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This comes out next week. Is anyone looking forward to it? I'm considering picking it up but I'm also kind of leery after the disappointment of Blue Dragon. Still, the previews sound really intriguing.

Yes. But next week rocks my ass. This might be the first thing I play though.

It's the only game I plan to buy this month =)

Gamestop shows week after next.

Day 1 purchase for me.  I'll likely drop everything I'm playing for it.

I'm really looking forward to it but I probably won't have the time to play it until next month.  The art style killed all interest I had in Blue Dragon, but I'm a sucker for classic JRPG gameplay.

This is a shitty month to be taking classes.  Not playing this and DMC4 might kill me, not to mention Sins of a Solar Empire.

Still plowing through Mass Effect, but as soon as that's put to bed (and I actually get to use the living room again!) I'll be picking it up.

From the sound of it, half the game is cutscenes.  That kinda dulls my interest in the game a bit, since the average game doesn't have good enough writing to justify devoting that much of the game to telling the story.

Delayed til 2/12. Which is good, won't compete with Sins, DMC4 or Culdcept. Which all DO have to compete against eachother.

Fuck.

Just a heads up, there seems to be a bonus to preordering.  Oddly I don't see any mention of it on EB's website, but both Amazon and Best Buy's websites advertise some extra content.  From amazon: (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ZJVDA2/ref=amb_link_6343592_1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=ilm&pf_rd_r=19RDV0TJGJCTERSSBGQZ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=363897901&pf_rd_i=468642)

EB has them in store.

I brought this home today and tore through the rapper like a kid at Christmas.  Got through the first cut-scene when suddenly my 360 dies.  Completely bricked, 3 red rings and all.

(http://www.urb.com/uploads/reviews/game_reviews/PaRappa_the_Rapper_Sony.jpg)

The game is absolutely gorgeous.  Not surprisingly for jRPG, the first couple hours are freedom-lite and cutscene heavy.

Too early to get a complete feel for the game.  It's interesting, for once a Japanese produced game has a majority of characters looking Japanese.

Will play more, perhaps a BiiF is in it's future.  I can already say though, unless you like jRPGs, don't bother.

I fully intend to jump into the game later and enjoy it and all, but the first thought that entered my mind when I first opened the case up....

For $60, could they have come up with a better solution for getting all four discs into the case besides stacking three in the case tray and the just throwing the fourth into a sleeve and tucking it in there?  The damn thing practically spilt out when I opened it. 

Agreed.  I thought the fourth disc was a soundtrack at first.

Played up to the first real boss last night at a friend's place and I'm mostly optimistic about it, although it looks like they didn't learn much of the pixel hunting lesson from Blue Dragon.  I still feel compelled to click on everything, just in case.

Would do a BiiF, but I don't think I got the full experience considering there were many distractions.

This game is fantastic.

That first major boss was a pain.  Took me a few tries.  Doesn't help that the guy could hit for over 50% of someone's health and had an AOE that did more than that.

At least they don't push you back to your last save after a death.  That was a nice touch.

Didn't play any tonight (V-Day and I'd like to devote 2hr + chunks to this one), but the characters/dialog alone will propel me through this.  Just really well done in that department.

Ordered it and can't wait to get it. Since you people mentioned Blue Dragon and I ignored that in the past. Is it worth getting as well?

Yeah, that boss was a motherfucker.  I saved and quit after I finally beat him.

This game has the best music Nobuo Uematsu has done since FF6. Period. Fucking amazing. The main theme is just.... fuck, it's perfect.

I haven't played it yet but will soon. My fiance got this, the strat guide and fire emblem for Wii for me for Valentine's!

That's a keeper right there that is.

Hence why we're engaged.

You have to be able to tolerate Toriyama to deal with Blue Dragon, in my opinion, as well as like twentieth-century Final Fantasy.  All three of his character designs appear in that game.  Also the protagonists are kids, some people (my wife) don't like that.  As for the music, I had high hopes for Uematsu-san's score in Blue Dragon but it left me wanting; it's good but the quality is uneven.  Also the boss fight theme is one of the worst examples of Japanese music that I can think of.  Still, I enjoy it.  It looks great, technically speaking, not in a design way unless you have a chubby dick for Toriyama.  At the core, it's very much like the old Final Fantasy games.

I played the demo. The gameplay was kind of fun. But that weird high-voiced monster character totally turned me off of the game. It was about as annoying as the lisping walking stereotype from Enchant Arms. To me at least.

I loved the combat system in Blue Dragon, but absolutely loathed the characters.  You can see rants on the subject elsewhere.  Still, it's not a bad game at the core, and bad music by Uematsu is still better than 95% of everything else out there.

Blue Dragon was a decent game but I disliked the fact that each character was inherently exactly the same and were defined solely by their classes. Towards the end when everyone had decent level in every class there really wasn't anything that discerned the characters from each other other than their avatar and gear. In addition, I began to loathe the extra time dedicated to attack animations since you had to see them a billion times through the course of the game.

