Odin Sphere for Playstation 2

[X-Calibar]

Hey!  Somehow I never got around to mentioning this game here for the few who might not know about it.

http://www.atlus.com/odinsphere/



Odin Sphere, released earlier this year: here's the RPGfan review :
http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/odinsphere/index.html

As I was playing Oath of Felghana, I remembered I hadn't beaten this game yet.  It's a side-scroller unlike any other that I know of, has kind of an arcade / Storybook feel.  Adol reminded me of it when I went crazy on a bunch of those wolves...  It's a great game that I have enjoyed, so if you are curious check these videos to see what I'm talking about!

the English trailer!Here's a longer Japanese Promotion video with some gameplay...Here's another Japanese promotion video...You can choose english or japanese for audio which is a nice feature.
There are 5 characters with their own stories to play through. [you go in a set order, because of how the story is told]

If you aren't sure about getting it, or you know you won't, here's the first character's cutscene story for the most part :  Obviously it's a spoiler!  So soon as you are sold, stop watching and buy the game before it becomes hard to purchase!

The Cauldron War
Retreat
All the Kings Men
Queen of the Ghosts
Seize the Witch
A Father's Pain
Crime, Punishment and Clipped Wings
A Gift, The Master's Absence Omen in Ragnanival
Demon Lord, Leaving the Nest
Where art thou?, Inferno King Onyx
Hatchling Leventhan, Husband and Wife
Fated Lovers, Proof Of His Love
Mercedes, Death and Despair, Suffering Heart
To The Netherworld, The Demon Lord's Pact
Waltz of Death, Closing World, Father's Dignity, The Illusion of Love

[there are other character's and then perhaps a secret one or true one.. ]
EDIT: There are a few cutscenes missing in this, and most all of the gameplay...  but still!  [oh and he's playing on Easy I think]
Here's a bonus concert song from Otakon 2007!

[NightWolve]

You did all that work writing this thread up, so I finally took a look at a few of these videos. Well, it does look like an interesting game. It definitely has to be one where the story is VERY good given how this thing is arranged otherwise it doesn't have much to fall back on from what I see...

Did you ever beat it ?

[X-Calibar]

Actually, I've only played Gwendolyn's story, and started the second story.  [There are 5 different stories to play through before the conclusion story is unlocked.]  I personally loved the story, the voice acting, the art and the music.  The gameplay was pretty fun as well, although very constricted.  If the 2d levels had been more of a SOTN style areas it would have been a blow me away game

But, as it is; I heartily recommend this game from just the first story.  The second one was shaping up to be quite interesting as well, as each person's story is connected to each other.  So you uncover more and more of what is really transpiring in the world.  [Rather than mr. RPG who goes and fights everything in the world and saves it ]

Why did I stop?  I restarted it on Hard because I wanted to have a bit more of a challenge, but at some point I got sidetracked with all the other things I want to do/have to do.  I'm definitely going to revisit and finish this one.  I just don't know when I'll get to it yet...

I give a big negative to the loading times though, it's not that bad, but it adds up, especially when you have to load a boss battle a few times...
Also, the game slows down very noticeably on some of the more epic battles.  I would love to see it play flawlessly on the PC on an emulator someday... [so far my comp is far from PS2 emulator material ]

Bottomline : Artistic, and enjoyable.  One of the few great 2D sidescrolling games to come out in recent times.. (lol and all of this is based on my first and second story playthrough... Does it live up to those first two stories?  Methinks it will... but judgment is reserved!)

[Justus]

Story and voice acting is great, as is the art.

The music was pretty good too, though I think Sakimoto is capable of much better.  But then, I'm a music guy too, so I'm going to be more picky about that than most people.  Sadly, Sakimoto fell back on mostly filler orchestral drudgery for the soundtrack, like he's been doing with his other soundtracks lately.  Nothing like the thoughtful motifs found in Final Fantasy Tactics here, nor the driving contrasts of Radiant Silvergun.

But oh good God, the gameplay.  The gameplay is really fucking annoying.  A few points:

- The game artificially makes the game challenging in incredibly stupid ways
- There was no reason to make item management as silly as they did.
- As you stated, the game is set up as something of an arcade-style side-scrolling action game.  Unfortunately, most egregious of all, the control is terrible!  This game has the kind of control where you have to plan every move ahead, because every button initializes a series of (admittedly pretty) animations that you have no control of your character during.

It's a shame, because this game could have been one of the greatest with just a couple of slightly less boneheaded design decisions.

I really REALLY wanted to like it too.

EDIT: The story is really cool though.  I made it through 2 and a half of the stories myself, and I really wanted to do more, but I just couldn't take the game deciding to kill me for no good reason anymore.

