Lost Odyssey, Microsoft's latest attempt to partner with a Japanese developer to add some JRPG spice to a game lineup often derided as being shooter and sports focused with not much else by critics, represents a major step forward for the platform. While Lost Odyssey is not the first major JRPG to come to the console, as it follows Eternal Sonata and Blue Dragon, it is easily the best to date. While it isn't without its flaws (more on this in a future blog I think) it is certainly a big step forward from its very flawed predecessors. A large part of what makes this game such a significant improvement upon earlier efforts is the great deal of attention paid to the storyline and the characters. While they still do not rise to the level of some of the more impressive WRPG titles in recent years like Mass Effect, they are certainly above average. However, I think what makes the characters above average is not necessarily the characters themselves, but the dialog and relationships between them. With that in mind, I'm going to take some time to go into detail on the character lineup and list my impressions of both their personalities and usefulness in the game. I'm going to do this in two parts. The first part will focus on the four immortal characters in the game while the second will address the five mortal characters. But before I do that, I'd like to add some context by adding some thoughts upon a common theme that I saw pop up time and again throughout the game that were more or less central to the entire experience.



Immortal Characters "You mock my pain!" "Life is pain highness! Anyone who says otherwise is selling something." The Man In Black and Princess Buttercup from The Princess Bride (I've been waiting for months for the chance to work in a Princess Bride quote. It felt good.) The thing that sticks out the most about the immortal characters in the game is what gigantic whiners they are. I suppose fans of JRPG games will stop reading at this point whereas critics of the genre will be cheering, but both sides hold off and let me explain what I mean. All the immortal characters, to greater or lesser degree, focused extensively about how sad their eternal life was, how very lonely, and how awful it was to live forever. Paging Adrian Paul! Paging Adrian Paul! These guys need some instruction on how to live a full and happy life despite being immortal. After 70+ hours of this, I had a burning desire to sign them up for some extensive therapy or get them a motivational speaker or something. The immortals focused on this one thing that was beyond their control, that they were going to live seemingly forever and that everyone else around them would grow old and die, and developed a severe case of tunnel vision. Yes, I can see how this might be sad at times. But really, a life, eternal or otherwise, is only as fulfilling as the amount of effort and time you put in to make it so. You're lonely? Well then go out and make friends. You're sick of constantly fighting in wars? Well, take a decade or so and go be a farmer. While it is true that there is something tragic inherent in knowing you're going to constantly outlive all the people you love, it doesn't mean that you can't still enjoy their friendship and love in return for the decades that a mortal lives. I swear, most goth people are more uplifting and positive thinking than these people. Cowboy up and face your challenges like grown ups instead of angst ridden teenagers people!

Japophiles out there, is this sort of wallowing in tragedy common in Japanese culture?

Rant over. Let's go to the score cards and see how the Immortal characters stack up against one another. Kaim Argonar Kaim is the de-facto leader of the immortals, I guess because he has the best abs or…something. It's never really clear why the other three follow his lead. It could be because he's generally the scariest guy throughout the game, though more likely because war-making seems to be the central reason for his existence. Of the 1000 Years of Dreams flashbacks, I think approximately 73% focus on how sick he is with going from one war to the next. After the first couple of flashbacks of this type, this struck me as really weird. Nobody was forcing Kaim to sign up for another tour of duty time and time again. Hell, the way the game tried to portray him as the ultimate warrior I doubt anyone could force him. Take some responsibility for your life choices Mr. Argonar. If you don't like being constantly in wars, then change that.

