Metareview: Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360)

I wrote a long rant, but I'll just say that people shouldn't dismiss a game because they don't like the style, and reviewers shouldn't deduct points because they decided turn based combat was dead.

I bought this Wednesday but have been too busy to play. Looking forward to it.

Gamespy doesn't inflate their ratings nearly as much as Gamespot/IGN, in part because the former uses a five star rating system. Gamespy's two and a half star rating is indicative of an okay-to-mediocre game, whereas Gamespot's 5.0 (out of 10.0) is reserved for terrible games.

Ugh! GameSpy's "3/5" is NOT equivalent to a 50%!

It works more like this:

5/5: 95-90
4.5/5: 89-85
4/5: 84-80
3.5/5: 79-75
3/5: 74-70
2.5/5: 69-65
2/5: 64-60
1.5/5: 59-55
1/5: 50-0

It's more like a letter grade system, but with stars. Ya know, how things SHOULD be.

So all these stupid review score indexing sites need to revise their 5-star score translations.

Lost Odyssey basically got ~ a 69-65%, which, while lower than most other reviews, is still much closer than 50.

50 is nearly 2 standard deviations from the mean, a much less probable intended score than 69-65%.

I realized midpost that Gamespy gave the game a "2.5/5", so pretend I said "2.5/5" in the above post

I would love to say that MS is the only 1 that does this. Truth is, American packaging sucks giant hairy sweaty nuttsacs compared to Japanese packaging. And its not just games, Hell even Japanese candy is packaged beautifully, presentation is everything in the land of the rising Sun.

Why do people love to get banned?

Another pathetic fanboy rant from Ken! GJ, thanks for doing your job again.

I see your argument, but I fail to see in what sense it's a disadvantage.

The game still costs the same from the user end, and it's not that much of an inconvenience to actually swap DVDs.

Blu-Ray, of which I own, is not needed.

The load times are not as bad as advertised.

Why a PS3 fanboy would even bother to read this thread and then comment is beyond me. You do know Joystiq made a site especially just for you right? Of course you do, you have almost 200 comments left there...

Boo hoo...

you have to get off your ass once every 10-15 hours to change a disc.

...and we wonder why America is so fat.

I'm with you on that one, although maybe I did like FFX a lot because it brought back those happy memories playing Grandia II.

By the sounds of it my friend, it seems that LO isn't a game for us. The story which I'm sure you love those games you listed for just isn't as deep in LO and instead of being the central point of the game, it's more like an eccentric extra to the game. For that reason alone I am very deterred from this game.

Blue Dragon was crap. Lost Odyssey plays a lot like a "lost Final Fantasy chapter" than it does anything else... so I'd say it's very close to a Final Fantasy that a lot of Xbox 360 owners have been wanting. Also, the story is excellent, with the Thousand Year in-game novel having some of the easiest to read yet emotional stories within but the main story is typical fare but not cookie-cutter. There is definitely A LOT of reading in this game, and only major plot points and cutscenes are VO'd. If you don't even like the English dubs, you can choose from 4 other languages, including the original Japanese if you wish... but the lip syncing will be off.

"I dont understand why everyone is acting like turn based games are old and out dated."

No one said that turned based games are outdated, its just that how Mistwalker has been implementing it has been plain boring (Look at Blue Dragon, snorefest)

"Hasn't every FF game except 12 and dirge of cerebus (12 was partially turn based and dirge of cerebus sucked)"

Sorry but not, every FF game up to X has had a basic turned based game, X-2 changed a lot because of the ATB system, so yah, the FF franchise, up to episode X which was released in 2001, was turn-based, and that was....8 years ago...

I know that Sakaguchi is trying to keep it old school, but even old school people are finding the game not as appealing...

I didnt play Blue Dragon outside of the demo, so I cant say much about it. But Lost Odyssey plays just like a final fantasy game, but with its own changes and additions such as battle rings, the way human and immortals level and gain skills, the mini game you play for extra damage, etc. Its actually one of the better(not the best, but certainly better than most) turn based battle systems out there.

I played FF10 from beginning to end, and it was 100% turn based. The only major changes they made in 10 was the ability to swap your characters in and out of battle during battle and getting rid of the active time. Still, at the end of the day, it was turn based.
I dont know about 10-2, because I had stopped gaming on my ps2 by then. but from what I hear, it too was turn based. 12 was partially real time like KOTOR and in my opinion had the best battle system to date.

With that said, there is nothing wrong with Lost Odysseys battle system. If you want to criticize the game, talk about the voice acting of some characters, or the texture pop in that the UR3 engine is famous for, but don't shit on the game just because it isn't FF.

Mispost, sorry. This was supposed to be a reply to some poster's justification for LO's poor reviews being:

"Probably because these games were created soley to lure and steal the fans away from those games, and some people might think its not doing a very good job."