Sometimes I really have to scratch my head about my choices in gaming..
What I play, and when.
I've known about this game since it was released.
A close friend of mine was all about it, showed it to me and everything and I thought it looked
sweet.
That was eleven years ago.
Some years ago I bought said copy of Odin Sphere from said friend.
I was going to sit down and play it a couple times, but then I heard about this HD remaster
and I decided to hold off again.
I played this back in the fall of 2016, but with The Cartridge Club covering this for
their game of the month for February 2018, I thought this would be the perfect time to
talk about Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir.
Church here, and welcome to The Game Grinder.
Today we'll be reviewing Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir.
Odin Sphere and its HD remaster were both developed by Vanillaware, and published by
Atlus.
Vanillaware have some highly praised releases under their belt, with the most notable being
Muramasa and Dragon's Crown besides Odin Sphere itself.
Odin Sphere was originally released in 2007 for the Playstation 2 and the HD remaster
was released for the Playstation 4 in June of 2016.
In the land of Erion, there is a prophecy of an impending apocalypse, the end of the
world as we know it.
A once powerful kingdom of Valentine was once destroyed by a creation of great power, the
Crystalization Cauldon, which has caused the many regions to go to war fall into war of
this device.
So begins The Cauldron War.
Odin Sphere is a 2D action RPG.
In its simplest form, it's a side-scrolling beat 'em up, with a leveling system focused
on attack skill acquisition, with a strong narrative direction and story focus.
Throughout the game we'll play as various characters with stories that intersect.
As each character, we'll play through a series of chapters, 6 each as well as a prelude
and epilogue.
Each character's tale covers different events, sometimes with a cause and effect to others,
and once completing all character's quests, they'll merge into an epic conclusion.
Let's briefly meet our cast of heroes.
We're introduced to power struggle that's consumed Erion as we first meet the forces
of Ragnanival, under the rule of The Demon King Odin, as Gwendolyn, Valkyrie warrior,
and daughter of Odin discovers her elder sister has fallen during battle.
In the Kingdom of Titania, Prince Cornelius wishes nothing but to be with his love, a
witch of the forest, but finds himself in the underworld now in the cursed form of the
Pooka.
In the fairy forest of Ringford, the young Princess Mercedes has no choice but to take
her place as queen when her mother falls.
Oswald, a shadow knight, serves under Melvin, the advisor for Queen Elfaria, and finds his
life has been traded for the power he wields.
Lastly we'll play as Velvet, the orphaned daughter of the destroyed kingdom of Valentine,
who seeks to end the coming destruction of the world.
Game-play consists of visiting the various regions of Erion.
Each region is layed out in a series of sections.
Sections have branching paths that we'll use to progress through.
Some sections are shown as a circle, which wraps infinitely until we use an exit, and
then we have straightforward square rooms.
We're free to proceed through the areas, and backtrack at will.
We can also revisit and leave the areas as well.
Within the sections, some are shown with crossed swords.
These are the battle stages, and where the main bulk of our game-play will happen.
These usually involve a few waves of enemies to dispatch and depending on how well and
fast we do this, we'll get an overall ranking.
S, and A through F. S rankings will reap the most rewards, experience, items, and Valentine
Coins.
It's ideal to do big combos, utilizing skills either power based, or Phozon aka magic.
Phozons are a huge part to the game's story, magic casting, and leveling as well.
Phozons are gained from defeating enemies, and sometimes we may find plants that will
allow us to draw Phozons to grow other plants.
There are also Phozon Butterflies that can be absorbed, and we can even craft Phozon
potions.
Besides gaining experience to level up, Phozons can be used on various seeds we find during
the playthrough, which once planted will bear fruit.
This fruit can be eaten for large chunks of experience.
We can also use the fruit, combined with recipes found to order meals from the Pooka Chef,
for even bigger experience rewards.
Phozons can also be spent on the skills we unlock to boost their level of effectiveness.
Of course leveling boosts our overall performance, damage, defense, health, magic and power,
but also yields a power points that can be used on addition character perks like faster
movement, special passive abilities, or discounted shop prices.
Each character has a pretty large skill tree, with abilities unlocked by completing the
battle stages, or finding chests hidden throughout the regions.
These are either power based skills, or magic.
The power skills basically use stamina, which will slowly recharge.
We also have the magic abilities.
