So this year I was going to make a conscious effort to work through my backlog. Buy less games, play more etc. That quickly fell apart in the first month however I've done decently at playing them so far and the Odin Sphere remaster Leifthrasir is one of the older PSN purchase I have yet to play . I decided it was a good title to finally finish on my 2024 games played list.
Odin Sphere is the third Vanillaware title I've played at the time of writing. The first was Dragon's Crown, a game I truly hated but perhaps approached wrong expecting a four player Guardian Heroes. The second was 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim which I utterly adored for it's keep you guessing sci-fi story. (First quick review I wrote on Backloggd actually) It's fitting then that Odin Sphere would sit somewhere in the middle between them as a game I like but with a lot of flaws preventing me loving it and hard to actually recommend.
So lets get the positive aspects out in the open first as this game does have a lot of good going for it. Firstly the artwork and animations are pretty stunning. Vanillaware is pretty famous for it's layered 2D art style and animations. The characters and enemies all stand out and the usage of colour and style makes it feel like a painting in motion. To carry on the presentation side of my positive compliments, the whimsical soundtrack is stunning. I especially like the theme song but it's all gorgeous wrapping up Odin Sphere into a great looking and sounding package.
I actually had to double check this was originally a PS2 game because even as a remaster it just doesn't feel like it. Equally it just doesn't play like it came from that console. The combat animations and battles are all so smooth chaining from moves to move. This isn't an insult to the PS2, it was an amazing system, just a compliment to Odin sphere's visuals and animations. When in combat the characters have a large amount of moves with more unlocking as the game progresses. It allows you to chain various moves and skills into large combos. Hitting a group of enemies into a huge combo with perfect blocks to keep the chain is initially really fun. I'm saying initially because this is where my praise of Odin sphere starts to breakdown a bit unfortunately. The game is based around five characters:
- Gwyndolin, a Valkyrie Princess.
- Cornelius, a prince cursed into a beast form.
- Mercedes, a fairy Princess.
- Oswald, an orphaned knight with a cursed sword.
- Velvet, a forest Witch.
Similar to Vanillaware's later title 13 Sentinels each character has their own story arc playing the game from different perspectives before a final chapter linking the full story together. In principal the idea is great. Vanillaware themselves proved this can work wonderfully as a concept. Here it is extremely flawed though. My biggest issue is there is no variety between each character play through. They have different moves, weapons and some unique skills on a couple of them but they are fundamentally the same. When you take that into account along with the fact that each one of them plays through the same 6 locations fighting the same 20 ish enemies and same bosses and no matter how gorgeous Odin Sphere is, and no matter how nicely it plays it just becomes tedious. You have to play all five scenarios to see the ending and by the 4th character I was just feeling burnt out of it all.
Perhaps because it's an action RPG there is a greater downtime between the story sections that could have kept the mystery going for me to want to push onwards but I feel the narrative behind the game overall just isn't strong enough to justify the multiple perspectives. There isn't a huge mystery that gets unveiled or a surprise twist. Each scenario explains a few things more but I didn't find any of it compelling. Everything around the multiple protagonist formula here undermines the story and the mechanics. Some of the story arcs on each character don't quite match with some odd reasons to make sure the character does visit the snow mountain or lava kingdom etc. Having a food resource cooking mini game for levelling is a neat little idea but gets boring having to save ingredients and feed each character as a core way to level them up every time. Exploring never has anything new on different characters, same levels, same equipment. This feels like a 6 hour game padded out to a 30 hour game and the fairy tale esq setting and lore aren't strong enough to carry that.
I hate typing this as I wanted to love Odin Sphere like I did 13 Sentinels. I am however grateful to it for being the game that put Vanillaware on the map, the game that is almost like a later prototype they built on. I'm glad I played it, it's well made, and looks and plays wonderfully it's just lacking meat on it's bones.
I wish you really could just grow sheep from trees.
+ Gorgeous art design.
+ Fun , fast and fluid combat system.
+ Pleasant whimsical soundtrack and great voice acting (I played it in Japanese).
- The game loop is extremely repetitive and the story cannot carry nearly the exact same content from a slightly different view point. Only one real negative but it's a big one.
Odin Sphere is the third Vanillaware title I've played at the time of writing. The first was Dragon's Crown, a game I truly hated but perhaps approached wrong expecting a four player Guardian Heroes. The second was 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim which I utterly adored for it's keep you guessing sci-fi story. (First quick review I wrote on Backloggd actually) It's fitting then that Odin Sphere would sit somewhere in the middle between them as a game I like but with a lot of flaws preventing me loving it and hard to actually recommend.
