Play Asia never waste boxes.
It's something you learn after a couple of orders - if the box is big, expect something big inside.
So, when I took this rather large box containing Odin Sphere I told myself: "extras time!"
The game comes in a standard PS2 game case, but there's a Gorgeous hardcover, full color, 65 B4 pages book with illustrations and character sketches.
Introduced by a simple splash screen with new game/load game options, the game introduces us to a little girl and her black cat. Nothing more, nothing less.
A book lies on the ground and you have to pick it up to begin the "real" game: this book tells the story of Gwendolyn, daughter of Odyn, of one the kings of the realm of Erion and the war ragin over a mysterious artifact, the Cauldron,
And then I was frankly stunned by the graphics. It was like watching a top-of-the-line SNES game for the first time: multiple sprites ranging from big to huge, excellent animations, multiple parallax levels and lovely color palette. Much, much, much better than Grim Grimoire: colors, animations, even the artistic direction looks better.
Everything I wrote about Grim Grimoire stands for Odin Sphere too, just think it's better.
Unfortunately there are slowdowns. Face a huge dragon, its escort, throw in a few potions for mass destruction and random special effects and the PS2 will have an hard time to move everything smoothly.
The game structure is quite simple: each chapter is composed by one or more drama parts where the story unfolds and a battle scene. There are five main characters and each story is intertwined with each other; every drama part can be watched again by bringin up the option menu while at the castle, and you can see that, for example, Gwendolyn story starts after those of other characters and some event told in the other stories are between two or more chapters.
Battles are fought like an old school beat'em'up; square is used for attacking, x for jumping, triangle for special moves, circle for the item menu, L1 brings up a map, R1 gathers the soul of fallen enemies and start brings up the menu.
Odin Sphere is not a button masher, however. For each attack, the POW meter goes down and once it's empty the character won't be able to move until it's full again; the POW meter starts recharging after you stand still a couple of seconds and the amount of energy used depends on the attack used: pressing square will remove just a tiny bit, performing a low sweep (down+square) an uppercut (up+square) or a flying dash (jump, down+square) will use a large amount of POW meter. This forces the player to take his time during fight to recover POW energy, analyze the situation and try to do the right thing to defeat the incoming enemies.
Each character can equip a single item (classic things like belts to increase defense, amulets for HPs, charms to revive after being killed and so on) and have an inventory to stock food, potions and seeds.
R1 gathers souls: these souls are used to increase your special attack gauge. Once full, you'll be awarded by a special attack point which can be used to unleash to mentioned special attack. Souls are also used to feed plants which can grow fruits to replenish health or produce other souls for some complex battle strategies.
For example, I'm low on HPs, so I need a fruit to replenish my health. However various enemy waves are coming, I need a special attack to fend at least one of these waves off while I eat but I only have one special attack point. So, what to do? First, I unleash my special attack, then plant a seed; the souls will feed the seed and it will grow a plant that will produce more souls; I will absord these souls by using R1, unleash a second special attack and plant a second seed; this time the seed will produce edible fruits for my health. I killed my enemies, restored my health and gained XPs for that.
Just like standard RPGs XPs increase HPs, defense and attack each level up, but the primary way to gain XPs is to eat, not to fight. Each slice of bread, fruit or potion used or created will grant some XPs, just like restaurants and caf?s found in various locations; these shops are really expensive (and money isn't easy to come by) but are worth as they have various permament effects, depending on whatever you eat.
Battles are fought over several battefields linked together. Each battlefield is essentially a ring whre the character runs back and forth hoping to defeat the enemies in it and gain the treasure if successfully cleared. By running around you'll come across checkpoints that will let you change battlefields and navigate through the chapter map to find the purple "B" field which houses the main chapter boss. Each chapter has a star rating to indicate how hard it is and the best item you'll get for completing it. If you fail one of these battlefields (your HPs reaching zero), you'll start all over again and once cleared you'll be judged over damage taken and inflicted, items and time used; I don't think this affects the story in any way and it's only an high score for personal satisfaction.
The game is challenging; you can choose between three levels at the beginning (easy, normal and hard, I think) and with the second setting (two stars - normal, I suppose) passing the first boss is a good challenge, requiring you to use your inventary and battle skills, but never frustrating; things get a little harder after that, but it's good to see a game that doesn't force tutorials or uninteresting all too easy stages on the player.
A thing I didn't liked was about the story: Odin Sphere is set in fantastic fantasy world, full of magic, dragons, fairies, evil witches and whatever you can think of;
And then slowdowns, but I think it's something linked to the PS2 capabilities more than not, si I'll let this slide. Loading screens are a bit too frequent too and some of them are awfully long, but again it's the hardware fault.
Odin Sphere is really fun. It's one of those simple games that suck you into their world not to let you until you realize you spent four hours while you thought it was just ten minutes, even with dialogues and storytelling in japanese. Menus are in english and it's really easy to understand game mechanics and potions are labelled with a roman letter for their use (H - health, N - Napalm, P - poison, and so on) make the game import friendly, but the american version is due next week, so make sure to buy it.
