Ode to a Sphere (warning: TEXT)

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Locit
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Ode to a Sphere (warning: TEXT)

Post by Locit »

So Odin Sphere is out, and some of you haven't bought it yet. This is a mistake. Here are a few thousand reasons why.

It's beautiful. The game is a labor of love, and it shows. Every frame of animation is lovingly drawn, literally. Characters and backgrounds are rendered entirely in 2D, but unlike, say, Super Paper Mario, characters aren't necessarily stylized in a way that fits a graphical prescription. Jointed animation is put to very good use in characters and changing environments, and giant characters have an insane amount of detail put into them. At least as important as animation is the color palette. It's incredibly vibrant, but not gaudy, and promotes a the game's atmosphere in a way that recalls Ico and SotC- not in its bleakness, but rather its effectiveness.

Image

Gameplay wise areas are mapped on a number of circles (or "spheres" if you will, though not really- see the bottom right corner of the screenshot) traversed one a 2D plane. Each circle has one or more exit points from which you can get to one of the other areas that make up whichever country/area you're currently making your way through. Battles are fought in real time and make use of a limited combo system. Each one is ranked by how fast you complete it and how much damage you take (as well as a few other things that currently escape me). However, you can't go too crazy because a pow meter limits the number of swings you can take before becoming incapacitated for a few seconds and vulnerable to attack. Balancing this out are the innumerable other techniques you are constantly employing mid-fight.

"Spells," such as they are, are gained as you level up your weapon. This is done by killing enemies, which releases psyphers into the surrounding area. You then hold R1 to suck these in, leveling up your attack power and spell abilities, as well as filling up what is more or less your MP bar. Spells such as a cyclone that takes up a vertical line and progresses through a level can also damage you, while some spells have effects on the player, such as granting a 5X attack power for one blow, but draining HP to 1.

Much of the meat of the game comes from gardening, and not in a gay, Harvest Moon that's-neat-I'll-never-play-that-again kind of way. Planting seeds you pick up along the way produces little sprouts that also feed on the same phozons you use to level up your weapon and charge MP. Each plant has a different number of phozons needed to grow, with varying results. One, the rosmile, needs none and produces 15 phozons to help whichever nearby plant you want to give a leg up. Another, the napple, requires 18 phozons and produces two peach-fruit thingies that give you some HP and give your HP experience. Yep, you level up your HP with experience gained by eating. My personal favourite plant thus far is the sheep tree, which sprouts two live sheep at full growth. Killing the sheep results in tasty, tasty lamb chops, which give 200 hp and 150 exp, as well as having two portions each. There's also a kitchen you can go to, and for a little cash you can have them cook up a tasty, experience rich meal from whatever ingredients you've got on hand.

Alchemy! There have been a squillion FMA games and Odin Sphere does alchemy better than all of them. Starting with base materials (well, really just one called a "material" kept in a vial) you combine these materials with various types of (deceptively cute) mandragoras to make various helpful potions. For instance, combining a Material (0) with a Habanerista mandragora produces "Cooler" tonic, which helps prevent damage from intense heat in volcanic areas. Other mixes include napalm and toxins to use on your enemies. Mandragoras themselves are found by listening for squeaks as you walk through stages. Jumping on said squeaky areas produces a cute little animated root that runs about till you kill it mercilessly.

Finally there's the story. I know I made fun of the claim of the game's back cover that you should "lose yourself" in an "intricately spun tale worthy of a place in the canon of classic literature," but it's really a fantastically told story. It starts out sounding early on as if it's going to be a cookie cutter affair with stereotypical players, but character development starts quickly and you quickly become interested in why each character is doing something, and when you do find out it actually fits instead of turning out they were trying to revive their dead science experiment mother-thing from a lab or something.

The downside of the game's segmented nature are load times. While not always long, there are plenty of them. Additionally once in a while you'll come across an oddly animated character that seems a little off at first, but you generally get used to it quickly. There will sometimes be a bit (read: lots) of slowdown when a bajillion sprites show up on the screen. Thankfully this doesn't happen too often, but when it does it's jarring. Finally, the item system takes some getting used to. You're not meant to horde items but use them copiously, and if you try to keep them as you would in a normal game you'll get frustrated very quickly.

