Gamespot score:7.6(good)
my score:8.5
(+)Pros:-Beautiful artwork and sprite animation,-incredibly absorbing story with a cast of equally intruiging characters,-excellent combat that is both fun and challenging,-many innovative in game features,-constant item management keeps players on thier toes,-lenghty main story,-5 different playable characters,-awesome boss fights
(-)Cons:-Frequent load times,-difficulty can be rage inducing
Gameplay time:30-40 hours
Back to game reviews! As said previously, I will only be doing 2 more PS2 game reviews, including this one. Odin sphere is one hell of a masterpiece, I reviewed it before, but its archived somewhere deep in the blog history. Anyway, this is the re do review. Back during the game's release date, the PS2 was already dieing off, and no one was expecting any more awesome games, good thing odin sphere came to save the day. Action side scrolling RPGs back in the day werent too popular, and they may not be too today, but odin sphere still remains one of the top games in that genre, and is one hell of a great game to play, provided you can handle the tough as nails difficulty.
The story for odin sphere is one of its star points. The game talks about multiple characters, portrayed in story books. You play the game as a girl who reads books, each of them containing the told story of one of 5 intruiging warriors. Though each of the 5 characters' stories over lap into each other and link one way or another, the main picture comes off as an incoming world crisis, taking the form of a war. The war causes different factions to fight and brought about the deaths of many, and each of the characters in the story represent some of the given factions, wheter they belong to them or not. Revolving around the story are the involvment of other mythical and magical factors, such as dragons, great wizards and a certain magical artifact. The story is great, its full of plot twists that catches players off guard, and you play as many different characters,all of which are full of personality, making the game all the more interesting.
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| Captions! At last! |
The gameplay of odin sphere is strikingly good. Though the game plays much like your everyday action scrolling platformer, its a little different. Like of course in many of these side scrollers, you have a field to walk around in, but in odin sphere, 1 level contains many of these stages, and after each stage, you are prompted to move to one of the surrounding other stages, where you continue to fight hordes of enemies, until they are slain, and the process repeats itself until you fight the boss. Of course in these stages there are mini boss fights, which of course are difficult all on their own. In 1 level, there are at least 2 mini boss fights, which means you will be dieing alot, since they are hard, not that the bosses are any easier.
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| The story is filled with entertaining and enthralling conversations. |
In the great gaming process of odin sphere, you will be using 5 different unique characters, switching immediately after each's story is done. The game opens out with gwendolyn, the valkyrie daughter of odin, the great ruler of the heavens. Gwen uses a spear and has the ability to gain short flights in battle. Next we have the pooka prince cornelius, who fights with a huge sword, and has the ability to extend his jumps. Following up we have mercedes, a fairy princess that fights with an incredible bowgun that fires at extreme speed. Oswald, possibly my favourite character, fights with a sword and has the ability to go "shadow mode". Velvet is another princess of some sort, wielding a pair twin chaings as weapons. Each of these heroes/heroines have thier own interesting story to behold and each one is filled with enthralling boss fights, interesting dialouge, and many more.
Combat with each character is interesting, and although you will be fighting repeat bosses found in other characters' stories, beating them with different characters require different strategies, and each wields a different reason for fighting, which is great. Battle is challenging as it is fun, you will spend time jumping and hovering around the field dodging enemy attacks, most of which can take alot off your health. You will also have to keep watch on your stamina, which is dangerous to keep low, and these factors can determine life or death in battle.
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| Combat is fun, but terribly hard. |
Odin sphere is great, but it has its shortcomings. You will be navigating around the level alot, from stage to stage, as said before. And moving to a different stage will open up the loading screen, and this will be happening alot, as there are many stages in a single level. The load times arent long, but when your are flooded with these loading screens from time to time, you get annoyed. Also a factor affecting the game is the crazy difficulty. If you do not grasp the game's playstyle, you will die, alot. Bosses and even enemies, can deplete more than 50% of your health in a single attack, and cause you to refight them tons and tons of times, to the extent that you can win without even getting hit.
Odin sphere is probably a game that many might not have seen before, its unique gameplay and style will catch many off guard, but its a game worth loving, and most will fall in love with it in awhile. Its insanely well done art and sprite animations are great, the combat is enjoyable, and the story, along with the dialouge, are highly intruiging. Though it is an old PS2 game, this still remains one heck of a great game.
Happy gaming.
