Odin Sphere: Five Characters, Five Stories, One Epic Adventure

Flash back to about a year ago, the next generation of console gaming was already out for a year (which makes it current gen by this point), but despite that, several game companies were still producing games to systems like the PS2, giving it a few last breaths to hold its own until the Wii and 360 pretty much took over, cause at the time the PS3 and it’s $600 price tag wasn’t really selling systems. However, these final additions were surprising in their quality, really good. Odin Sphere is one such game that takes already excellent Norse Mythos and transforms it into a game that in a world blow your mind.

Story: When you begin Odin Sphere, there isn’t any explosive intro, nor do you just start off by watching one character do something. No. When you start, you find yourself in a study of sorts, books stacked high and tomes littering the floor, and you also find yourself in control of not a warrior, but a little girl and you find a single book on the ground. You pick it up and start reading it and then, like the Neverending Story, you find yourself viewing the novel’s events as the girl reads on.

Including this beginning book, there are six books total, each one tell one of the five main characters stories and backgrounds and a final book that wraps everything together. Through each of the five characters, you witness the events surrounding the war between Demon Lord Odin and the Fairy Kingdom, a powerful cauldron that destroyed an entire nation, the death of one of the great dragons, and several other major events, from the viewpoint of five different nations, and while you’ll learn each nation’s history, law, and problems, the characters themselves have their own inner demons to fight against.

The story is told through cutscenes that really bring out the emotions and thoughts of each of the main characters, including their joys, their worries, and their pains. Gwendolyn, the first protagonist, seeks to find the love from her father, the great lord Odin, who shrugs off the news of his other daughter’s death as if it were nothing. Meanwhile, Cornelius, the prince of another nation called Titania, wakes up one day to find himself not only in the netherworld but transformed into a furry rabbit-like creature, so he sets out to seek a cure to his curse.

Through it all, the characters really have a way with connecting with players, whether it’s through sheer badassery, or through the occasional monologue, but if there’s something you’ll learn from each character’s story, it’s this: Gwendolyn has father-issues, Cornelius is a furry, Mercedes’ mother has large mammaries, Oswald is a badass, and Velvet is just plain hot. No ladies and gentlemen, I’m not spoiling anything. In all seriousness, however, players will easily have semi-deep conversations over the intricate story and which character (perhaps even a minor one) is their favorite.

Gameplay: The game is a side-scrolling real time RPG, but at its core, it really feels more like an action game that requires more skill than levels. Each character has their own physical attributes and abilities that can grant them certain advantages over the hordes of enemies player’s will tear through. For instance, one of Gwendolyn’s main abilities is to spread her valkyrie wings and glide through the air and then thrust her spear down with a ripping bombardment of damage on foes, while the next character Cornelius cannot glide, but his jumping ability is much greater. Furthermore, he can become a spinning wheel of pain to enemies foolish enough to hit him. In short, while you might find yourself going through the same areas as a previous character, the abilities of your current character vary enough that it doesn’t become repetitive.

One major thing that bugged me was that although the physical traits of character differed greatly, the magical part of the deal isn’t too original as most characters will learn the exact same spells, just in a different order. Then again, you won’t be throwing spells off left and right because of the limit on your spells. The game is more about melee skill than spell nuking skill.

While skill is always an excellent factor on how good your avatar is, it’s always wise to level up when the going gets tough. In Odin Sphere, leveling takes a bit of a different approach. Instead of just a character level that you increase as you fight, you instead have a Psypher level and a HP level.

Your Psypher level determines the strength of your weapon as well as your MP gauge as well as what spells you can cast. You level up your Psypher by absorbing phozons, spiritual energy that your enemies release when they die. Your HP Level determines basically how much HP you have; the higher the HP level, the higher your HP, but leveling it works a little differently. Instead of absorbing phozons, you take seeds you find, plant them, let them nourish on the phozons in the area and eat the result. That’s right. You get more health through eating, and you’ll grow nearly anything, from mulberries to napples to sheep. You heard me. SHEEP!

In addition to what’s already a pretty fun fighting system, the game also incorporates a interesting alchemy system that has you building up your alchemic materials before making the final product, which potions of a huge variety, so that you can create as many phozons as you can.

Alone, all these elements sound interesting and simple to grasp, but when you find yourself scrambling through your inventory in the midst of battle, so that you can make that napalm potion to blow away your foes and get enough phozons to grow your sheep plant, the game can become extremely rewarding, especially with the many epic boss battles.

Despite a few exploration problems, where in order to go through battle area, you follow a circular path and choose an exit to another circular path, and so on and so forth, the game is surprisingly fresh, especially with the simple yet amazingly complex battle system. And to those seeking a challenge, fear not, for the game brings plenty of difficulty and you will die often. Not to be frustrated, though, since the only penalty of death is to start the current area over with the items and level you began with. Even if you find yourself stuck, you can just warp back to town to train some more.

One other complaint I had, besides the whole spell thing, is that in the final book, the game becomes so difficult that you’re practically forced to go through each character’s story mode just to get them up to snuff against the challenges. Is it worth it? You better believe it!

Graphics: The graphics in Odin Sphere can be described in one statement: Next-Generation 2D gaming. It’s composed mainly of well-drawn sprites that are practically the game’s concept art and serve as the basis for the animations that the characters and environments move. While in battle, the characters have plenty of acrobatic maneuverability, but the true expression of each character comes out in the cutscenes as the character will react with the environment and other characters as though that’s how all games should have their character’s react. The game moves very smoothly, except when dealing with too many enemies, the most frequent times this happens being the Netherworld.

While 2D games have slowly been dwindling out of the mainstream of the gaming industry, it’s always good to see a game that’s not only fun but uses it’s 2D animation style to express art in a unique and beautiful way.

Sound: When it comes to Japanese game becoming translated, the usual problem is that the voice acting is usually horrendous, but thankfully, the voice actors given to the character take their parts seriously, albeit sometimes, a bit too seriously. Certain scenes can be a bit overdramatic with the English voice actors, but it’s almost never over the point of pain, but if you’re one of those weeaboos who can’t stand the English language at all in your games, then there is a Japanese track that you can listen to instead. In my opinion, the voice acting in English is excellent, especially when it comes to the major characters and sometimes, they can deliver a better performance than their Japanese counterparts.

The music in Odin Sphere, much like most fantasy games of late, take excellent Orchestral talent and forge a splendid composition of music that, when combined with the splendid acting of the characters, can make a player cringe from the sheer sadness of the moment to feel even more like a awesome warrior as they confront a titan of a foe. It helps that each different area not only has their own out-of-combat music, but their own battle themes.

Overall: Odin Sphere is like a gem hidden beneath a pile of crap that the many third party developers created for the PS2. If you can find a copy, buy it, cherish it, and never let it go. It’ll give you a fantasy adventure you shouldn’t be soon to forget. 9/10