If I've made it sound complicated that's because it is, but the game itself does a very effective job of introducing the basics to you and letting you go from there. The visual and visceral come together to make it a really special game. The PS2 has had a couple of so-called "swan songs" before now, but I wouldn't be disappointed if this was really it. Buy it before you can't find it. Odin Sphere is worth every penny.

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

Screen progression and the item system sound exactly like Princess Crown. Can you pause the game while you open the items menu? I remember in Princess Crown you had to handle all your item toggling in realtime and it was most distressing, especially during boss fights.

Anyway, I raided one whole quadrant of town on my lunch break looking for the game and it was nowhere to be found. I think you're lying.

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Post by Locit »

Green Gibbon! wrote:Screen progression and the item system sound exactly like Princess Crown. Can you pause the game while you open the items menu? I remember in Princess Crown you had to handle all your item toggling in realtime and it was most distressing, especially during boss fights.
I believe the team behind Odin Sphere were also behind Princess Crown, actually.

Items are handled through a system of bags, thankfully not in real time. I can't count the number of times I would've died if the game didn't pause when you entered the item menu. The menu itself is a ring of items that circle your character. You switch between up to five bags that can have up to eight slots each. That said, I haven't found out if you can unequip new bags, so don't go buying the small three-slot bags you can get for cheap or you might end up a figurative creek.
Green Gibbon! wrote:Anyway, I raided one whole quadrant of town on my lunch break looking for the game and it was nowhere to be found. I think you're lying.
Proof!

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

I believe the team behind Odin Sphere were also behind Princess Crown, actually.
I'm pretty sure it's a sequel even though the director insists it's not.

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Post by Delphine »

I had the same problem as you, G!. I ended up ordering it. Too late in the week, of course, and now I will have to wait until next week to play it. Sad cries.

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Post by Locit »

Green Gibbon! wrote:I'm pretty sure it's a sequel even though the director insists it's not.
I never played Princess Crown, but I do know it's got a PSP port out. Is it worth importing?

Incidentally, one of the major parts I forgot to write about was the voice acting. People like Gibbon will be satisfied with the original Japanese dialogue, but for those that like their games in English what I've heard of the dub is actually very, very good. In fact, you can go to the options menu mid-battle and switch between the two on the fly without even restarting the game if you're curious.

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Post by Ngangbius »

I was planning on using my Best Buy gift card to obtain this game, but it won't be available there until the 29th or that's what customer service said.

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Post by Shadow Hog »

I want this game, purely because the graphics are absolutely STUNNING and the gameplay underneath actually sounds very solid.

...But I have no PS2. >_>

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

I can't speak for the PSP version, but the Saturn version is cool if you can nab it for under 15 bucks or so (which you can't, at least not in this country). Also, unless you're quite comfortable with Japanese, prepare for hours of trial, error, and aimless wandering back and forth to trigger events.

It's also hard.

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Post by gr4yJ4Y »

Shadow Hog wrote:I want this game, purely because the graphics are absolutely STUNNING and the gameplay underneath actually sounds very solid.

...But I have no PS2. >_>
Same here...

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Post by Senbei »

Green Gibbon! wrote:Anyway, I raided one whole quadrant of town on my lunch break looking for the game and it was nowhere to be found. I think you're lying.
I reserved mine at Gamestop and they've only got enough for reservations; no copies for the casual shopper.

I haven't gotten too far into the game yet as my time has recently been split between this, Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, and the sixth Harry Potter. Plus, either Odin Sphere is pretty hard, or I suck at it. I never seem to be able to get enough phozons to power up both my skills and my seeds on each battlefield. You get a ranking after each "level" and because my average is usually a B (out of S, A, B, C, and D) I never seem to get enough money in rewards, which makes it hard to buy essential items and seeds from merchants.