The overall story wasn't too bad, but some of the writing and spoken dialog was subpar. Not as bad as Eternal Sonata, which subjected me to hideously painful conversations and had almost no semblance of motivation for character actions, but I never really felt like I cared one way or another what happened to the main characters in BD.

I ordered Lost Odyssey today and I'm looking forward to a solid RPG for the 360.

http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/928334.asp

I wanted to make sure I had some back-up before I said I looked at a sample of their combat and didn't want to deal with another game where it took a fucking day and a half to resolve combat.

I stopped caring about JRPGs when I realized I was spending 50% of those 60 hours just waiting for my characters to act in a battle.

I don't mind the length of the combat animations nearly as much as I hate the ring system obstructing my view of said animations.  It's like they took the gunblade mechanism from FFVIII and added a tacky graphical element to it.

You know, these dreams are really, really, REALLY well-written.

Holy shit, this game.

Yeah, holy shit.  I smell lots of FFXII on this but that's not bad; it's more like I'm playing Cloud in Dalmasca with Midgar music, than Van in wherever Yuna lived with shit-ass music, meaning it's the good bits rather than the bad.

And what's up with that first boss being such a bitch?  That was kinda old OLD Final Fantasy shit, the tough shit.  It didn't help that I didn't bother to read the manual and later figured out that Earth isn't strong against Wind... keke me!

The dreams, wacky.  My wife was into them until the fifth one was also incredibly depressing, but yea they are well-written.

Jury's still out on the ring system.  Combat in general, including items, is good.

I was afraid of dull characters until Jensen showed up.  Localization team gets an A.

The pixel-hunting isn't as bad as Blue Dragon.  So far I have not found anything that contained an item that didn't also have an icon in the lower right to go with it.

Lost Odyssey is going down in my personal history book for one reason: it made my wife want to buy a new TV.

Also, it's probably the most well-written and well-localized games in the history of JRPGs.

FeelPlus+ (Shadowhearts) + ITPlanning (Takehiko Inoue) + Mistwalker (Sakaguchi) + Uematsu = Fucking GOLD. GOLD, JERRY, GOLD.

Yah, I just got through the Holy Shit part schild is referencing.  Goddamn.  Games don't really ever bring emotion like this.


A save point during all of that would have been nice though, it's past my bedtime.

I rang MS today to ask why they're still fucking around with parts of my retrofit wireless wheel after a month. They told me the final cable they said would be sent out 2 weeks ago was sent out yesterday. I asked to speak to a T2 supervisor because it's not good enough, and after hearing my long and painful story of "I'm not satisfied as a consumer who bought an item that cost nearly $200 a month ago and have not been able to use it yet" (without swerring or personal abuse) the woman offered me a free game to shut me up. One of the games on the list was this one, and since 3 of the other games from the list are shit and I already own the other 5, I chose Lost Odyssey (after checking an online review).

How nice to log onto f13 and find it's actually quite good.

Jesus. Kaim is a great fucking protagonist.

DISC 2 PLZ.

Castro retired so he can play this game all day.

I have to add to the "the dreams are great and depressing" chorus. Jesus, does this guy have any good memories?

I don't remember anywhere near as many good memories as I do bad ones (I mean 'in real life').

Also, a number of the dreams are bittersweet. Not bad, but definitely not good, but they no doubt bring you closer to Kaim and his journey.

Fuck, he's well characterized.

Just got it and didn't have much time to meddle yet, but damn if this game isn't beautiful.

I feel like they probably watched a lot of Highlander to inspire the flashbacks.

The dream sequences are actually based on a Japanese style of game called Visual novels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel).

I've been playing this for a while. No idea what made me pick it up, as I have a lot of prejudice towards JPRGs but I'm fucking loving it. I'm even asking around for other decent games like it to play through after I'm done. You guys touched on the visiuals and the music, they're fucking amazing. The actor that does Seth, however, fucking irritates me. I find myself switching to the Japanese audio quite often because of her. Until I get tired of reading subtitles and missing shit that is. And since we're on the subject of reading, I like the novels, but I also hate reading on screen. Publish a book and I'll read 'em. Right now I'm just mashing the B button as soon as Seth or Kaim start looking weird. First couple of boss battles were a bit rough, yeah. But right now I should be around the middle of the second disk and I can only lose a battle if the power to my apartment cuts out. I think I figured out what's this game's le imba is. Still, I love it and ripping through shit feels awesome :)

Closest game in feel would be Shadow Hearts: Covenant (SH2), although it takes itself way less seriously (and there's like 100% more gayness).   It's recommended to finish Shadow Hearts first, although SH has the problem of being a little bit dated and not nearly as polished as SH2.  Anything you seriously dislike about SH1 is fixed in SH2.  It's just a massive improvement to all of the game systems.  However, the story in SH2 assumes a certain ending from the first and does some major retconning in spots.  It can get on your nerves a little.  Still, best JRPG with a great battle system. 

