Odin Sphere - Where playing once isn't enough

Odin Sphere is made by Vanillaware and published by Atlus. It is considered to be the spiritual successor of Princess Crown. Although I never played it, I've been told it was enjoyable. The entire idea of this game is you are a little girl in a room and there are books laying around. As you pick up a book and read the story, you control the main character as he or she goes on their adventures. As one book is completed, more books open up. This game is kind of like the Tales series meets Valkyrie Profile. Yes, this actually is like the Tales series! You are wondering how I got to know this game. Well, it's Cent. Do I wish horrible death upon him for this game? Not really. I enjoyed the story of this game.

First off each book is divided the same way:
Prelude - Introduction
Chapter 1 - Plot
Chapter 2 - Plot
Chapter 3 - Plot
Chapter 4 - Plot
Chapter 5 - Plot
Chapter 6 - Plot
Epilogue - Ending

And every chapter has a few acts too. Every chapter starts the same way. You are in town, which allows you to move like a side-scroller, Valkyrie profile style. You press up to enter buildings to exit places. Then when you exit you are at the world map and you can choose where to go. Visit old places or continue with the story. If you choose to continue the story it will change acts and a small cut scene will happen. After the cut scene you are thrown into the dungeon. After clearing the dungeon towards the boss you are met with a cut scene and then you fight the boss. After the boss is another cut scene. After that you are onto the next chapter in town. Repeat until after the epilogue.

Each book focuses on a specific hero who is related to one of the few royal families in the story. All books are set in the same world and at different time frames which overlap. Characters overlap each other and their stories are intertwined. Here are the five main books and their characters. I included a small introduction

Book 1: Valkyrie - You play as Gwendolyn, daughter of the Demon Lord Odin, king of Ragnaviel. You follow your father's plans to fight against the fairy army and to claim the cauldron that annihilated the kingdom of Valentine. You are eventually wed to Oswald the Shadow Knight, also the enemy's greatest fighter. Afraid at first, but soon you realize his kindness.

Book 2: The Pooka Prince - You play as Cornelius, the prince of Titania, who has a relationship with Velvet the princess of Valentine against the wishes of your father and his advisers. One day you wake up being cursed and transformed into a Pooka. You must find a way to change back, and help Velvet while hiding your identity as you are afraid of her reaction.

Book 3: Fairyland - You play as Mercedes, the princess of Ringford, the fairies. Your mother, the queen was brutally murdered by the Demon Lord Odin and you are now the queen. You must lead your army to victory and stop Odin from taking the cauldron as if it is ever activated, it will absorb all the psyphers and all faeries will be wiped from the world.

Book 4: The Black Sword - You play as Oswald, the shadow knight. You are an orphan that was adopted by the fairies and used as a tool for victory. You are the greatest fighter but cursed to a fate of death by your adoptive father. You move from one person to serve to another until you finally met Gwendolyn.

Book 5: Fate - You play as Velvet the princess of Valentine. You and your twin brother Ingway were cursed to death by your mother who had the ability to see into the future. You must find a way to defy your destiny.

Book 6: ??? - The final book. Won't spoil it.

That's a lot of books isn't it. But the story itself isn't very long as 90% of the game is in the combat. Combat itself is like the Tales series. Real action side-scrolling. It's fun as the characters are all different, have their unique style, and strength and weaknesses. Sometimes, its just downright frustrating. Every dungeon has a few stages and mini-boss stage and the boss stage. Each stage is the same you are in a side-scrolling map and the entire map itself is a circle so if you keep running in one direction you'll never reach an end. Monsters will spawn, you kill them and when they are all dead it will calculate a rank based on your speed, damage, and damage taken. Depending on your rank you will get better rewards from the chest that spawns. After you are done grabbing the chest you move to another stage and repeat the process.

That doesn't sound so bad. It sounds enjoyable. Well it is, the first time around. Unfortunately for you, you need to play though the game five times over just for the main storyline and about...11 times for the final book if you want to get every scene. I want to point out that, every dungeon is the same, every map is the same, every mini boss is the same, and every boss is the same. For all five books. You don't fight them in the same order and you don't fight every boss but most bosses you need to fight 3-4 times in the game. It was fun the first time, they could have thought of something new right? Depending on the character the bosses might get harder or easier. For example, Gwendolyn and Cornelius are pretty rounded characters. Mercedes has a bow that's fast but you need to take around 5 seconds to reload once you are out of ammo. Oswald is fast but his air attack sucks and his close range attack is weak. Velvet is the slowest, hits the weakest, and has the worst POW out of any character, but she dominates anything in the air.

