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Some Comments on Odin Sphere


Surely, by now, you've heard about Odin Sphere. It's a game that Atlus showed a tiny bit of behind very closed doors last year at E3 and then sat in a sort of guaranteed limbo. Everyone knew Atlus was developing it but no one knew when or how an announcement would come as - afaik - SCEA had not yet said 'yay' or 'nay' on it. Well, its release is imminent (05/22/07) and I've logged about 12 hours in it. The first thing I'd really like to get off my chest is that this title is fucking gorgeous. If there was ever a time where 'fucking' described a hand-drawn 2D video game, this is that time. And you can't really appreciate what it's doing until it's on your TV, in front of you, and you're controlling it. At first things may seem a bit awkward, but as you get into it, the controls become an extension of your hands. It's really quite incredible how this whole thing came together.

The other thing I'd like to say is this: I don't think I've scratched the surface. That's not to say there's too much to the game. But quite the contrary. I want more. I froth for more. I don't think they can give me enough. Every time I get a grip on something, they throw in a twist. You've seen previews that have mentioned the growing of plants. Yea, that's just the beginning.

After I log maybe 30 or probably 40 hours with this title I might be able to say something cohesive. But really, if you own a PS2 and like brawlers, RPGs, or exquisitely crafted games then you owe it to yourself to pre-order this. That's right, I said pre-order. That may even involve shopping at a EBGamestop. And I'm sorry for that. But if you're one of those "Awesome, I'll wait to get it used" or "I'll wait for the price to drop" type guys and you say that with this title... I will cut you.

This is one of the few games I've been wanting to pick up at full price.  Everything I've heard so far has been, from previews to some stuff mentioned over at Penny Arcade has been positive.

Now, I'm not quite far enough in to say this, but I'll say it very lightly...

this is game of the year material

Also, I should mention, I was purposefully vague with a lot of shit because 1. Press Embargo, 2. Some of this shit is really complex, I'm not even sure how the actual full story flows yet.

I watched the trailer when it was linked on PA and found myself drooling over the art and the freaking beautiful sprite work.  It's on my must buy list since then.

I've had good luck at finding Altus games at Toys R Us which allows me to safely avoid the mouthbreathers at EB. (Summon Night 1/2 and Trauma Center before the re-release come to mind)   

Summon Night and Trauma Center had pretty big runs all things considered. But hey, I'm not the one taking chances. :P

Are you saying this might not be for sale at the Atlus store (http://www.atlus.com/cgi-bin/shop?action=search)?

Hmm. I don't really have access to those numbers so I will take your word for it.  Great, now I have to brave the EB.

"Do you want to purchase scratch protection on this?"
"You mean on this DS game?"
"Yes"
"...."

I think I'm gonna have to write a primer on dealing with EBGames. Remember, most of these people are high school drones or just plain retarded. If you're not cool with the people at EB, just tell them fuck no, you just want to preorder a game. Remember, despite being - BY FAR - the best place to preorder anything, they are an evil, evil corporation who is hurting the industry more than helping it.

So a "brawler" means something like Streets of Rage or Final Fight? But with Vikings?

It's a 2D sidescrolling brawler, like Final Fight - very loosely speaking.

Nope.

GotY? Stiff competition.

Uhm. There is only one GOTY. God of War 2.

Ooo, now That would be a fun one.

Also, I agree with you. Most of the management is either braindead, douchebags, or quaking in fear of their moronic District Manager who is painfully out of touch with reality. Sometimes, all 3 apply.

This one should beat it for not being a sequel.

I'll be picking it uip, and I'm one of those wait till later guys.

I watched the trailer for this and.... are you guys on some mass hallucination?!
 :-o

Is it that bad looking to you really? Hand drawn brawler-rpg = Win.

Action RPG with good art direction and some unique gameplay twists?  Sounds pretty damn good to me.

The story gets kinda out there also. I'm not far enough to say It's as good as say, Disgaea, but it's more than entertaining thus far. The story structure is just simply incoherent to me at the moment.

I don't know - looks purty to me. At least it has some style and quality art direction as opposed to relying on "4 trillion pixel shaders and BLOOM, lotsa BLOOM!"

Um... no.  I'm with JoeTF's sentiment; not GOTY, no way.

You'd know.

Maybe.

It actually IS a pretty fun game.  I'll be damned.

It should win something just based on looks.  UPSCALED IN THE PS3, BITCHES!

Yea, it's hot in the PS3. We have a review incoming.

I don't really understand why people get excited with upscaling. I find upscaled graphics to be awful. Either they are blocky or they have some horrible blurring smoothing applied.

I'll still be playing it on my Super Old Skool TV. And it will look great.

I've played through the first chapter now and I'm quite happy with the game.  It's a great mix of old school brawler and RPG. 

I already want to start a wish list for a sequel though.  More quests, more freedom in regards to exploration, bigger game world, more art assets, and a larger item selection are all things I'd really like to see.  With a few tweaks a sequel could easily be an instant classic in my opinion. 


I can confirm this.  The game is jaw dropping gorgeous.  I'd rate it above most PS3 and 360 games in the graphics dept.  Prettiest game ever!

