![]() ![]() It’s like going back in time, only much, much prettier than you remember. When it’s over, your victorious heroes run through their cheerful celebration anthem, again like it’s still 1997. Then you watch as the ensuing round of combat takes place, heroes and enemies taking polite turns to batter or blast each other senseless. Where FFXII brought us monsters you could see coming and an AI-controlled party aided by a programmable gambit system, Lost Odyssey takes us back to sudden scraps where you run through each member of the party in order, telling them to attack, defend or use an item or magic spell. You’ll understand this from your first random monster encounter, as a whole lot of nothing in the wilderness suddenly turns out to be a motley crew of savage beasts, and the screen warps to show the sort of preparing-for-battle animation we saw in Final Fantasy VII back in 1997. However, there’s no getting past the fact that Lost Odyssey doesn’t play like an HD-era RPG. The cinematic depth of field effect is brilliantly employed. Architecture, creature design and the attention to detail shown in the character’s hair, clothing or armour are frequently breathtaking. Sure, the world has a few muddy textures and Mistwalker hasn’t taken the characters down a totally photo-realistic route, but things like the weather effects, the water effects and the rendering and animation of the heroes are everything you would expect from an HD-era RPG. That means it looks glorious, narrowing the gap between in-game graphics and cut-scenes more successfully than any Japanese RPG we’ve seen before. Of course, while it looks like a Final Fantasy game, Lost Odyssey does at least look like you’d imagine a Final Fantasy game would if rendered in glorious high-definition using the Unreal 3.0 engine. ![]() Lost Odyssey looks a lot like a Final Fantasy game, and with music from FF series composer, Nobuo Uematsu, it also sounds a lot like a Final Fantasy game. Like Final Fantasy, it takes place in a world where the forces of magic freely mix with elements of Victorian-era industrial technology and great chunks of what you’d normally label sci-fi. It’s a sprawling, epic RPG, more serious in tone and more realistic in visual style than Blue Dragon, with the exploration and action framed by exactly the sort of lengthy cinematic cut-scenes that Final Fantasy VII to XII have become famous for. Mistwalker’s founder, Hironobu Sakaguchi, created Square’s classic RPG series and played some role in its progress right up to Final Fantasy X-2, and Lost Odyssey feels very much like an attempt to reclaim that old territory. It’s impossible to review Lost Odyssey without making comparisons with Final Fantasy XII, so I’m not even going to try. No matter how much you love it, all the stuff I’ve just mentioned is guaranteed to get on your nerves at some point during the game. While Lost Odyssey has its share of interesting or innovative game mechanics, it’s not a game that’s been designed to drive the genre forwards. Time and again you’ll feel yourself horrified by such hideous anachronisms as random monster encounters, huge stretches without a single save point or the jarring switch from exploration to yet another turn-based combat sequence. Nearly two years after Square-Enix tried to revolutionise the genre with Final Fantasy XII, Lost Odyssey feels less like a rival, and more like a deliberate attempt to step backwards to the days of Final Fantasy VIII. Like Mistwalker’s Xbox 360 debut, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey can easily be condemned as a good-looking, HD throwback to the good old days of Japanese RPGs. Our Blue Dragon reviews are written by Josh Lewis and Kyle C.We might as well just get this straight from the start. Please see our MANY reviews for these Xbox 360-only Mistwalker games if you’re interested and are still on the fence. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II.Sega Vintage Collection: Alex Kidd & Co.The full list of game titles that will no longer be purchasable is listed below: However, if you only have an Xbox 360 and don’t already own games like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, it may be a good idea to pick them up through the Xbox 360 Marketplace just in case you want to play them on the console in the future. Thankfully, according to Gematsu, it will not affect the titles that are already purchasable through the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S stores, so the delistings should not be a huge deal if you own one of the modern Xbox consoles. You will still be able to redownload the games you’ve already purchased after they are delisted, but they will no longer be purchasable through the Xbox 360 Store. Microsoft has posted an update that they are planning to delist some game titles and add-on content from the Xbox 360 Marketplace on February 7th. ![]()
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