When a game needs four discs, you just know you won't finish it over a rainy weekend.
Lost Odyssey
Microsoft
(Xbox 360)
4 stars (out of 5)
In the time it takes to read this page, and re-read it perhaps a dozen times, just to make sure you haven't missed anything, you could complete about 0.0000000000000000001% of Lost Odyssey.
This is one seriously big game. It's EPIC with four very bold capitals.
It is, as far as I know, the only Xbox 360 game that requires four discs. In fact, it's the first video game I've ever seen for a console that requires more than two.
You get the point. It's a big game.
Lost Odyssey is the first real attempt to give 360 gamers the sort of lengthy, detailed role-playing game with a heavy Japanese flavour that has been available for PC devotees for donkey's years.
It is unashamedly broad in scope and immersive in detail, and does not pretend to appeal to anybody other than those who have hours, and hours to spend in a virtual world.
The story's nice, if a little predictable. Your character is Kaim, an immortal man who is cursed with the unfortunate and horribly familiar trait of amnesia, and as the story unfolds he gets to find out more about who he is and why he is unable to die.
The game comes from one of the more revered figures in fantasy gaming, Hironobu Sakaguchi, who is to the genre what the late Marcel Marceau was to mime. In the tradition of the much-loved Final Fantasy series, Lost Odyssey is beautiful to look it, addictive and occasionally frustrating to play, and takes about a million (OK, 40, they reckon) hours to complete.
All the usual RPG elements are in place: the exploration, the levelling up, the discovering of useful trinkets and weapons and herbs.
There are regular and long cut scenes, which can sometimes drag a game down, but in this case add to the immersive feel because they are extremely polished and not at all painful to watch.
When the time comes for combat, you utilise a turn-based system that is a really nice mix of the old and the new. A formation function makes you think about which members of your party should be used as cannon fodder up front, and an innovative ``aim ring'', with Kaim utilising the right trigger to use various rings he has collected, spices up the clash.
There's a helpful map to get around what is a sprawling world, and unlockable ships to travel from port to port.
Inventory systems vary in their levels of complication from one RPG game to another. Lost Odyssey does a good job at keeping it simple at the same time as offering plenty of options.
It all adds up to one very good game. Just don't expect to dip into it now and then. Save points are far apart and the game moves at a relatively sedate pace, so trust me when I say it is not something you will finish on a rainy weekend.
