overdrive's Lost Odyssey review

I was a huge fan of this game and how it handled the concept of immortality -- very beautiful. Unfortunately it was also very dated and archaic in much if its design (those dungeons and environments remind me exactly why I can't get through the old FFs on PSX anymore). And when the story got back in motion half-way through, the game lost a lot of its charm.

Good review though, you brought out the best points of the game, though I maybe a little too forgiving =p

That's always a chance, although it might be partially because I'm basically a JRPG addict (almost in a "comfort food" way where I complain about all the tired cliches in them, but never put them down), so some of the stuff you mentioned probably was the sort of thing that gave me a "I'm home" sort of reaction.

I'd say that one thing LO really should have done was give Gongora a sidekick villain to help carry the plot through the middle portions of the game. The only other one was that power-hungry general and he was more a stupid goof played for comedy at times (like when one of the kids used magic to strip him down to his undies). Giving Gongora some legit tough henchman to repeatedly send after your guys would have helped a lot with plot pacing, since so much of the game was your guys in one or two or three places doing stuff with occasional cinema of Gongora doing stuff.