Beyond that, his reason for losing his memories seems a bit far-fetched. A guy who has seen the amount of death and suffering that he had suddenly couldn't take it anymore when his daughter committed suicide under magical influence? It's semi-plausible since you can argue that this was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, but it still seems a bit far fetched to me. On the plus side, he does gradually show some growth during the game, evolving from the brooding, and scowling tough guy into a big old softy. He also has some depth as he's obviously afraid of getting his memories back because he's not sure he wants to know what they will reveal. But as a grandparent, it seems really strange that he has his two pre-teen grandchildren accompany him into combat situations time and time again. I guess there is no such thing as babysitters in the world where Lost Odyssey takes place? Maybe he's just new to this whole parenting thing? After all, he's only a thousand years old. While the game does not mention any previous children for Kaim that I'm aware of, it is hard to see him not having had any at all previously during his thousand year old lifetime. Moving past all this and looking at Kaim from a combat standpoint, he is absolutely essential. Except for storyline purposes, Kaim should never leave your active group. He's the lynchpin of your front-line forces with the most hit points of any character in the game. His combat abilities are, overall, the best of any character in the game. Seth may be faster than him, but nowhere near as heavy a hitter or strong a defender. He doesn't bring much to the table outside of muscles, but he doesn't need to. He serves a role and really, nobody else on the team can serve the same function. Kaim does best if you don't try and turn him into some sort of fighter/magic hybrid. He's intended to be a tank and the skills you equip to him should reflect that. While there is nothing wrong with mapping some white magic to him in case of emergencies, using any sort of attack magic is by and large a waste of time until late in the game when you get access to magics like Reverse and Divide. Final Grade: C- for personality, A+ for usefulness Seth Balmore Seth needs a stylist. That is one heck of an afro she's packing for the entire game. I guess it was intended to make her look "piratey" and an eyepatch was out of the question, but you have to wonder what inspired that look. I watched pretty closely and I couldn't find another person in the entire world that had a similar hairdo. Seth's a bit of a rebel type, so maybe that's the reason? She wanted to be different? Seth shows a greater degree of testicular fortitude than Kaim does in many ways. (Irony intentional) After all, the prospect of being chained inside a dark, lonely cave with no food, no water, and no hope of escape for all eternity would be a pretty darn good design for Hell. Now to me, that is the sort of thing that would be a really good reason for a person to lose their mind. Her other reason for losing her mind is a pretty decent one as well, but seems odd that she lost her mind since she still had her son with her and he definitely needed her at that point. Regardless, I liked Seth. Of the four immortals, she's the only one who showed even traces of a fun-loving spirit and a cheerful nature, no matter what deeper feelings that may have been a cover for. From the time she first joins up with Kaim at the beginning of the game and teases him about how maybe they were lovers at some point in their past to her constant ribbing of Jansen along with the two kids, she adds a much needed light-hearted element to the plot. Add onto that the fact that her breasts actually looked like they might exist in real life and her actions at the end of the game, and you've got a pretty decent character. Combat wise, Seth is, like all the immortals, irreplaceable. She almost always attacks first in a round and packs a pretty darn decent punch. She's not as heavy as Kaim, but makes up for it with her speed. Seth should never leave your front-line except for storyline forced purposes. Overall, she's an above-average character. I employed Seth as a bit of a jack-of-all-trades in addition to being my second fighter type. Skills like Double SP, Double Gold, Double Experience, Double Potion etc. got mapped to her.

Final Grade: B for personality and B+ for usefulness Ming Numara We come at last to the first immortal who actually took advantage of her endless lifetime to accomplish something worthwhile. Ming is the queen of the nation of Numara, and has been queen for pretty much the entirety of her thousand year lifetime. During that time she's actually built her nation into a beautiful place filled with art and culture and devoted by and large to a peaceful existence. Sure, she, like the other immortals, has been lonely at times over the years, but that hasn't stopped her from taking advantage of her immortality to do real good in the world. She is also the only immortal in the game that lost her memories voluntarily. Gongora was attacking her nation with a bunch of super-monsters. In return for her agreement to use her magic to take her own memories away; he spared her nation from destruction. It was a noble, if ultimately shortsighted, sacrifice. But as reasons go for an immortal losing their memories, doing it voluntarily to save thousands of lives is a pretty darn decent one. Then we get to her physical design, and that's where things take a sharp downwards turn. Frankly, I don't have any issues with her choice of wardrobe per se, though others have expressed disapproval for what they see as the latest example of female characters in gaming being turned into a sex symbol. To me, this ignores two things.