[NightWolve]

Hm, guess I'm interested. What's the cheapest you can find it for new? Amazon has it for $19.99, but add in whatever for shipping. I guess it's too late to find it at Best Buy, though I see it made it to the Greatest Hits category so it did get reprinted.

[X-Calibar]

19.99$ for Odin Sphere, buy something else that's 5 $ or more and you get free shipping~ [select free shipping savers]

I used to loveee Final Fantasy Tactics soundtrack, now I find it only so, so... On the other hand I really enjoyed some of Odin Sphere's songs.  Great moody cutscenes.
You found it hard though?  What difficulty did you play on?  There's an easy mode I think besides hard, and normal [and unlockable difficulties]  My problem was I would reload the level if I took Any damage, I wanted to get S class all the way through the game.

[Justus]

I used to loveee Final Fantasy Tactics soundtrack, now I find it only so, so... On the other hand I really enjoyed some of Odin Sphere's songs.  Great moody cutscenes.

The music wasn't awful by any stretch.  But it also wasn't ingenious like some of Sakimoto's earlier work.  It provided decent background music, nothing else, just like dozens of other jRPGs with orchestrally-inspired soundtracks.  Nothing about it stood out or was particularly memorable.

In other words, I'm looking for more than "great moody cutscenes" from music before I'm impressed.  I'm fully aware that most people aren't.

You found it hard though?  What difficulty did you play on?  There's an easy mode I think besides hard, and normal [and unlockable difficulties]

No, it wasn't hard as in challenging.  The difficulty in this game was all artificially induced due to piss-poor controls.  If you're OK with reloading every time you take a hit, then you wouldn't have picked up on this.  I wouldn't find that fun, personally.  If the action in the game was the kind of thing I could learn from and get better at (ie - actually challenging), I wouldn't have a problem.

It's good to see you're not trying to defend the absurd item management.

[Slayne]

Odin Sphere was a lot of fun.  I'm anxious to play their new one, though I'm disappointed by their choice of consoles.

[X-Calibar]

Odin Sphere was a lot of fun.  I'm anxious to play their new one, though I'm disappointed by their choice of consoles.

Huh?? New one?  *looking*
What's it called?

@Justus -
I guess it just had a different effect on me. 
Sinking in Sadness
A Hard Fight and then Hope
Odin Sphere Orchestra Version
A Fate Accepted

I find it hard to not find these memorible, as they compliment the scenes they are played really well.  [On the other hand I didn't care for the constantly looping area battle themes that get played over and over.  The cutscenes were a different story in my opinion.]
However, I personally can't see the music of Odin Sphere as just another background music orchestra/like dozens of other jRPGs.  I agree that too many RPGs have a generic musical feel about them, I just didn't find this to be one of them.

I myself skim through game soundtracks in the hopes of finding a few good songs hiding.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover Odin Sphere had several of these...
But, each to his and her own tastes I guess...

I don't know what to say about the controls, I found them natural to pickup making the battles pretty enjoyable, albiet way repetitive.  Gwendolyn : Swoop in, time the dive then, critical if possible;  or do the whirlwind, alt. jump over the whirlwind to make the enemies follow you into the whirlwind [kills em instantly pretty much].  I think games like Crescent Pale Mist or even Ys VI, referring to learning the whirlwind, dash attacks, and dash jumps were far more awkward.  And far from FPS difficulty like Starsiege : Tribes.

It's good to see you're not trying to defend the absurd item management.

Well... actually.....
lol it was pretty interesting, but a huge waste of time   I found myself just stockpiling potions for the 90 something attribute, so during difficult battles I could unleash tons and tons of those souls at once making them easy.
Sorry if I sound repetitive, just enjoyed dwelling/remembering Odin Sphere as I type 

[Justus]

I don't know what to say about the controls, I found them natural to pickup making the battles pretty enjoyable, albiet way repetitive.  Gwendolyn : Swoop in, time the dive then, critical if possible;  or do the whirlwind, alt. jump over the whirlwind to make the enemies follow you into the whirlwind [kills em instantly pretty much].  I think games like Crescent Pale Mist or even Ys VI, referring to learning the whirlwind, dash attacks, and dash jumps were far more awkward.  And far from FPS difficulty like Starsiege : Tribes.

Wow, the two of us must have radically different approaches to what we want out of a game's controls then.  You appear to equate "good controls" with a good control scheme.

To me, "good control" is a simple matter of "does the @sshole on the screen do what I want?"

It's telling that you'd bring up something as rarely used as Ys VI's dash jump, a maneuver that is pretty much never used in normal combat, and is in fact completely optional to the game (you need it to get certain treasure, but none of it is required to complete the game).  Something like that is bonus material, and has nothing to do with the game's control.