FF12 is similar in scope and tone, just it plays like a MMO and you might not like that.

Persona 3 was last year's JRPG gem, but it's a different beast altogether.

None of these are going to match the production values for Lost Odyssey.  SH2 does an admirable job for the hardware it's working with.

edit: all ps2 games.  LO is honestly the only really good JRPG on the 360.  Eternal Sonata and Blue Dragon were disappointments. The later especially so.

Rasix nails it.  Just wanted to add that I absolutely loved the Shadow Hearts games and playing them in order is pretty important.  If you play the 2nd one first, you might as well not play the first one at all which is a shame since the storyline is really artfully done and the first few hours of it are incredible.

What are the chances of this ever coming to PC.  This sounds, quite seriously, like the kind of game i would be willing to actually buy a 360 to play, even though i loathe the idea of buying a new system for one game.

Thanks Rasix.

There's some seriously weird shit, gameplay wise, happening around the first third of the third disc. I can get why they did what they did, but it irritates me to no end :/

Also the game really does a poor job of balancing "action" and story telling. 2 hours of non stop random encounters, followed by 3 hours of running around a city topped by 45 minutes of cut scenes. I'm still loving it, though :)

I'm playing it with German voices.  It's great.

I sincerely doubt it will ever come to PC.  But I could be wrong.

Maybe in ten years as part of the Lost Odyssey anthology, coinciding with the release of Lost Odyssey XIII...

My copy arrived today. Hopefully I'll have tome to check it out on the weekend.

Consider me interested when I finally pick up a 360. I hope my utterly destroyed attention span can survive a full-on RPG...I still haven't completed Dragon Quest 8 or FF12 despite really liking both.

FF12 I can sort of understand, the story was very meh. But DQVIII? That's one of my favorite RPGs ever, though in all fairness I'm not sure I can tell you why since it has very little story and the game is "cute".

DQ8 was balls.  I quit the second I realized I'd have to grind to beat the first sub-boss and then later the first official boss. Persona 3 grinding I could take, but I have issues with it when it's just there because of antiquated ideas on RPG design still holding sway.  Or perhaps it was just the game started you out at too low of a power curve (LO almost did this) and then failed to grab me at all with its story.

edit: hah, I thought I was responding to Phil. His irrational love of that game still burns brightly in my eyes.

I'm tempted to suggest other MegaTen games than Persona 3, but to enjoy those you really have to enjoy the combat.  A lot.  I adore the combat system, myself, especially the streamlined version in Digital Devil Saga, but it's really not for everyone.

I played DQVIII until the final boss, where I discovered that I wasn't quite powerful enough, but the idea of grinding more levels made my asshole clench.  I'll grind if it's fun, but that wasn't fun.

DQ8 is strictly for people who enjoy old-school "pixel people" JRPG grindy games. It's basically Final Fantasy 4 or 5 updated to the PS2.

(Note: I am one of those people. I think I own about 5 copies of FFV on various platforms.)

DQ8 feels nothing like FF4 or 5. it feels like DQ1.

Which was the damn problem.

I agree with schild, and I didn't even play DQ1.  Of course, FF was patterened after DQ so it's probably just nitpicking.

Nah, really wasn't. Final Fantasy is about 500x faster, and less Toriyamagay.

Now, if you mean DQ and FF defined the JRPG style of gaming, well, yea.

DQ is still overrated grindy ugly dreck.

I'm remembering some interview or something from Sakaguchi where he was using DQ as a model or inspiration for Square's last-ditch effort to stay in business.  I'm not trying to say FF didn't improve on DQ, don't get me wrong.  "Inspired by" might be a better phrase, or maybe everyone just liked blue backgrounds.  I enjoyed the shit out of Final Fantasy.  DQVIII was more grindy than FF1.  Also Toriyama can suck my left nut.

Dragon Quest has always done really really well in Japan I think. DQ8 certainly had great music and something resembling a sense of freedom despite being so linear. It was insanely difficult though and required pretty intensive grinding. I got to a point where you had to go get attacked by some dragon that casts a flash spell and use an item to absorb the flash so you can enter some stupid dungeon and I got tired of sailing around and quit.

FF12 I was wrapped up in but life got busy and I loaned it to a friend, I have yet to get it back. The whole gambit thing kinda got on my nerves.

This is just slightly off topic but only a little. I have a friend who works at S-E. Recently there have been some interviews with him and some others at Square on places like Gamasutra where they discuss the typical way that Square operates. It's odd. Basically they start with concept art, characters, story, etc, the game is driven by what they call "planners" and the actual gameplay comes in much later. They don't re-use any tools or code. It's a very slow and expensive way of doing development, and explains things like "The Bouncer."