First, the climate of her nation seems to be pretty sunny and warm. Second, and vastly more important, the royal crest of her authority is plastered across her chest. By dressing the way she does, she can be instantly identified and verified as the queen. It is like wearing a crown, albeit in an odd location. Ming has not been reduced to a sex symbol in the game because she has obvious power, authority, intelligence and influence. She isn't some damsel in distress that needs to be rescued. Calling her a sex symbol based solely on her bust size and how she dressed is lazy thinking. My objections to Ming's looks stem from something more specific: My god, those blue veins that are so blatantly visible on her breasts are not fun to look over the course of a very long game. There is such a thing as too much realism. Where is Monco in all of this? Why hasn't he condemned this in a Friday Funbag blog? (Probably because he doesn't play JRPGs very often I guess.) Getting to the combat portion, Ming is, like all the immortals, completely indispensable. She and Sarah are the two most powerful magic users in the game. Given that magic in the game is remarkably flexible between attack, healing, and support, these two become an unstoppable team when paired. Ming's also a pretty fast caster and can learn to be faster with the proper skills set. Add onto that the ability she eventually learns from Jansen to Double Cast and the ability to add skills that boost her HP and she becomes just an absolute magic casting tank of a character. Throw on the auto magic recover skill, completely ignore anything that might boost her worthless combat abilities since you'll never use them, and you've got a walking, talking magical nuclear arsenal with ugly boobs. Final Grade: A for personality and A+ for usefulness Sarah Sisulart As a character, Sarah struck me as more than a little dry. She seemed to spend most of the game stuck in Kaim's shadow. It wasn't that she was unimportant, but rather, she seemed to almost be an extension of Kaim. According to the storyline, Sarah was a researcher of some kind into magic energy. She wears glasses and is obviously intended to be a scholar of some type. Sadly, the game never really elaborates on what, if anything, Sarah has learned over her decades or even centuries of study. This is very vexing. I'll get back to this in a minute. Like Kaim, Sarah's memory loss was triggered by the apparent loss of their shared daughter. Only, she took it to an even greater extreme than Kaim did. She went complete bat**** crazy, locked herself in their old mansion, and became some sort of hermit, self-flagellating lunatic. Eventually, with the help of her grandchildren Mack and Cooke singing a lullaby that Sarah's lost daughter used to know, she's restored to her senses if not her memories. Now, this is where Sarah actually brings something to the table for the first time as a character: she actually took the time and effort to keep a diary over her 1000 year old lifetime! Yes, one of the immortals took the time to do something completely pragmatic and reasonable. Bravo Sarah! Bravo! I would have liked to have seen more information in that diary, maybe something readable, or at least a summation from a cutscene on all the things she'd written about and discovered over the years. This isn't up there with the complete ripoff that not being able to read Fall-From-Grace's diary in Planescape: Torment was, but it still felt unfair. At the very least, it would have been nice if she had discovered even a quarter as much as what Gongora's diaries in his secret labs revealed and wrote it into her own journals. It's all well and good for the game developers to call her a scholar and give her a pair of glasses, but it would be nice if she had something to show for the title. After all, Ming was called a queen and actually had a thriving and beautiful nation to show for her efforts. Getting to the subject of combat, Sarah and Ming could be twins. Normally, duplication of abilities in a party is a recipe for disaster in an RPG. Fortunately, this isn't the case in Lost Odyssey. Sarah, like Ming, should come fully loaded with Black, White, Spirit and Composite magic and all the HP boosting/Magic boosting skills like speed casting you can get squeezed in. You pretty much want these two to have identical skills mapped to them. Sarah and Ming actually make an exceptional team. You can switch their roles in combat at will between attack and defense magic. A good strategy that I liked to use for boss battles was having both of them spending the first round getting support magic like All-Barricadus and All-Shieldus setup, and then take advantage of their incredible magic versatility to both keep your party healthy and whittle away at the enemy throughout the rest of the combat.

Final Grade: C for personality, A+ for usefulness That's it for part 1. I'll throw up a part 2 in a couple of days that will tackle the five different mortal characters.