If you were approaching the issue the same way I do, there's no way you could call Ys VI's controls "awkward" from any perspective.  In that game, you will almost always move in the direction being pressed regardless of what you're doing, and most of the attacks are either short, are allow for control during the attack (like the whirlwind); hence, the @sshole on the screen does what I tell him to do, acting as my proper avatar in that virtual world without significant latency.

...As opposed to a game like Odin Sphere where you press a button and promptly lose all control of your character for several moments.

This is the same reason why I'll always prefer a fighting game like Guilty Gear or Street Fighter (good control) over one like Tekken or Soul Calibur (shitty control).

Sorry if I sound repetitive, just enjoyed dwelling/remembering Odin Sphere as I type 

oh noes, someone has a different opinion ON THE INTERNET.

I think you're reading my posts the wrong way if you feel a need to apologize.  I'm not trying to put you down here, dude.

But it's interesting to me that spending hours doing repetitive things and reloading to get perfect scores doesn't faze you at all, whereas having to learn a semi-complex maneuver in order to get optional treasure is "awkward".

[Slayne]

Huh?? New one?  *looking*
What's it called?

Muramasa: The Demon Blade; being developed for the Wii and looks just as good as the other titles.

[X-Calibar]

Thanks Slayne, that game looks interesting.  I miss the Norse influence, but am increasingly interested to see how it turns out.
Will need to keep watching that one!

@Justus -

If you were approaching the issue the same way I do, there's no way you could call Ys VI's controls "awkward" from any perspective.  In that game, you will almost always move in the direction being pressed regardless of what you're doing, and most of the attacks are either short, are allow for control during the attack (like the whirlwind); hence, the @sshole on the screen does what I tell him to do, acting as my proper avatar in that virtual world without significant latency.

Did you just call Adol an @sshole!
lol  Yeah, I see where you are coming from better now.  I'm so used to fighting with the controls in games that I rarely expect ideal or proper real-time control of the avatar. 
Too many tramautic memories of Altered Beast, first person shooters with lots of lag [jerky crazy; oops sorry my teammate!]; I'm used to walking off cliffs even though I said... STOP!

With regards to my oddities, (mention of the Ys VI dash jump), and the Odin Sphere S rank :
lol  Soon as I am presented with a new technique, I want to master it and learn it.  And actually, I found myself using the dash attack quite a lot in Ys VI once I actually figured the blasted move out.  It sped up travel across Ys VI considerably (dash jump run technique), and on Nightmare I found it helpful to avoid some of the nastier attacks... 
And as for rank S, I was hoping for some kind of bonus or reward.  In most cases getting S wasn't that hard, although I admit some of those large battles I'd just give up and quit; until I was ready to try my luck again.

PS - Enjoyed Vesper Voyages...  Nostalgic.  If compared to existing music it reminded me of a cross between a Falcom game, Snatcher and Mega Man.

[Justus]

It sped up travel across Ys VI considerably (dash jump run technique), and on Nightmare I found it helpful to avoid some of the nastier attacks...

Wow, you used it to move around?  That's...impressive, to say the least.  I couldn't stand that just because it looks dumb.  No, I didn't moonwalk everywhere in Symphony of the Night either.

PS - Enjoyed Vesper Voyages...  Nostalgic.  If compared to existing music it reminded me of a cross between a Falcom game, Snatcher and Mega Man.

I know what you mean.  The less serious music that I write (like that), always winds up with a kind of "old video game music" vibe, but without the chiptune crap.  I guess I still hearken back to the day when game music was largely inspired by Yellow Magic Orchestra.

[SkyeWelse]

Odin Sphere is incredible. It's seriously one of the best Action-Rpgs to come out in years. The visuals, the characters, dialogue, the music, it is all fantastic and poetically orchestrated to give the player the ultimate fantasy/storybook telling experience.

The only downside to it is quite repetitive in that even though many of the characters you play as have different control schemes, you are constantly revisiting the same areas and fighting the same enemies over and over again. This makes the game much more tedious than it needs to be and also quite long. I've put in around 40 hours so far and currently I'm mid-way through the 5th unlockable character's storyline. And even still, after looking at the Scenario Timeline, it looks like that character is not the final chapter in the least. Apparently there's quite a bit more in the game that I can unlock after completing the 5th character's story.

Still, even though it is repetitive, the game is good enough to make me want to eventually finish it. It's that good. And you definitely owe it to yourself to at least play through Gwendolyn's story (the first character). The game can also be found for practically nothing now.

I'm very happy because I was able to pick up a small artbook for Odin Sphere at a used game shop in Japan that apparently was released with the limited edition version of the game in Japan. It definitely has some of the prettiest looking water color character designs I've ever seen, ever... : )

Edit: And it's Justus for Great Justice! It's been awhile! Good to see you around again.

-Thomas