I finally got past the Valkyrie chapter. The story is just....wow. Also, the Pooka Village is cute, especially with the JP voice track.

Too bad the Netherworld maps suck; those damn ghosts with the rapid-attack arms are just Evil.


EDIT: And shit, there are still more character story lines to play through. If they're all around the same length, this game could be very long; the Valkyrie line was almost as long as some full games.

From the outside this game looks like something my 13 year old brother would play, but its compelling to hear the positive feedback on the story...

Doesnt look like a game I would pick up, but the what the hell do I know about single player RPG's...I fucking liked the first turn based Mario RPG that came out like 8 years ago or something... :roll:

Um...anyone who had a clue about RPGs liked Mario RPG. Not sure what you're trying to say.

hmm... Maybe I do have good taste then? I was starting to wonder....Ive been slammed a couple of times for defending that game in the past..Figured my opinion differed from the majority on that one....good to know others like it as much as I did...it remains as one of my favorite single player RPG's.

Mario RPG was Awesome.

Also, Odin Sphere is kicking my ass worse than anything I've played in years.  I'm just no good at this game.

Review up, submitted by Cory Jacobs (http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=568#more).

Finally got my copy.  It's going to stay in wrap till I finish Etrian Odyssey so I can take everything in.

This game has become hard as shit to find btw.

If anyone in the Philadelphia metro area needs a copy, PM me; I should be able to get ahold of one for a few people if need be. Also outside of the area as well, if you want to pay shipping.

No promises.

You also can just order it off www.rosenqueen.com

They're still only showing a pre-order SKU. Not sure what their situation is.

Finally managed to track down a copy today, and started playing.  I'd read the review, but figured I'd start on normal difficulty anyways.   Did that, played with it there for a bit, and then switched to easy...  This quote from the review:


Wow, is this ever true...  I just finished the Valkyrie path battle with Demon Lord Odin and well, I lost count of how many tries it took...  He had so many attacks that did 90% or more of my life (effectively instant kills, because you can't really stay at 100% all the time) I ended up just trying over and over...  Any hit with the spiky blue ball, most of his 2 and 3 hit punch combos...  My character just couldn't take it...   In the end, my strategy became:  1) Any time you see the spiky blue ball, RUN AWAY!!! 2) Any time you're below 50% stamina (or whatever that meter is called), RUN AWAY!  3) Any time you're below 60% (150 for me) life, RUN AWAY!  4) If none of those conditions are met, jump behind him and do a 4 attack combo.  Even then, it still took a ton of tries to beat him.

It's nice to see a challenging level of difficulty like this, but on easy?

Besides that it's really a great game.  Amazing graphics, great audio, interesting story...  It actually reminds me of the GameCube RPG, Tales of Symphonia, in a few ways.  Even the difficulty in a way...  ToS had a special bonus you could get by going through a good amount of the game without taking the newbie wooden sword off the main character.  Odin Sphere's difficulty is like that, except for Odin Sphere, it's what they call easy, rather than some extra bonus mode. ;-)

If you have a PS2 or PS3 to play it on, and can find it, get it.  Great game. :)   Thanks for pointing it out here. :)

Sounds like someone needs to use food more often.

Maybe I should have, earlier on...  For most of the early game it was finish a level, and absorb all the photons...  I'll worry about those seeds later...  Lately I've been eating all I can.

Now I'm at the underworld, and am blocked by two boss battles.  Not in good shape on gear either, as I'm low on food / seeds.  Got the cash together to get the vampiric ring, but sadly found that the hp returned per hit is 1 hp, when stuff is generally hitting me for 40+.

I still stand by my great game comment. :)

Yeah, that ring is a sucker's deal, which I too found out the hard way. I found it better to either use a shield ring to blunt the damage, or a talisman to negate the status effects.

Can anyone confirm/deny the allegations of slowdown in the game?  It's a bit of a deal-breaker for me if a game has technical issues as severe as not being able to run properly on the hardware it was designed for.

Strong, strong confirm.  It was mentioned in the review briefly, but there is SERIOUS slowdown in this game, at least in the PS2 version (and the review was using the PS3 version).  For half of the last chapter of the first book, the game was in major slowdown.  For the ENTIRE final boss fight in that chapter, the game was massively slowing down (and moving at half speed is not fun when it's combined with the whole "oops, you died instantly" factor and the "you did 167 damage, boss has 3,287,433 hp remaining" nature of the boss fights).

Still fun, though.  Boss fights annoy the hell out of me, but the rest of the game I am really loving.  Thanks for reccomending it, everyone.

Yeah, I looked around on a couple message boards, and the general opinion was that playing it on the PS3 helps a little bit, but on PS2 or PS3 there are places you run into massive slowdown.  Maybe someone else here can come up with something else, but the valkyrie path final boss in the underworld is actually the slowest I've ever seen a PS2 game ever run.

Time to go play some more. :)

I think Kail meant to say the game slows down on the PS3, not the PS3 version.  :evil:

Anyway....yeah, there's slowdown. I most or less ignore it.