It's something you learn after a couple of orders - if the box is big, expect something big inside.
So, when I took this rather large box containing Odin Sphere I told myself: "extras time!"
The game comes in a standard PS2 game case, but there's a Gorgeous hardcover, full color, 65 B4 pages book with illustrations and character sketches.
Introduced by a simple splash screen with new game/load game options, the game introduces us to a little girl and her black cat. Nothing more, nothing less.
A book lies on the ground and you have to pick it up to begin the "real" game: this book tells the story of Gwendolyn, daughter of Odyn, of one the kings of the realm of Erion and the war ragin over a mysterious artifact, the Cauldron,
And then I was frankly stunned by the graphics. It was like watching a top-of-the-line SNES game for the first time: multiple sprites ranging from big to huge, excellent animations, multiple parallax levels and lovely color palette. Much, much, much better than Grim Grimoire: colors, animations, even the artistic direction looks better.
Everything I wrote about Grim Grimoire stands for Odin Sphere too, just think it's better.
Unfortunately there are slowdowns. Face a huge dragon, its escort, throw in a few potions for mass destruction and random special effects and the PS2 will have an hard time to move everything smoothly.
The game structure is quite simple: each chapter is composed by one or more drama parts where the story unfolds and a battle scene. There are five main characters and each story is intertwined with each other; every drama part can be watched again by bringin up the option menu while at the castle, and you can see that, for example, Gwendolyn story starts after those of other characters and some event told in the other stories are between two or more chapters.
Battles are fought like an old school beat'em'up; square is used for attacking, x for jumping, triangle for special moves, circle for the item menu, L1 brings up a map, R1 gathers the soul of fallen enemies and start brings up the menu.
Odin Sphere is not a button masher, however. For each attack, the POW meter goes down and once it's empty the character won't be able to move until it's full again; the POW meter starts recharging after you stand still a couple of seconds and the amount of energy used depends on the attack used: pressing square will remove just a tiny bit, performing a low sweep (down+square) an uppercut (up+square) or a flying dash (jump, down+square) will use a large amount of POW meter. This forces the player to take his time during fight to recover POW energy, analyze the situation and try to do the right thing to defeat the incoming enemies.
Each character can equip a single item (classic things like belts to increase defense, amulets for HPs, charms to revive after being killed and so on) and have an inventory to stock food, potions and seeds.
R1 gathers souls: these souls are used to increase your special attack gauge. Once full, you'll be awarded by a special attack point which can be used to unleash to mentioned special attack. Souls are also used to feed plants which can grow fruits to replenish health or produce other souls for some complex battle strategies.
For example, I'm low on HPs, so I need a fruit to replenish my health. However various enemy waves are coming, I need a special attack to fend at least one of these waves off while I eat but I only have one special attack point. So, what to do? First, I unleash my special attack, then plant a seed; the souls will feed the seed and it will grow a plant that will produce more souls; I will absord these souls by using R1, unleash a second special attack and plant a second seed; this time the seed will produce edible fruits for my health. I killed my enemies, restored my health and gained XPs for that.
Just like standard RPGs XPs increase HPs, defense and attack each level up, but the primary way to gain XPs is to eat, not to fight. Each slice of bread, fruit or potion used or created will grant some XPs, just like restaurants and caf?s found in various locations; these shops are really expensive (and money isn't easy to come by) but are worth as they have various permament effects, depending on whatever you eat.
Battles are fought over several battefields linked together. Each battlefield is essentially a ring whre the character runs back and forth hoping to defeat the enemies in it and gain the treasure if successfully cleared. By running around you'll come across checkpoints that will let you change battlefields and navigate through the chapter map to find the purple "B" field which houses the main chapter boss. Each chapter has a star rating to indicate how hard it is and the best item you'll get for completing it. If you fail one of these battlefields (your HPs reaching zero), you'll start all over again and once cleared you'll be judged over damage taken and inflicted, items and time used; I don't think this affects the story in any way and it's only an high score for personal satisfaction.
The game is challenging; you can choose between three levels at the beginning (easy, normal and hard, I think) and with the second setting (two stars - normal, I suppose) passing the first boss is a good challenge, requiring you to use your inventary and battle skills, but never frustrating; things get a little harder after that, but it's good to see a game that doesn't force tutorials or uninteresting all too easy stages on the player.
A thing I didn't liked was about the story: Odin Sphere is set in fantastic fantasy world, full of magic, dragons, fairies, evil witches and whatever you can think of;
And then slowdowns, but I think it's something linked to the PS2 capabilities more than not, si I'll let this slide. Loading screens are a bit too frequent too and some of them are awfully long, but again it's the hardware fault.
Odin Sphere is really fun. It's one of those simple games that suck you into their world not to let you until you realize you spent four hours while you thought it was just ten minutes, even with dialogues and storytelling in japanese. Menus are in english and it's really easy to understand game mechanics and potions are labelled with a roman letter for their use (H - health, N - Napalm, P - poison, and so on) make the game import friendly, but the american version is due next week, so make sure to buy it.
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