The magic doesn't automatically recover like stamina, but we can craft potions to
restore it, or as we gain Phozons, the meter will fill.
There's a pretty wide variety of skills to make use of, and the game enables us to
set a series of button commands to pull these off, but were limited to a set amount of combinations
using the circle button and the analog sticks.
This adds a level of strategy and customization to our playstyle.
I mentioned items so let's run through that.
Odin Sphere has a large focus on crafting potions, but it's not the tedium of many
crafting games.
We'll find empty potions that we can then add a series of vegetables to, and even other
potions, food or even items to change what they do, or the effectiveness.
It's a very simple and straightforward system that will have to be relied on to make it
through the game, creating our healing items or status effect items whether attack or defensive.
We can also purchase items, potions, components, food, and the essential area map from vendors
we encounter in the various places we visit.
Lastly there's the Valentine Coins.
These are given as reward at the end of combat rounds and can be spent at the Pooka Cafes.
Just like the Chef, we can get huge experience from the food items, and there's one additional
catch.
The game really has two endings, a good and bad, but the good ending has additional scenes
to show if we collect all the Valentine coins by finding all hidden chests and getting S
ratings across the board, as well as finding all the recipes and lore notes.
I got the good ending myself, but didn't get all the hidden items.
Fortunately there's Youtube.
At the beginning of the game, we'll start in what appears to be an attic, filled with
books.
Here's we'll find a young girl Alice, and her cat Socrates.
This acts as a game hub of sorts.
Each of Odin Sphere's main characters have a book.
Once completing one storyline, another book will appear.
Alice will read the books to access each story, and previous ones can be accessed again.
Also, on the bookshelf we can browse lore notes, and food and alchemy recipes we've
found.
This is really just a novel (pun intended) presentation for a menu system, but the thoughtfulness
into something a little more is definitely appreciated.
I'm not going to any great detail about Odin Sphere's story, as with each playable
characters quest intersecting and affecting events all throughout the region, there's
a lot to cover.
Despite it's heavy focus on the game-play itself, Odin Sphere has a very rich and deep
story to tell.
Though some elements may be superficial on the surface, this is a story of the end of
the world.
There's betrayal, intrigue, conspiracy, war, and destruction, but even in the face
death itself there's hope.
The cast of characters are fully voice acted, and maybe a bit off at times, I felt the actors
did a fine job, and made each personality stand out.
For a the first few hours of the game, I'll admit I felt a bit confused taking in this
massive war, and the significance of all the players involved, but as I progressed and
pieces started to come together, I found myself more and more enthralled in the story, and
wanted to see what would happen next.
Visually I'd say the game was gorgeous to look at.
The hand painted art style of the characters and scenery were detailed are definitely one
of Vanillaware strong points.
You'll revisit almost every region with each character, and though the areas didn't
necessarily change to any great extent, I never found myself tired of looking at the
backgrounds.
There's a lot going on and I really enjoyed that.
Masaharu Iwata was the composer for the soundtrack, and his pedigree definitely shows.
He's well known for his soundtracks in Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre, along with Final
Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics.
The orchestral music used fit incredibly well into the scenes and moods as needed, and there
were some very stand out songs for me.
Along with revisiting the same regions multiple times, with that we'll hear some of the
same music many times, and I had no problems with this.
It's always great when there's a game you've heard nothing but good things about
for many years since it was released, and when finally playing it meets pretty high
expectations.
Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir brings a fantastic game into the new generation in full HD, and
with it's visual style that's pure eye-candy, interesting unique characters, a winding and
twisting story, beautiful visuals and music, there's no going wrong.
The combat does get a bit repetitive, but I didn't experiment much with the skills,
so that could just be my own fault.
If you haven't played it already, I'd definitely recommend Odin Sphere as a must
play.
Now if I can make the time to play the other Vanillaware games.
Lastly I just wanted to again mention The Cartridge Club.
Think of this community as a book club for games.
Like I said, they're covering Odin Sphere for February 2018, so they'll have a wrap
up podcast with guests and will be talking about the game in depth.
I'd encourage you to head on over to their site and check things out.
Maybe following months will have more games you're interested in getting involved with.
Thanks for checking out my review of Odin Sphere Leifthrasir!
Let me know in the comments below.
If you liked what you've seen or heard, please give the video a like, a share, and
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I'm on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as well, and post a lot of other great game related
content there, and of course links are in the description.
Until next time on The Game Grinder.
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