For example, Wagner the dragon. He flies around and breathes fire. When you fight him with Cornelius, you have a hard time getting to him and hitting him because you're hopping on the ground. If you are Mercedes, you can fly up and shoot him with your bow and dodge every single attack he does. Its like shooting a fish in a barrel. The most amazing one is Velvet. She just jumps up and swings her chain and it drops in seconds. Then there are times where bosses are completely frustrating because your character does horrible against them. Every boss there is a few ways to beat it. First way is to learn their combos and avoid their attacks and kill them without taking much damage. This will be the way everyone will go for. The second way is to have a ton of healing items and spam them constantly when you get hit and wear out the boss. This will the the way people will pick if they are horribly under leveled or bad at combat. The final way is to grind endlessly until you learn Overcharge, a skill that allows you to do double damage for the duration. This will make boss battles end so fast they don't have time to hit you.

All characters have the exact same skills and Overcharge is usually the final if not the second final skill they will learn. Probably something you wouldn't need right? Well, lets just say this game has the tendency to lag. If there are many projectiles or things on the screen. Everything will slow down. This usually means you are not able to dodge attacks. So you would spam more potions than you would normally do right? That's ok right? No. Some bosses have the ability to kill you in one hit. This includes regular monsters too. While combat itself is not hard, the occasional hit from one of those can be frustrating. A good thing is if you die, you restart the stage. If you happen to lag and is unable to dodge these hits then even potions cannot help you there. You must resort to using Overcharge. While Overcharge alone isn't a instant win. It helps you finish the fight faster before it can lag and kill you.

Another thing about this game is not only does it lag a lot when there are a ton of stuff. The loading times are terrible. Every stage you need to sit there while your playstation loads for about a minute. Then you enter the stage. The stage doesn't start right away though, it usually takes up to 20-30 seconds to start. Even then some monsters don't spawn right away. One example is Revenant, the mini-boss. It took me exactly 58 seconds running around before it finally spawned on me. Why won't they spawn right away? To give you time to prepare? Not exactly. Sometimes when you think you have time and you're busy doing things on your PC when you get attacked by a mob of monsters. You're going "What? Instant battle?" If it can spawn instantly sometimes why not do it for every battle? The loading time is long enough at it is, you shouldn't need another wait time. If you revisit cleared stages it becomes a safe map and the music changes. If you were to wait there and go do something else. When you come back you might find yourself dead. Why? Because shit will spawn and kill you. Yes, monsters spawns in safe spots.

Combat may be frustrating and repetitive but the storyline is always different for every character. Sometimes you know whats going to happen because of a previous storyline you met that character before as an enemy or such, But this time you are on the opposite side, you know why they are doing what they are doing. Neither side is wrong, they all have their reasons to do what they are doing. Maybe it was the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe it was coincidence, and perhaps they were waiting for you. Each of the characters are very like able and well developed. I particularly liked the story of Cornelius and Mercedes the best. Mercedes I started off hating her because she was this frightened spoiled child that became the queen. But as the story progressed she became strong and she really did feel like a real queen. The story of Gwendolyn and Oswald was a little disappointing but good nonetheless. There is not a story that I would say is bad. Now Velvet there is mixed feelings. Parts of the story I didn't like her, parts of the story she was alright.

I like to point out that the voice acting in this game is pretty bad. Almost as bad as the voice acting for the cut scenes of Persona 3. A good thing is that you can change the voices to Japanese. It may not be any better but because you don't understand Japanese you can remain oblivious.

Sexism is also everywhere in the game. Although mostly in Gwendolyn's chapter. Women are used to bear children for the men. If a Valkyrie is unable to fight, she will be brainwashed and when she is woken up by a kiss, she will fall in love with the man that wakes her up and bear his children. Its like slavery. Just wanted to point that out.

If you thought Okami was repetitive you haven't seen anything yet. This game redefines being lazy. The bosses are the same, the characters are the same, the dungeons are the same, the maps are the same. I also am wondering, like for example, Odin. You fight him with every character except Cornelius. How is he still the king? He gets his ass kicked by every single random character in the game. He has the strongest Psypher as well. Although it was shattered by Mercedes near the end of the game. This includes every other boss as well. If we were to combine all the story lines together, you'd notice how much they get their asses kicked. Sometimes story lines are a little weird too. Like some scenes happen to both characters but when you read the book of the other character, things are a little different.

Another annoying thing is if you wish to revisit an old book, you need to go through all the chapters and the story. That's not bad if you don't ever go back but in the final chapter you need to use characters from all books. Unfortunately, the characters in the early books did o't get the powerful items from the later books. You will have to play through the books again to reach the end to upgrade your characters. Only then are you prepared for the final battle.

If you can stand lag, fighting the same laggy bosses over and over again, the long loading times, and the sometimes frustrating combat, then you should try this game for the story. People will say, this game is about the story. I know it is, but that doesn't change the fact that 90% of the game is combat. I probably typed more text in this post than the whole game combined.