So lets get the positive aspects out in the open first as this game does have a lot of good going for it. Firstly the artwork and animations are pretty stunning. Vanillaware is pretty famous for it's layered 2D art style and animations. The characters and enemies all stand out and the usage of colour and style makes it feel like a painting in motion. To carry on the presentation side of my positive compliments, the whimsical soundtrack is stunning. I especially like the theme song but it's all gorgeous wrapping up Odin Sphere into a great looking and sounding package.
I actually had to double check this was originally a PS2 game because even as a remaster it just doesn't feel like it. Equally it just doesn't play like it came from that console. The combat animations and battles are all so smooth chaining from moves to move. This isn't an insult to the PS2, it was an amazing system, just a compliment to Odin sphere's visuals and animations. When in combat the characters have a large amount of moves with more unlocking as the game progresses. It allows you to chain various moves and skills into large combos. Hitting a group of enemies into a huge combo with perfect blocks to keep the chain is initially really fun. I'm saying initially because this is where my praise of Odin sphere starts to breakdown a bit unfortunately. The game is based around five characters:
- Gwyndolin, a Valkyrie Princess.
- Cornelius, a prince cursed into a beast form.
- Mercedes, a fairy Princess.
- Oswald, an orphaned knight with a cursed sword.
- Velvet, a forest Witch.
Similar to Vanillaware's later title 13 Sentinels each character has their own story arc playing the game from different perspectives before a final chapter linking the full story together. In principal the idea is great. Vanillaware themselves proved this can work wonderfully as a concept. Here it is extremely flawed though. My biggest issue is there is no variety between each character play through. They have different moves, weapons and some unique skills on a couple of them but they are fundamentally the same. When you take that into account along with the fact that each one of them plays through the same 6 locations fighting the same 20 ish enemies and same bosses and no matter how gorgeous Odin Sphere is, and no matter how nicely it plays it just becomes tedious. You have to play all five scenarios to see the ending and by the 4th character I was just feeling burnt out of it all.
Perhaps because it's an action RPG there is a greater downtime between the story sections that could have kept the mystery going for me to want to push onwards but I feel the narrative behind the game overall just isn't strong enough to justify the multiple perspectives. There isn't a huge mystery that gets unveiled or a surprise twist. Each scenario explains a few things more but I didn't find any of it compelling. Everything around the multiple protagonist formula here undermines the story and the mechanics. Some of the story arcs on each character don't quite match with some odd reasons to make sure the character does visit the snow mountain or lava kingdom etc. Having a food resource cooking mini game for levelling is a neat little idea but gets boring having to save ingredients and feed each character as a core way to level them up every time. Exploring never has anything new on different characters, same levels, same equipment. This feels like a 6 hour game padded out to a 30 hour game and the fairy tale esq setting and lore aren't strong enough to carry that.
I hate typing this as I wanted to love Odin Sphere like I did 13 Sentinels. I am however grateful to it for being the game that put Vanillaware on the map, the game that is almost like a later prototype they built on. I'm glad I played it, it's well made, and looks and plays wonderfully it's just lacking meat on it's bones.
I wish you really could just grow sheep from trees.
+ Gorgeous art design.
+ Fun , fast and fluid combat system.
+ Pleasant whimsical soundtrack and great voice acting (I played it in Japanese).
- The game loop is extremely repetitive and the story cannot carry nearly the exact same content from a slightly different view point. Only one real negative but it's a big one.
14 Comments
@Lemonstrade - I've gained 18 games and played 9 so it's +9 to the backlog beast right now. I just can't resist a sale...at this point if I can get close to even I'm calling it a good result lol.
I think its important to note (tho it doesnt absolve them of criticism) that Vanillaware makes all of their games reuse content as a cost saving/ developement measure. Im willing to bet their extremely gorgeous art puts a huge weight on dev time and I wouldnt even be surprised if their signature multi-character writing style was an excuse to be able to get more.mileage
*out of their assets.
@_YALP - I absolutely appreciate that. A lot of developers do in various ways and I also respect Vanillaware is a small studio that often struggled for funding. I guess the difference here (as I probably poorly articulated in my review) is how much I really feel that asset reuse compared with other games. 13 Sentinels reuses a lot of locations and assets but I think the way it's so much more story heavy makes it work more than Odin Sphere as a primarily action title. There just isn't any variety at all, like not even a palette swap and I find it hard to overlook in such a long game. I like a lot of what it does but the more I played it the more I simply lost interest.
