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By now you may have heard of Lost Odyssey. They hyped it pretty hard. It's an old school role-playing game for the Xbox 360, developed by Mistwalker (read: Final Fantasy fame). The video game media got everyone frothing excited about it. An epic commercial for the game aired in which Jefferson Airplane wail out "White Rabbit" against cut-scenes of angels and swords and explosions.

I admit that I was taken in. The fact that it touted its "old-school" RPG status piqued my nostalgic interest; I wanted a new, fresh game in the style of the 90s RPGs I'd grown up on. But what was it Dr. Brown said about the space-time continuum? Basically, if you go back to the past, be cool and don't fuck with anything. Lost Odyssey does not heed this advice. Lost Odyssey actually puts you into a beautiful time machine, whisks you away to 1995 RPG Land, and then it violently shits on you forever. Why it chooses to do this is unclear. But here are 7 examples to prove it.

1. The "Thousand Years of Dreams" Feature is Cheesy beyond Hope

In the ancient 90s, RPGs chose to progress their stories through a series of long, scrolling text. Lost Odyssey does this with fervor, as part of a little feature aptly titled "Thousand Years of Dreams," which is what it will induce in the gamer.

Let me set the scene. You're minding your own business in the game world, and suddenly a cut-scene occurs, followed by a grim message: "Kaim has recalled a memory buried deep within his heart." Then you're done. Playing. The stories you must read are here. You'll discover how Kaim is sad, and other things. It's all very sad and grave with piano music. It almost resembles a pastor's power point presentation at church. A good 15 minutes until you're back in control. Go to the bathroom, crack a beer, or just skip through (which takes a notably long time even on fast-forward.)

It's mystifying that we're still at a stage in game design when designers equate "emotional connection with the player" with writing sad words that you must read. And you must. Even if you cleverly change the speaking voices to Japanese out of hatred for the voice acting, you then must read. And it is a poor read. Even if you explore, you'll trigger cut-scenes of talking. What is with this game's creepy desire to make me read it?

NOTE: In a self-reflexive (guilty?) moment, the game titles one of the dreams "A Talkative Memory." From Wikipedia I quote: "whereas previous games in the series incorporated scrolling subtitles..." From the Final Fantasy X entry. Vis a vis Lost Odyssey is older in execution than a game that came out 7 years ago.

2. The Magic in the Game is Retarded

It's probably not a good sign if when playing an RPG you ever say to yourself, "this part reminds me of an old HeMan episode I saw." This occurs in Lost Odyssey. The magic in the game that gives everyone powers is literally called "magic energy," and everyone greedily fights over It. It makes apparently serious moments seem like greedy cartoons when they talk like "we could use MAGIC ENERGY to blah blah." FFVII gave us "materia," countless other games have reinvented "mana;" was there no other idea on the table besides "magic energy?"

3. The Parts that aren't fighting are lame

The presentation is gorgeous. The menus snap and glow, the battles rock, and Kaim moves with a surprising amount of subtly and response. Basically, it's the most beautiful realization of Final Fantasy X you could hope for. Unfortunately, the developers over at Mistwalker each have PhD's in "Irritating side-quest theory, execution and design." And they are brilliant, dazzling geniuses at this art.

Example: Early in the game, where is that first shop located at the Grand Staff Military Base? The answer is a secret. Shhhhhh. The first rule of Lost Odyssey is you cannot shop for items. This information is delicate and most top-secret in Lost Odyssey. Entering the shop is made into a fun, stupid minigame, where you have to make it past these guards and down a ladder. If they see you, the scene resets, and you have to do it all over again. Why? I even wanted to pay. I had built up over $4,000 in my journeys, a shopless shit head. At other random times in the game, you are held prisoner in villages unless you collect 10 little dolls or some shit.

You may also notice that the second shop requires a secret password. Very quickly it seems, the shops in the game slip into dark shadowy dealings. Why does this world have critical resources in hidden, guarded, passworded, perhaps later submerged locales? We do not understand what all the fuss is for. But then again, I'm not the one with a Ph.D in how to irritate gamers in this way, I'm just a guy.

4. Kaim Is the Only Cool Character:

Despite his ability to make you read more sentimental, sappy shit than Mitch Albom on crack, he's the only likable compelling character. Don't know what else there is to say to about that.

5. Voice Acting is Excruciating and Persistent

Not just the usual annoying anime type character voices, but poorly, poorly written and acted. A helping of it: "Isn't it weird that we both are immortal and we both lost our memories?," she dances around him, "Maybe we used to know each other, like from our past," nudge nudge. Maybe their past will be slowly revealed over the course of the game? If you think so, you guessed correctly. Seth is in fact from Kaim's past. The game is filled with these graceful gems of plot development, like soap operas from the 80s in hell but a thousand times worse.

You might defend the game, and say it's not the fault of the writers, it's the fault of the American voice actors. I say yes, fuck those guys. Failures. Who are these guys? It could be the same guys for 15 years for all we know.

6. Kaim Always Has This One Strand of Hair Right down the Middle of His Face

This might seem like a blatantly unfair criticism. Understand, it's always there. In every cut-scene and battle. In the same place. I can see what they were going for: wispy, emotional hair, introspection and pensive moments with wind-blown hair. You know, the gruff/quiet bad ass hero guy with too much on his mind to move his long hair from his sad eyes. But they made this transparent and awkward. A while ago they even did a study on it, and discovered it was "the most hated strand of hair in video games."

7. The game is wild and unexplored

Lost Odyssey clocks in at 4 full discs, instead of 1. Not only is this obnoxious on a basic visual level, it also means the game is one long son of a bitch. If you combined length and magnitude of boredom of The English Patient, A Very Long Engagement and Pirates 3, and then exponentially multiplied them, you'd get a vague understanding of how long-winded the game is. Church-when-you're-a-kid long. Flight-to-Australia-20-times-in-a-row long. The last RPG I played with a full 4 discs was 2000's The Legend of the Dragoon on PSOne, for example.

This is that antiquated, deep long huge RPG style thing in effect. It's like in the olden days, when people owned books, they came in things called "folios," which were big heavy mean mother fuckers, that sat on your desk an looked goddamn important. This is the effect Lost Odyssey achieves. But beneath each disc, is a full Mitch Albom novel, not a rich epic RPG.

Bottom Line:

If you're the sort of person who does not like turn-based RPGs; if you've always been the guy saying "I don't see what the big deal is with Final Fantasy," then Lost Odyssey will be a disaster for you. All of your dislikes will be met with their most prominent examples. It may even cause some sort of explosion, we're not sure.

The game does get some things right for fans of the genre. You can explore the world shitloads, battle optional bosses, gather powerful weapons and items, and create a powerhouse of a team. But you'll have to read your way to freedom, and endure dozens of other little terrible trifles. You might get a better game if you took FFX, Mitch Albom and a HeMan reel and put them in a blender. Actually that's a fairly accurate description of Lost Odyssey.

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