One game that truly emphasized this was one of final games to be released during the era of the Playstation 2. It came out with practically no hype that I heard behind it, and I picked it up completely on impulse knowing nothing about it. What I ended up purchasing was a game that I spent well over 120 hours to play through and was such a hidden gem I know am willing to throw my money at any product they intend to release in the future. I am speaking of course, of Vanillaware's loosely norse based mythological adventure......
ODIN SPHERE:(PS2/PS3)
The story of Odin Sphere is expertly crafted among 5 separate tales. When you start the game you take control of a young girl in her library attic. You pick up a tomb and sit down to read. In the world of Erion, Demon King Odin wages war against against the Fairy kingdom of Ringford to the south for control of a Crystallization Cauldron that has the ability to produce pyspher crystals. The war is waged in the wastelands of the former kingdom of Valentine, who's remaining survivors are cursed and trapped in the form of anthropomorphic rabbits called Pookas.
As the war wages, you take control of 5 characters and play along each of their adventures during this sorted timeline:
-Gwendolyn the Valkyrie, who is caught up in Odin's plan to distract one of the faeries agent's and is torn between the duty to her father and the love that develops to the agent.
-Cornelius, the prince of the neutral kingdom of Titania who is in love with the princess of the former kingdom of Valentie, and is cursed to become a pooka and sets off to reunite with his love and find out the truth behind his grandfathers death.
-Mercedes, the fairy princess of Ringford who is ill-prepared to lead and is caught up in an uprising of her cousin Melvin for the throne. She must quell the usurping before she can lead her people into war.
-Oswald, the Shadow Knight who was orphaned and adopted by Melvin, but is betrayed the Fairy kingdom when he falls for the valkyrie, Gwendolyn.
-Lastly there is Velvet, one of the two remaining uncursed survivors of Valentine and its former princess. She fights to stop Odin from using the cauldron because it is the reason Valentine was destroyed, and piece together ancient prophecies to try to stop a foretold Armageddon.
-Gwendolyn the Valkyrie, who is caught up in Odin's plan to distract one of the faeries agent's and is torn between the duty to her father and the love that develops to the agent.
-Cornelius, the prince of the neutral kingdom of Titania who is in love with the princess of the former kingdom of Valentie, and is cursed to become a pooka and sets off to reunite with his love and find out the truth behind his grandfathers death.
-Mercedes, the fairy princess of Ringford who is ill-prepared to lead and is caught up in an uprising of her cousin Melvin for the throne. She must quell the usurping before she can lead her people into war.
-Oswald, the Shadow Knight who was orphaned and adopted by Melvin, but is betrayed the Fairy kingdom when he falls for the valkyrie, Gwendolyn.
-Lastly there is Velvet, one of the two remaining uncursed survivors of Valentine and its former princess. She fights to stop Odin from using the cauldron because it is the reason Valentine was destroyed, and piece together ancient prophecies to try to stop a foretold Armageddon.
The game can best be described as a side-scrolling hack and slasher with RPG elements. Levels are broken up by story chapters where you get exposition about the character and the situation. Then you go into various levels of the game. The maps are all basically a series of combat challenges of varied difficulty. All of the maps are completely circular so you can't really get lost. If you continue going one direction it will eventually bring you back to where you started. The objective is to clear the map of enemies as quickly as possible.
When you defeat enemies, they drop phozons which you can absorb into your weapon. These allow you to use your various magic attacks but the more you collect they more they level your weapon as well. They are also used to grow seeds you can plant for recovery items. So there are many instances where you may want to release the phozons you collect, and while you don't get as many back when you release them, their experience does stack when you absorb them again.
As stated just one paragraph ago, you can plant seeds to grow various fruits and sheep (yes, you and grow sheep. No, I'm not kidding.) which you can harvest and use to recover your health. But one of the first mistakes I made was trying to hoard my healing items. What you want to do is start stuffing your face because as you eat, your health has an experience gauge too and every time it levels you gain a larger health meter. Some fruit will leave seeds so you can eat the fruit, plant the seed, release your phozons, and repeat.
When you defeat enemies, they drop phozons which you can absorb into your weapon. These allow you to use your various magic attacks but the more you collect they more they level your weapon as well. They are also used to grow seeds you can plant for recovery items. So there are many instances where you may want to release the phozons you collect, and while you don't get as many back when you release them, their experience does stack when you absorb them again.
As stated just one paragraph ago, you can plant seeds to grow various fruits and sheep (yes, you and grow sheep. No, I'm not kidding.) which you can harvest and use to recover your health. But one of the first mistakes I made was trying to hoard my healing items. What you want to do is start stuffing your face because as you eat, your health has an experience gauge too and every time it levels you gain a larger health meter. Some fruit will leave seeds so you can eat the fruit, plant the seed, release your phozons, and repeat.
Lastly there is an alchemy system as well. By combining certain items with material bottles you get new items that can help in battle, recover health, remove status ailments, and so forth. You can also upgrade the bottle levels through simple multiplication to produce extra phozons to collect. So after some stages you may wanna spend a minute doing some item creation.
People who are very familar with 2D fighting will feel right at home with the combat. But what makes it fun is each character has a different style of weapon or a different type of a ability unique to their character. Gwen is a valkyrie and is able to use a long float that can turn into a downward dash. Cornelius is fast and nimble in his pooka form and has lots of quick moving and flipping combos to hack enemies with. Mercedes is a fairy and can fly while using her bow and so forth.
