical mastery. I enjoyed reading books again.
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Across our four person Lost Odyssey party, I was in control of the game 90% of the time. Though everyone was aware of the game’s various systems, I held responsibility for managing skills, accessories, stats, party formation, and inconsequential battles while navigating the comically obtuse dungeon layouts.
We all worked together to establish action plans on the more complicated fights, but I felt a pride and responsibility to ensure we moved through the game at a decent pace and didn’t spend too much time lost in the world or in the menus. I even gladly put in additional 10 hours of my own before the final session to ensure our final session would be relatively smooth. I didn’t want our final session to end on a sour note due to being underprepared or underleveled or losing time to needless deaths.
The combat areas brought necessary pacing breaks between the main story and its many text side-stories, but everyone was immediately engaged once story events kicked back in. The character moments I learned to value in these stories were accentuated by my connection to the real people sharing the same level of excitement.
Playing through Lost Odyssey was a significant experience at this stage in my life. I’m not old by any means, but I think about my age a lot. I find myself constantly reassessing memories of my past and questioning how they contribute to my present motivations. I think a lot about who I want to be in the future and how I’ll look back on the person I am right now.
Kaim is a great protagonist because the stories of his past and the lessons he learns supports this character and his decisions in the present period of the story. Even if he never mentions a single memory to any of the party members, because I as an audience member have seen stories of his past, I have a stronger idea of his character. I know Kaim more than most characters know Kaim.
My appreciation of Lost Odyssey comes from more than just my time playing Lost Odyssey. I acquired a new thing I want to share with people and it brought upon a JRPG-like party with friends new and old. It wasn’t my favorite game played in 2024 but it’s more important to me than a “better” game would have. For now, it’s maybe the best I could have asked for in satisfying my desire that “I wish my friends played more visual novels.”
Recommend: Play Lost Odyssey if you read my entire review
Replay Percentage Chance: 55%
Time Played: 55 hours
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