A classic RPG who's slow pacing will only really appeal to old school players.
The game starts with an amazing cutscene on a gigantic battlefield where two nations are at war. You play as Kaim Argonar fighting on the side of Uhra. During the battle, a gigantic meteor appears out of nowhere destroying both armies to a man, except for Kaim. He is an immortal, but one with no memories (a gloomy amnesia led hero, boy, we've never seen that before....). Kaim is then sent with another immortal Seth and a wild cracking ladies man known as Jansen to check out an item in constuction known as the Grand Staff, which due to it's magic energy may have caused the meteor to fall.
I personally found the story to be quite interesting, if cliched in some parts, and full of "magic energy" explanations for everything else. Still enjoyable but it won't set your world on fire in anyway. Along the story you will gather 8 different characters, some of which are immortals. The problem I had is that only 3 of them are actually likeable or have real personalities. Jansen is especially likeable, he's funny, negative and sarcastic, but all in all a good guy. As for Kaim...I could count the amount of words he says in the entire game on my right hand. (Hyperbole, but you can see I found him interesting....)
As for the gameplay, well Lost Odyssey is a standard turn based RPG. There are a few twists of course. When each character attacks they get a target on their foe and another one zooming in on it. Depending on your timing for when you let go, will depend on any extra benefits your character will gain in that attack from the ring they are wearing. Each ring is different and you will gain many throughout the game, as well as the ability to make them yourself from different items found and bought. Some deal extra damage, some give ailment effects, others absorb MP etc. With a maximum of 3 abilities on each ring. This adds for alot of strategic thought keeping the battles involving as the wrong ring on enemies, especially bosses can get your characters killed. I really liked this system, think of it like a mix of Shadow Hearts and Legend of Dragoon.
After each battle your characters gain experience, the difference in this RPG being that each area you are in seems to have a level cap. Yep you will level up fast at first then hit a wall, it's impossible to level grind. This kind of annoyed me at first as I like to power up and plow through. But after a while it was a welcome addition as it means that beating bosses requires more strategy then just overpowering, such as finding their elemental weakness, or equiping the right rings etc.
Along with experience gained, your characters also gain SP points, at least the immortals do. Let me explain, the mortal characters you get learn various skills just through leveling up. These skills are specific to them, though they gain others when certain accessorys are equiped, but never permenently. The immortal characters however can learn skills through wearing them, or through skill linking with a mortal character once the amount of SP needed to learn it has been aquired (this varies per skill).
This system has a flaw though. For a start once the Immortals have gained a certain amount of skills they over power your mortal characters making them useless outside of learning blocks. It kind of makes the characters completely unbalanced as the immortals can do everything the mortals can only better. By 2/3 of the way through the game one of my party slots was solely used for a mortal to let the others learn from them. This doesn't really get in the way of the game though, but if you want to make the most of your party then you are limited in character selection.
As your party travels through towns, dungeuns and cities, Kaim will see events or people that will remind him of memories of his past. These events play out in the form of text with some music in the background. I have heard praise for this from people, but not from me. It will quite often appear in the most annoying places when you are looking around, go on for 15 minutes and totally breaks up the pace of the game. I also didn't find alot of them relevent and they in no way effected the game other then to slow it down. However there are only about 30, and you can skip them should you wish.
I feel I should mention this. While Lost Odssey has a mini map, and most dungeuns are pretty straightforward and enjoyable. There are several that come accross as being frustrating, confusing and repetitive. The Experimental Staff being the first of which though there are others. These were not good game design in any way and actually put me off playing the game for a while. Seriously nothing but dull frustration. Although nearly all the others are fun to play with some fantastic environments and neat ideas.
Visually this game is excellent. This shows from the very first cutscene, with great character models and detailed backdrops. The menu system has an archaic grey feel to it's design that reminds me alot of FFVIII, however it fits the game perfectly. No complaints on this front.
The music and sound is equally impressive with some great tracks thrown in, especially during the boss fights. It's actually music you would throw on an MP3 player and take with you. The voice acting is well acted all round, even the child parts of Cooke and Mack aren't overdone. However I wouldn't say outside of Jansen, Sed and Seth that any of them standout that much either, but that is down more to the characters written personalities then the va's themselves.
The game is huge, and will take a good 40 hours to play through with plenty of sidequests and extras to find hewre and there like the backyard battle arena and the frustrating Temple of Enlightenment. I gather a new Dungeun is up for DLC at the time of writting this as well. Either way it will keep you busy should you want to.
My final thoughts on Lost Odssey are that while it's a good game, and one I'm glad I played, it's not a terribly exciting one. Some archaic design and gameplay issues slow it down from the fantastic game it could have been. Still, if you are looking for classic RPG gameplay on the 360 then this is certainly the title for you.