None of this should be taken in a bad way, though. I've definitely enjoyed the game so far, having only gotten a short way through the first character's story. The game is hard, and often unforgiving, but this just encourages you to use strategy throughout each collection of areas, like only planting seeds that you know you'll have enough phozons to raise or saving those alchemy materials for only the most important items. It's similar to a survival horror like RE4 in that respect: you've got to keep an eye on your items constantly or you're never going to beat that boss.

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Post by aso »

Nope, the game is hard; one of the biggest issues tends to be that enemies can still attack you even as you're slashing at them. The entire thing essentially forces you to think about how you're going to carry your attack out; blind buttonsmashing leads to a quick and painful death.

It gets even worse when particular enemies clearly work together to entrap you, IE: enemies in Gwen's final area which teleport and attack you en masse.

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Post by Esrever »

I really like the look of this game, but I can't for the life of me figure out if I would actually enjoy playing it.

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Post by Majestic Joey »

I'm getting this game today and since I work part time at a video game store I don't have to pay tax. woo hoo!

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Post by Locit »

As far as difficulty goes, there is an option to change to "easy" if you're really having trouble, or "hard" if you have a masochistic streak.

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

I just played it for a bit. I've only cleared a stage and a half so this is only a first impression, but structurally it seems very rigid and repetitive. It's all screen-screen-screen and not much to do in each other than run in circles and slash-slash-slash. It looks like item management demands the lion's share of the player's attention.

The graphics are very rich and smooth, but something about the overall sense of aesthetics rubs me the wrong way. I'm not sure what program is used to achieve this sort of animation - I've seen it before and it works well in certain contexts, but here it just kind of looks like rigid paper cut-outs that warp and wiggle at random junctures in occasionally unnatural ways. It's not really the sort of organic, flowing animation I was expecting.

I do get a very strong "obscure Japanese Saturn RPG" vibe that tickles my fancy, but I haven't yet found much to sink my teeth into. I don't see myself finishing this.

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Post by Zeta »

From what I've seen, most of the sprites lack good proportional anatomy. IE - one leg will be bigger than the other, or the head will be oddly huge.

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Post by Delphine »

Everyone in this game has such a <i>tragic</i> life. It's just <i>tragic</i>. You should feel bad for them because it's <i>tragic</i>.

There's only so much to do in this game. Once you've mastered the mechanics, all that's left is story, which is just so goddamn <i>tragic</i>.

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Post by Heroic One »

I'll never understand why 2D games have load times these days.

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Post by G.Silver »

The largest chunk of memory consumed by a 3D game is the textures, the models are just vertex points, even a very detailed model does not require much memory. The textures are increasingly large and with more and more colors. A 2D game is all textures. That data isn't going to just read itself!

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Post by Delphine »

The load times are <i>tragic</i>.

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Post by Arcade »

I dont like Gardening, even if the only thing you had to do was planting the seeds, like in Legend of mana, I still dont like it. Thats sad, it doesnt sound like a bad game...

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

Yop, upon further investigation it seems I can find very few redeeming elements at all. There's not much of anything here other than an item-juggling funhouse. The art direction is gaudy, the story is trite, the characters are dull, and the whole thing is as rigid as a stack of bricks.

On the other hand, the load times don't really bother me...

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Post by aso »

Green Gibbon! wrote:Yop, upon further investigation it seems I can find very few redeeming elements at all. There's not much of anything here other than an item-juggling funhouse. The art direction is gaudy, the story is trite, the characters are dull, and the whole thing is as rigid as a stack of bricks.

On the other hand, the load times don't really bother me...
How would you say it directly stacks up to Princess Crown, given that Odin Sphere is supposed to be a 'sequel in spirit'?

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

Princess Crown was structurally much more open. The whole thing took place on a proper map so it actually felt like you were going somewhere rather than just running from one identical square on the grid to the next. Towns and other interesting locations were more generously interspersed with the action segues. It was more of a proper adventure RPG structure - even the dungeons, while a bit grueling, weren't as panel-to-panel boring as Odin Sphere's battlegrounds.

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