Mid-game impressions
Current Play Time is 20:24, start of Disc 3.
Overall I'm really enjoying Lost Odyssey. It's not without a fair share of problems though, both technical and story-wise. There are some slight design issues, but overall where the game really shines is in the gameplay. The battle system is fun and well thought out. The battles are pretty traditional, but balanced to be relatively challenging. There are random encounters, and the encounter rate is pretty similar to any other JRPG. Sakaguchi is a dirty liar for promising a low encounter rate.
The character customization options are pretty good, and there are tons of skills to learn from accessories and mortal party members. The ring making system is pretty interesting as well, and adds a certain tactical element to battles since you can change equipment in battles on the fly. There's no harm in making a bunch of rings that give different elemental or racial bonuses since you can swap them during battles depending on the enemies.
The dungeons and towns/cities are really well designed. They look good, and more importantly they play well. Each area has it's own unique little properties and gimmicks, and the puzzles and design logic on the maps and stuff are pretty neat. Areas are sizable and exploring corners or dead ends almost always reward you with items and stuff. The game also has various side events in each town/city and it always feels like there's something extra to do in the game.
Storywise, LO is a mixed bag. On one hand, the cutscenes are pretty well directed and the voice acting in both languages is pretty spot on. The characters are interesting and have unique personalities, and the worldview is pretty interesting and fleshed out. On the other hand, the game never really seems to want to take advantage of this, instead preferring to stay low-key most of the time. Even with the themes of immortals, great empires, betrayals and conspiricies, and high fantasy - the actual story remains muted and chooses instead to focus on more mundane interactions between characters showcasing their personalities and quirks.
A good comparison for this would be FF:TSW and Xenosaga Episode 1. The way the story and presentation is paced is very similar. The cutscenes and events focus more on the character side of things than the larger picture, and it never really tries to take hold of the viewer's attention to make the game more exciting or epic. It's not exactly negative, but it just seems odd that the game keeps throwing in epic otherworldly themes and elements but never really let them take center stage.... or any stage at all. They're just terms and throwaway dialogue pieces.
The Thousand Years of Dreams short stories are really fantastic, and there isn't really anything to say other than it's pretty much one of the best visual novel package I've seen. The way each story's text is presented with the background, text effects, sound and music - it's pretty much perfect in that aspect. Too bad it doesn't really have anything to do with the game. When it's well integrated into the game, the transition from game to visual novel is wonderful, but many a times I just feel that it's kinda forced into the game at certain points. They're always nice to read, but very often they have nothing at all to do with the game or the game's world, which is a little disappointing I guess.
In terms of technical aspects, the game is a lot better than I expected. All texture pop-in issues have been eradicated and there isn't really slowdown while moving around towns and dungeons. Unfortunately the game also has a shitload of LONGASS longing. It's long and there's a lot of it, no two ways around it. While the slowdown doesn't affect the movement part of the game, in battles and in cutscenes it's a whole different issue. Many cutscenes are filled with slowdown that hinder the true intention of the presented scenes, and make the animation seem more unnatural than it actually is. Several battles are also plagued with jerky pans and framedrops when enemy attacks interact with character models. When the slowdown occur, and they occur quite a bit throughout the game, it makes the entire presentation far more amatuerish than it should. It's a pity they couldn't iron out these issues.
I'll keep playing, but most of these observations have been consistant across two discs, so even if anything changes, they still apply for pretty much half the game. I do expect the story to get more interesting, it just isn't as deep and complex as I expected. It's actually rather simplistic, with a ton of offbeat humor injected in the scenes. Interesting combination....