I read a bit of Vaillaware's history prior to writing this and have added some more of their games on my wishlist to try. They are an interesting studio and I wish them continued success in what they do but my enjoyment of their games so far have been all over the place lol.
I read a bit of Vaillaware's history prior to writing this and have added some more of their games on my wishlist to try. They are an interesting studio and I wish them continued success in what they do but my enjoyment of their games so far have been all over the place lol.
No youre absolutely right. Their OG release, Princess Crown, struggles with the exact same thing - and to me this is an exercise in choosing genre. Something like Dragons Crown represents a better choice of genre for Vanillaware if they want to make an action game and the upcoming Unicorn Overlord will likely benefit greatly from being an RPG in general.
I agree also I wish this game was just a straight focused 2 playable character action game. After playing two characters game uses all of it's unique content and playing the rest of the 4 feels like a chore.
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I don't know if you plan to play Muramasa(their other action game), but they do that. There is only two characters on that game so just for that fact it's a better game for me (also dlc stories that exclusive to vita are really amazing)
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I don't know if you plan to play Muramasa(their other action game), but they do that. There is only two characters on that game so just for that fact it's a better game for me (also dlc stories that exclusive to vita are really amazing)
@gsifgds - I was thinking similar, less characters but more locations or bosses would have made it a tighter experience all round.
Thanks for that info about Muramasa, I do plan on playing it though I knew little about it! I only have access to the original game though, not sure if my vita still works or if the online store is still open? Might have to look into that soon. 🤔
Thanks for that info about Muramasa, I do plan on playing it though I knew little about it! I only have access to the original game though, not sure if my vita still works or if the online store is still open? Might have to look into that soon. 🤔
Great review! And thanks for linking out to your Aegis Rim review; that was the last little nudge I needed to pick it up for sale.
As a big fan of Odin Sphere, this review hurts me, but I get it. This is a complaint that I hear a lot. Vanillaware games for me has some glaring flaws in each of their titles and with OS, this is probably it, but fortunately, not enough to deter me from my enjoyment.
The only other VW title I enjoyed a lot was 13 Sentinels, but the story heavily carried that one for me. The gameplay was passable at best, but the story being so good as it was really made me cared less about this issue.
I know somebody mentioned Muramasa, but I can't say variety is better there. Both characters share the same stages and levels essentially, but just in differing order. They also play exactly the same except their sword special skills do have some differences. The DLC characters do add much needed variety, but their stories are pretty short. I'll give the edge to bosses in Muramasa though which are pretty well done.
The only other VW title I enjoyed a lot was 13 Sentinels, but the story heavily carried that one for me. The gameplay was passable at best, but the story being so good as it was really made me cared less about this issue.
I know somebody mentioned Muramasa, but I can't say variety is better there. Both characters share the same stages and levels essentially, but just in differing order. They also play exactly the same except their sword special skills do have some differences. The DLC characters do add much needed variety, but their stories are pretty short. I'll give the edge to bosses in Muramasa though which are pretty well done.
@coewboyjosh - That always makes me nervous in case you don't like it XD. I loved the way the story unfolds and it's sci -fi references. Especially an anime from the 80's. I'll talk more about it when you play it. :)
@FallenGrace Great review and I definitely want to do the same with my backlog, but I doubt it will happen that way! I especially want to focus on more of my jrpgs this year, but I am also getting hit with the new releases like P3R and Infinite Wealth. About to pickup a good few I missed last year lmao. I still have to get to this, but I am definitely looking forward to it with the fluid combat style, I also know it is a HD port/remaster of a PS2 game so I can see why it has a repetitive type of game loop considering its age. 13 Sentinels was so damn good, but I may skip their newest one unless it blows others away and becomes an absolute must-play haha.
@DrJeans - I'm keeping two private lists for now of games I've beaten and games I've gained to see how it works out at year end lol. JRPGS is absolutely killer time wise but its a fair amount of my backlog too.
@sleeping0dragon - Sorry! lol. I know this game has a cult following and at first I was quite digging it but that slowly eroded with time. Still, a 3/5 from me is a still a good game in how I try and score things, it's just heavily flawed but I can see the heart put into it.
I'm still going to try and play them all. Looking more into them I see their PSP game Grand Knight's History has an English patch too.
I'm still going to try and play them all. Looking more into them I see their PSP game Grand Knight's History has an English patch too.
Lemonstrade
2 months ago