Visually appealing and engrossing game

User Rating: 9 | Odin Sphere PS2
After an abominable wait for my package from Play-Asia, I decided to purchase this instead from our local store. I had ordered from Play-Asia since they had a promo discount with another game that I had wanted so to make it worth the shipping fee, I included Odin Sphere as well. After a couple of months delay, it definitely seemed lost so I bit the bullet and bought it locally instead.

With that backstory aside, let's get to the actual game details.

Gameplay - Though repetitive at times since all you do is mash on the square button, it offers enough bit of variety from the different character's play-styles that you press on anyway. The difficulty can come from the cheapness of some enemies/bosses though. Load times can be a drag though, especially with the Pooka Kitchen where you have to trudge back and forth since I, more often than not, have a missing recipe and have to wait for the dragging wait upon exit and entering the kitchen and/or cafe to gain HP experience points. Some framerate issues pop up though during some boss fights and when there is a high number of enemies on screen. Graphics - Definitely a treat for the eyes, the animated illustrations are highly detailed with some characters looming large. Music - As expected from Hitoshi Sakimoto, the tracks fit well with the game and don't make you think it sounds like one of his other tracks from his Final Fantasy works.

Story - The story is fine for the most part, nothing too special, but entertaining enough and fun to watch their interactions with one another. At least the story isn't as disappointing and has a lot more volume than Final Fantasy XII.

Voices - I like the Japanese voices over the English voices by far. Some voices are a miss in the English version while only decent for others. This could be personal preference, but as with anime, definitely subs over dubs for me.

Replay Value - One incentive for replayability would be to play using the other voice included. Since they were kind enough to include both Japanese and English voices, might as well make the most of it. Currently I'm on my second playthrough with English voices option this time.