Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir

• Genre: Action RPG
• Time Played: 55 Hours
• Too Short/Long: A little long, it can get a little repetitive and monotonous.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Very pleased, it's one of my favorites.
• Why I played: After playing Unicorn Overlord I wanted some more Vanillaware flavored games. I tried playing a Vanillaware inspired game, but it just made me want to play Odin Sphere. So I played Odin Sphere.
• Recommend to others: Odin Sphere is probably a game I would recommend to everyone. It's just a great game, and even if it has some flaws, I think it's worth everyone trying it.

Earlier this year I had revised my favorite game list to include some stuff I had played in recent times, and Odin Sphere got bumped just off the list, scoring only 19 of the required 20 points or more. I reevaluated Odin Sphere now, with it fresh in my mind and bumped it back up to 33 points which coincidently places it alongside some very similar games.

When Leifthrasir came out, I played a little bit(apparently around 15 hours according to my old save) but didn't finish it because it felt all too fresh in my head. I supposed it was less than a decade after the original version's launch. But now, 17 years later, I got to the point where I only remembered certain aspects(and maybe the first dozen hours). The game can be a little long and feel a bit grindy at moments, like you're just kind of doing combat over and over again, but, that is also kind of the point. While I would still classify this as an "action rpg" the emphasis is on the action.

You get to play as five characters who each have their own feel and unique mechanics, and it wants to make sure each gets their fair share. I think the biggest improvement the game could have made, is to shorten up that which takes place before the final chapter by cutting out one of the chapters from each character, and then, as part of the final chapter, you get to go one more level with each of your characters. This would have made better use of the shared storage, and allowed you more playtime with each characters full range of abilities, instead of just one final boss.

Granted, you can always go back and play old stuff, or make use of the New Game +, but I really think saving the final dungeon for each character for the final chapter, to play in any order you prefer, would have made for a far better victory lap.

That said, otherwise I have very few complaints about the game. I love it. I love every one of the playable character, I love the combat, love the art, how can you not love the art, which is absolutely striking, and I do love the story. Some people think the story is generic and janky. Well it is generic in a sense, it's literally just based off tropes and inspired by norse mythology, but the presentation makes it unique. Especially for a game that came out when it did. Even with the storybook theming, it's presented as if you were watching a play. That's why there is little in the way of terrain obstacles. You get an artistic background, some items in the foreground, but you leave the stage clear for the actors. Sure there are some props here and there, but it's mostly open. I feel like the theatrical element makes itself pretty obvious, but it does seem to be lost on some people.

 
Without context, sometimes it may seem like characters just go on a tangent about something never mentioned, but they're referencing an earlier chapter, assuming you, the audience, were there for that. I also think it's kind of a variation of how many rpgs at the time with a silent protagonist would just say [...] speak to other characters, usually when explaining things that just happened. Overall, I prefer it to overly verbose dialog that would repeat itself over and over, and in a game like Odin Sphere, where you're playing multiple perspective of the same story, it would end up adding a lot more repetition to the dialog. But I suppose since the characters don't "say" [...] every time a characters dialog takes a turn, that makes the dialog seem clumsy to some people but...