Lost Odyssey

Lost Odyssey is a 2007 Japanese role-playing video game developed by Mistwalker and Feelplus and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released exclusively for the Xbox 360.

Plot
The story focuses on a group of Immortals, led by Kaim who have all lost a thousand years of their memories. During an investigation of Grand Staff, an adventure allowing them to regain their memories, and the cause of their amnesia begins.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The main antagonist is a genuinely horrible creature who makes you eager to defeat him. Unlike the others, he revels in his immortality and wishes to rule the world forever, and he bears responsibility for all of the disasters that the other four have endured.
 * 2) Great story that doesn't sugarcoat how painful immortality can be with Kaim seeing people he sees and care for leave him over the course of his thousand years.
 * 3) The Ring system allows the use of many abilities in combat provided you land an good rating upon the attack. A perfect grants max potential a ring ability has.
 * 4) Effects of ring abilities include elemental damage, siphoning HP or MP, damaging certain enemies and improving attack.
 * 5) Two types of playable characters, the Immortals, who have the ability to revive if fallen in battle, and can learn abilities from equipment and Mortals. Mortals, while requiring recovery magic if fallen in battle, have a set of abilities that can be used and allow Immortals to learn them.
 * 6) The ability for Immortals to learn abilities from equipment and Mortals was inspired by Final Fantasy IX.
 * 7) Likable characters with Jansen considered the most popular due to heavy character development.
 * 8) New game plus.
 * 9) Formation system allows characters in the front to combine their HP into a shield wall that reduces damage for characters in the back. However the wall weakens when front characters get damaged and healing items won't fix it, though certain abilities and items can.
 * 10) Each zone has a level cap, which lessens the need for intense grinding. To level up, all characters require 100 XP, although each zone can offer practically immediate level ups to a certain point, after which you receive normal exp. Combat, on the other hand, is still beneficial for gaining SP to enable Immortals master abilities.
 * 11) Lots of side-quests.
 * 12) One set of side-quests are the 1000 years of dreams, a bunch of short stories you collect chronicling the past of Kaim. The stories themselves were written by Japanese novelist, Kiyoshi Shigematsu.
 * 13) Amazing soundtrack courtesy of the legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu who did several Final Fantasy entries.
 * 14) The ability to learn almost any skill in the game lets you customize your Immortals any way you want.... provided you understand their stats.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Load times are frequent. Thankfully, this was addressed in subsequent generations, with the Xbox Series X having almost no loading delays.
 * 2) The gameplay is pretty standard and lacks creativity.
 * 3) There are a lot of random encounters, and there is no gameplay option or in-game item to turn them off if players want to explore the world.
 * 4) Framerate troubles: the fps will dip below 30 in several fights and boss encounters. This was improved by backward compatibility; specifically, beginning with the Xbox One X version and beyond, the game can keep a steady 30fps with no framerate dips.
 * 5) Because the creator did not want to remove any content, it remains one of the only two Xbox 360 games (the other being Wolfenstein: The New Order), as well as the only Xbox 360 exclusive to be released on four discs. As a result, if gamers want to play the physical version on their Xbox 360, they must be careful that none of the discs become damaged or missing, because if one of the discs becomes missing/too damaged, the game will become practically unplayable, with the player unable to advance any further due to the game requiring whatever said disc it requires.

Reception
The game was number 8 in Projared's Top 10 JRPGs (Not from Square). It's also the 41st highest ranked RPG on the Xbox 360 based off user ratings on GameFAQs

Videos
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