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Odin Sphere Review (continued)
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Manufacturer: Atlus
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ESRB Rating: Everyone
Platform(s): PlayStation2
Release Date: May 17, 2007
Average Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
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Retail Price: $19.99
Online Sale Price: $17.60
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More User Submitted Odin Sphere Reviews
Date: 2008-03-19
Vastly Underrated
This may be the most beautiful game ever made. The art is like none other and is so detailed it's amazing. There are less than a dozen areas to visit in this game, yet every time I returned with a different character, they never got old or repetitive. The same with the bosses. Each of the five characters are a different experience to play, although they are all in the same overall plot. Areas are set up as "stages" connecting together shown on the map as circles and are rated by difficulty from 1 to 5 as well as shops and bosses. I liked this set up because it was simple and told me exactly what I was getting into before I got there. The option to play using the original Japanese voice track was a big plus for me as well. I was skeptical of the growing and cooking food aspect of this game at first, but it is actually fun and easy. The only minuses are occasional long load times and slowdown. There is one boss battle where the slowdown is huge, but the battle is still doable on each character. Likewise when there are a lot of enemies on screen it can slow a little. It's a little annoying but is only a real problem with that specific boss. Odin Sphere follows a linear path so that you never have to guess where to go next which makes it easy to play and yet still challenging. It's a shame that this game hasn't gotten all the recognition it deserves.
Date: 2008-02-28
Holy Crap!!! A great side-scroller!!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the best 2-D side scroller since Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Talk about a welcome relief. When you get tired of all those first person shooters or huge combo-centeric 3-D adventures, this is the game for you.
Graphically, there hasn't been a better game on the PS2. I play this on my HDTV through my PS3 and it looks stunning. The gameplay is easy to learn, but surprisingly deep. It has those RPG elements to it, but the game doesn't get bogged down by these. All of this provides for some very smoothe gameplay.
Throughout the game, you play as five different characters whose stories are divided into five separate books. They do play in the same levels with many of the same bosses. This isn't such a bad thing as each character is fundamentally diffeent and this keeps the gameplay active.
I spent about 30 hours playing this game and found this to be time well spent. Playing this will evoke imagery and feelings of the games that were played in the NES era, but on a beautiful, sweeping scale.
Date: 2008-02-05
Beautifully Clumsy and Overrated
While I give this game points for the absolutely beautiful -and unique- graphics, I just can't bear to slug my way through the entire game.
Let's take a moment to talk about the game's most distinguished merit: Graphics. Now, just because the graphics are my favourite part of this game doesn't mean that you should expect the most "advanced" visuals. What is great about what you will see is that you probably haven't seen anything quite like it.
Sure, you've played sidescrollers and seen Japanese-style cartoon characters but screenshots just don't tell the whole story here. The characters have a motion that somehow allows a 2D cartoon character to come alive. Beyond that, there is just an enormous amount of detail poured into the environments that you just don't see in other 2D realms.
That said, there are just a number of flaws that bring this would-be giant to its knees. I'll only focus on the most important: Gameplay. Be prepared to be frustrated. When you first start out, you will be puzzled by seemingly unresponsive button presses. As you play you will learn that presses just don't register while the character is carrying out the current action. What this amounts to is slowly and carefully timing your buttons with the animations, which is incredibly counter intuitive and clumsy- especially when you have five to ten bad guys bum-rushing you at high speed. Your natural tendency is to mash away, which will ultimately result in your demise.
In the end, this game may be worth the bargain price, but only as a whimsical (and short) diversion for those dry spells between major new releases.
Summary:
Beautiful art meets clumsy controls
Pros:
-Absolutely wonderful art and animations
-Unique concept of combining action and RPG elements (albeit not masterfully executed)
Cons:
-Frustratingly clumsy controls
-Repetitive level design
Date: 2008-01-14
Repetative yet Rewarding
With the raving success of Disgaea, a score of similar RPG-infused action and tactics games were seen fit to localize by Atlus and other game developers. But success of these hand-drawn, anime-reminiscent, high-fantasy games has been spotty at best. Odin Sphere is a solid action-RPG release, hearkening back to classics like Valkyrie Profile. It's a beautiful, story-rich, side-scrolling crafting game disguised as a battle between fairies and demons.
I say it's a crafting game, since a good 50% of your time will be spent crafting food and potions and otherwise managing your inventory. Your character has two channels for character development: weapon level and hitpoint level. The monsters you kill yield phozons, which you can absorb to level up your weapon. Or you can leave the phozons floating around, and they will be absorbed by seeds you collect and plant. Your planted seeds become fruit (and sheep!) trees. Eating food is the only way to level up your hit points. Later in the game, you can collect different types of food and bring them to the pookas - a rabbit-like people. For a small fee, the pookas will make your food into delicious meals with better stats.
The battles are a little tough, and require some coordination to fight in every point of the 2-d plane. Monsters will come at you in enormous groups and they won't conveniently stop, split up, or take cover. You do have to manage your power - if you attack too frequently, you can run out and become exhausted, which renders you unable to fight or act for a short period of time (and those monsters won't stop coming at you while you're exhausted). Leveling up your weapon gives you new magic skills in addition to making your basic attacks more powerful. You must gather phozons to cast spells, so dedicating all your phozons to growing food isn't a great idea. Battle actions aren't instantaneous, so if you need to heal or gather in the middle of a battle while the monsters are coming at you, it's generally a good idea to run a good ways away first. How well you do in battles determines what treasures drop at the end of each level.
There are 5 main characters in Odin Sphere. All live within the same world and time period, and their stories meld together nicely. Each character has their own special weapon and different kinds of attacks. Every character moves differently, too: some characters have wings, some fight solely in melee range, and some have special jumps. The stories are compelling and grand, though a little humorless. I appreciate that the characters aren't always the most noble or heroic warriors. It's often the case that a boss you fight within one story becomes the next character you play.
The major criticism that can be leveled against Odin Sphere is repetition. For 5 characters and 5 story lines, you visit the same areas with the same monsters over and over again. New game mechanics are not introduced in subsequent characters - you learn them all with your first character. This is a great way to develop cheaply and focus your resources on the story and art. For Odin Sphere, it's pretty obvious that this is where all the time and care went into the game. However, your characters are different enough that the game remains fresh between the stories. You get new food and potion recipes all the time, and the recipes you learn don't vanish when you start playing through another character and story.
The result is that by your second or third character, you know how to control your character and the best way to defeat certain monsters, so the game becomes a kill-and-collect fest, regularly interrupted by stunning art and story. The combat may be a bit too shallow for some. The collection may be too tedious for others. But I appreciate eliminating a screen full of poisonous frogs with my fairy-gun in three seconds flat, and being rewarded with lamb chops and a story of treason, dragons, wizards, and intrigue.
Date: 2008-01-13
Overrated
"Odin Sphere" has garnered a LOT of acclaim. Indeed, it's graphical design has made for a unique game, as the colorful 2-D images come to life like no other I (or anyone else, judging by the stellar reviews) have ever seen. The game has a deep story.
Unfortunately, it's not very fun to play. Moreover, it is incredibly difficult. Now, difficulty isn't a bad thing in a game, but this one really takes the cake in that regard. Some bosses are absolutely murderous, forcing the player to power up incessantly (both to increase strength as well as garner funds for powerful items). Moreover, running back and forth on a 2-D plain, slashing at enemies attacking in the air and on the ground, isn't exactly an original idea.
I don't want to spoil any of the story, as it was strong and often helped an otherwise poor offering. But all in all, I would wait for this game to hit the twenty dollar bin. At fifty bucks, it just doesn't deliver.
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