The graphics of Odin Sphere are probably one of the games best selling points. In an era of games of shades of brown and gun metal grey with lifelike sweat and grime glistening effects, it was a wonderful change of pace to have beautifully illustrated characters with bright vibrant colors that pop out and contrast well. The animations of the character sprites are well done and many of the monsters are original to set this great fantasy piece together.
The music is classical, and scores well with the game. There are a handful of notable tunes in the game but nothing so memorable you'd catch yourself humming it later though.
But what is incredibly noticeable about the sound is how well voice acted it was. All of the characters manage to speak in their own style accent that feels "medieval" enough to fit in with the the games setting. None of it really feels awkward or hokey, and they stay away from some of the anime stereotypes of giving a character an exceptionally high voice. Sure, there is an occasional exception to this but their characters are sympathetic and tragic and really bring emphasis to the story.
Its not without its flaws though. Because all the maps are circular, there really isn't any real exploration to be had in the game. You can pretty much play the entire game only moving in a single direction and can probably complete it. While each stage is a map of different areas to explore the only thing that changes from map to map is what type or the number of enemies appear.
Because of of the lack of exploration, the game concept can get a little samey. You are basically plodding along from one fight to the next. Since the controls are fairly tight, I think a little platforming in the game could have helped somewhat and led way to some complex boss battles. Its fun to play but by the end of the game you are more pushing to see the end of the story rather continued excitement Its fun but can be a bit much to finish all at once.
And on the technical side, I played this on the PS2. There are a handful of boss fights, and I would say Odette in particular where there is just too much shit on the screen, and the frame rate starts to chug way down. I suppose it helps with precision to beat the boss but it is annoying. However, I am told on the PSN re-release they have since fixed that issue. So that's great.
What really made me fall in love with this game is that it took aspects of games that I love, none of which are original, and combined them together to make something I felt was really special. It was easy to get behind and fall in love with this universe, and its all capped off by a clever bit of ingenuity on how to properly unlock the final good ending in the game.
I really don't know what else I can say about it. I had never heard of Vanillaware before this one, but they have made me a huge fan of their work from one game alone. I am eagerly awaiting their upcoming PS3 release Dragon's Crown and and somewhat crestfallen that I never got to play their Wii title Muramasa: the Demon Blade. They also released a title on PSP called Grand Knights Story. Supposedly the last two were supposed to get PSN HD releases but that was last reported in 2010 and they have yet to see the light of day.
Odin Sphere is 20 bucks on the Playstation Network under its PS2 classics. It was a total impulse purchase but I'm completely thrilled with what I got. I easily cranked out 120+ hours to finish it and even now I have the urge to go back and play it further. As far as I am concerned it was the last great game on the PS2.
People who are very familar with 2D fighting will feel right at home with the combat. But what makes it fun is each character has a different style of weapon or a different type of a ability unique to their character. Gwen is a valkyrie and is able to use a long float that can turn into a downward dash. Cornelius is fast and nimble in his pooka form and has lots of quick moving and flipping combos to hack enemies with. Mercedes is a fairy and can fly while using her bow and so forth.
The music is classical, and scores well with the game. There are a handful of notable tunes in the game but nothing so memorable you'd catch yourself humming it later though.
But what is incredibly noticeable about the sound is how well voice acted it was. All of the characters manage to speak in their own style accent that feels "medieval" enough to fit in with the the games setting. None of it really feels awkward or hokey, and they stay away from some of the anime stereotypes of giving a character an exceptionally high voice. Sure, there is an occasional exception to this but their characters are sympathetic and tragic and really bring emphasis to the story.
Its not without its flaws though. Because all the maps are circular, there really isn't any real exploration to be had in the game. You can pretty much play the entire game only moving in a single direction and can probably complete it. While each stage is a map of different areas to explore the only thing that changes from map to map is what type or the number of enemies appear.
Because of of the lack of exploration, the game concept can get a little samey. You are basically plodding along from one fight to the next. Since the controls are fairly tight, I think a little platforming in the game could have helped somewhat and led way to some complex boss battles. Its fun to play but by the end of the game you are more pushing to see the end of the story rather continued excitement Its fun but can be a bit much to finish all at once.
And on the technical side, I played this on the PS2. There are a handful of boss fights, and I would say Odette in particular where there is just too much shit on the screen, and the frame rate starts to chug way down. I suppose it helps with precision to beat the boss but it is annoying. However, I am told on the PSN re-release they have since fixed that issue. So that's great.
What really made me fall in love with this game is that it took aspects of games that I love, none of which are original, and combined them together to make something I felt was really special. It was easy to get behind and fall in love with this universe, and its all capped off by a clever bit of ingenuity on how to properly unlock the final good ending in the game.
I really don't know what else I can say about it. I had never heard of Vanillaware before this one, but they have made me a huge fan of their work from one game alone. I am eagerly awaiting their upcoming PS3 release Dragon's Crown and and somewhat crestfallen that I never got to play their Wii title Muramasa: the Demon Blade. They also released a title on PSP called Grand Knights Story. Supposedly the last two were supposed to get PSN HD releases but that was last reported in 2010 and they have yet to see the light of day.
Odin Sphere is 20 bucks on the Playstation Network under its PS2 classics. It was a total impulse purchase but I'm completely thrilled with what I got. I easily cranked out 120+ hours to finish it and even now I have the urge to go back and play it further. As far as I am concerned it was the last great game on the PS2.
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