PixlBit

I like to write a review in two parts.  The first part is written when the game in question is perceived to be half-way done.  I’ll write my impressions, see what I thought about it to contrast with my ultimate opinion once the game is finished.  I’ll even project where on my top 250 RPG countdown (assuming it’s an RPG) the game will end up.  This lends to mixed degrees of success in prognostication, as you might imagine.  For example, if I were to project Tales of Graces f’s end position based on my impression after thirty hours, I would have placed it somewhere in the high (high meaning low numerically, as is the case with countdowns) 100s, maybe at 105 or 112 or something.  As it turns out, the game really picked up later on, and ended up at 68 when all was said and done.  Ni No Kuni had the opposite problem.  After the first couple of dozen hours, I had this one pegged for a top forty spot, no problem.  Well some late issues with the combat and repetitive fetch questing landed it at number 51; nothing to be ashamed of, but just outside the pantheon of my favorite RPGs of all time.

I’m half way done (about 25 hours in) with Odin Sphere, and unless something radical changes, I feel like I know exactly where it’s going to end up on my countdown.  91^st place, just behind Soul Blazer, just ahead of Wild Arms 3.  Hey, that’s not a bad thing.  If you crack the top hundred, you know you are a game well-made, and it’s cool that you knocked Oblivion down to 101- we didn’t need him anymore now that Skyrim is hanging out in the lower reaches of the chart.  And hey, you never know if Odin Sphere is going to surprise me late and make a push toward the top fifty.  But hey, I sorta know that it isn’t going to make that push.  You see, one of the main criticisms I can lay on this game is that it is fucking repetitive.  Not mind-numbingly so, but in a way that reeks of laziness or cost cutting.  Odin Sphere is a very good game with very good qualities, but I lament what it might have been if Atlus had a real budget to work with.  There is an awesome game lying in there, but in its current form, it is only aweseome enough to have to settle for something around 91^st place.

I am going to complain about this game.  It is repetitive, I believe I’ve said.  There are only seven (by my count, unless a new world map opens up late-game) regions, or “dungeons” to traverse in the game, and traverse them you will.  Like, over and over again.  These dungeons are made up of “rooms” that loop, so that if you keep running right, you will end up back where you started.  In each of these rooms, you fight a wave of enemies, ranging from various mythological baddies to evil knights and townspeople who all want to see you dead.  Every few rooms there is a boss who will try to do a better job of killing you.  You start the game as Gwendolyn, a Norse valkyrie, and she travels completely through six of these dungeons, fighting bad guys, collecting items, alchemizing the shit out of fruits and seeds.  It’s fun, it’s fast paced, and (I’ll say more on this later) it’s a joy to look at- seriously, Odin Sphere is one of the more gorgeously animated and drawn 2d games I’ve ever played.  You complete the valkyrie’s quest (which has some other problems I’m about to mention) and feel thrilled at this amalgam of fast paced action and RPG mehcanics which have been blended together to create something NEW-feeling.  And you can get a lot of mileage out of NEW, at least in my book.

But then the second quest begins, and you control a new character who must also run through these gorgeous dungeons, fighting these gorgeous, hand-drawn 2d enemies, alchemizing the same shit that Gwendolyn alchemized.  The concept begins to wear thin.  Some new enemies appear to accommodate a changed storyline, but a lot of the same old baddies make a return.  The rooms all look the same and offer nothing different than you saw before; the items, while randomized to a degree, are the same items you encountered in the earlier quest.  Worst of all, the humongous bosses that so impressed you the first time around will make appearances as integral story characters in multiple chapters.  That big dragon you took down after all that effort?  He’s back in the next character’s chapter, and while his reasons for fighting you have changed, his attacks have not.  Now, I should mention that this repetition is somewhat intentional.  I assume to mitigate the limitations placed upon them by budgetary constraints, Atlus tailored the story so that there were five concurrent narratives that could reuse a lot of the graphics and gameplay.  When you finish the valkyrie’s story, there are some questions left unanswered- what does Odin really want with the cauldron?  Who is that mysterious witch, Velvet?  What’s the deal with the Pookas, who seem to know more than they are letting on?  It’s undeniably cool to watch the story unfold through different perspectives, but having to run through the same forest or mountain over and over and over again to uncover said story?  Not nearly as cool.

Then there’s the second problem, one that I think most players will have more trouble overlooking.  You’ve heard it before- when there are too many things moving on the screen at the same time, there is crippling slowdown.  I don’t know if I’m using the word crippling correctly, so I’ll expound.  Sometimes there are a lot of beautifully drawn and rendered objects running around or flying around the screen real estate all at once.  There’s a huge boss with a bunch of moving parts shooting fifteen fireballs in every direction while bits of debris fall from the sky like dozens of tiny meteorites.  Meanwhile, there are ground troops chucking daggers at you, floating eyeballs shooting lasers, and you, running around like a chicken with its head cut off, flailing desperately at anything and everything.  It’s a lot for the system to handle, and Odin Sphere is not up to the challenge.  The action starts to slow down and you see your character take a long, slow swing of her spear that seems to linger inside of the boss for full seconds.  The fireballs inch toward you almost as if time has stopped, and the boss sits there immobilized, stuck forever in a second of time where your spear is rendering her guts.  Don’t be deceived, however!   You might not see it, because the game is now running at a single frame per second, but that boss is charging her super-attack, a screen clearing spell that can take away more than half your HP.  You can’t react to it because the screen is not accurately displaying what is going on, and when you finally realize that you are about to get pulverized, the controller won’t seem to respond to your inputs and you have no choice but to sit there in frustration as the visuals on your television try to catch up with the action.  The slowdown is so ridiculous that it messes up timing you’ve spent hours and hours perfecting.  Instead of executing combos or dodging attacks, you are instead forced to wait and react to the meager visual cues that tell you what is actually going on.  I can honestly say that Odin Sphere possesses some of the worst slow down I’ve ever seen since my NES days, it’s that bad.  Back to my original question- is it crippling?  I suppose not, since I was still able to beat these bosses, but I did feel like my PS2 was going to overheat or explode from the exertion placed upon it by the game, sometimes.

But if gamers have shown us anything (and they haven’t) it’s that they are willing to forgive a multitude of sins if there is something about a game they like.  Not to be corny, but there is rarely rational discourse about the flaws in games because these games often tap into our emotional cores and lodge themselves there like an old friend.  Insulting any one aspect of a game you love is like picking on a younger brother- you may see the flaw, but damned if you want anyone else telling you about it.  Truly, people will defend video games like they will defend their mother, another reason why video games are a transcendent media on the same level as movies or novels.  That having been said, I currently rank Odin Sphere as the 91^st best RPG I’ve ever played.  Yes, I rank my family members in the same way.  More on Odin Sphere once it’s either been beaten or relegated to the ignominious “unfinished” pile.