I hardly believe my OWN irrational love for DQ8.  I just wanted to finish the damn thing, and if I ever see another metal slime in my life, I'll probably implode.

The White Engine is the first engine they plan on using for a lot of shit.

XBox exclusive, eh?  Weak.

PC only gamers suddenly craving jRPGs?  Or just an excuse to make a textual funneh?


Temper your expectations if you're not a fan of the genre.  Just fair warning.

Yes, temper your expectations into STEEL!   :drill:

Which is now going by the suckier name of Crystal Tools.

Crystal Tools is what Squeenix is without Inoue, Uematsu and Sakaguchi. It's a great name for them.

Square should have picked up the staff from Nautilus when they had a chance.

Ironically, the first two SE games in ages that I have any interest in (The World Ends with You, and My Life as a King (http://wii.ign.com/articles/854/854726p2.html)) are for systems I don't have and don't have any intentions of buying anytime soon, if ever.  And so far there seems to be little chance of Lord of Vermillion being ported to consoles and released in the states.  SE is dead to me for now.

I never had an interest in JRPG's but I reluctantly picked up this one because of the recommendations here. The "rings" thing and relative lack of loot sounded kinda meh but the whole thing really works well. The cutscenes are long but for the most part really well done, just a few cringe-inducing moments here and there.

Kaim is a badass too, which helps immensely. I'm very pleasantly surprised.

I don't think I'll be able to make it through this.  The incomprehensible bullshit plot, the metrosexual yet strong silent type toughguy crap, the annoying chick sidekick.  It's everything I hate about Japanese weabu crap, but it's like they tried to slap a layer of "mature" on it.

Sorry, but this is lame shit.  I've wasted $60.

(http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=3270;type=avatar)

I actually agree with a lot of what you said, Gulp.  But at the end of the day, the combat system is appealing to me and that should keep me going.

The voice acting in the video previews turned me off to it.

Wasn't it pretty much advertised and reviewed as an old school "weaboo" kind of game?  Was there a reason you went into it thinking you might like it?

Some of the people here who also dislike JRPG's said it wasn't so bad.  I figured maybe it wouldn't be so bad.  I was wrong.

Oh, and the whole world/combat thing sucks.  Wander around a void, barren world and randomly encounter shit every 5 feet?  Yeah, that sucks.  Go through boring ass combat mechanics that don't even match up to old school SSI gold box games?  Yeah, that sucks too.

In conclusion, all you anime, hentai, weabu douchebags who enjoy this shit should be sterilized for the collective good of the gene pool.

weabu?

Means "Not xenophobic"  :oh_i_see:

America, fuck yeah!

Three more words for you (followed by more words):  Told you so.

First jRPG in a while where the actual characters looked Japanese. Exceptions being characters in SH like Yuri.. who is Japanese.  Perhaps that isn't helping.


You'd like Yuri. 

I liked the song from the commercials so I start googling to find out who does it and find out it's "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane.  The thing that blew me away was finding out it's actually a woman singing, same with "Somebody to Love".  I wasn't around in the 60's and don't know much about music so cut me some slack.

(http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s183/ec1016/Grace.jpg)

Grace was damn hot back in the day.

My 360 came back!  Squee!

So was it just that some PR guy thought that song would go good with the visuals in a commercial, or does that song actually relate to the game, or appear in it at some point?

I'm guessing they wanted to do the same thing Gears of War did.  I think it worked much better with the GoW ad though (but the Lost Odyssey ad is also quite good).

Saw 15 seconds of the commercial on youtube. Too many spoilers. Either play the game or don't play it. You fuckers should know what you like. :|

Also, song works for the game.

I was upset when I saw that commercial.  You have one of the best living composer put together an original score for your game, and... you re-use 70s acid rock?

................I can't stop playing.  Shit.

I've been at disk four since Sunday and I didn't have time to play at all. All going to change this weekend... I'm finishing this motherfucker. Also White Rabbit is like one of my very favorite songs ever. If I wasn't playing the game, I'd start now :)

I'm going to start in 3 weeks, I have a fraction over 2 weeks of holidays starting on Good Friday.

Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

I've played SH 1 and 2, all the FF games, and some of the DQ games and enjoyed most of them, so I tried to understand why this game turns me off so much... Probably the melodramatic sobbing that happens in every cut scene in the first 2 discs.

OK I UNDERSTAND YOUR DAUGHTER JUMPED OFF A CLIFF OR WHAT THE FUCK EVER.

And seriously, I think if I see another 30 minute cut scene I'm going to stab someone. I understand those other games I mentioned had long ass cut scenes, but these are just SO bad.

Clever.

Thanks  :awesome_for_real:

Lost Odyssey DLC is now up on Live: