Sapphire Valley Reviews #10: Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir · 7:21pm Sep 27th, 2016
Yeah yeah, I know that this isn't Sonic 06, but trying to capture Princess Luna is proving harder than I thought, also, I beat this game recently, and I just HAD to talk about it. I couldn't wait. It was THAT good. How good is that?
Okay, imagine any game you've played that was really good, but flawed. Now imagine if the company that made said game did an HD remake of it, only along with updating the graphics, they ironed out the kinks: taking away things that were bad, changing things that needed to be changed, and keeping everything the same that didn't need improving. What would you get after that?
You'd get Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir.
After reviewing Shadow the Hedgehog, and giving it my first ever TRULY bad review, I had to review this, as this is way more optimistic. So without further ado, I am Sapphire Valley, today reviewing Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir for the PS3, PS4, and PS Vita.
STORY
The story is one of the things that didn't change in Leifthrasir, and you know what? That's just fine, because this story is amazing. When you start a new game, the first thing you'll notice is that you're controlling a little girl in a blue dress. This is Alice, and she's the player proxy in this game. The actual story of Odin Sphere is told in a series of books, which become available as you beat the characters individual arcs. The main story chronicles a war between two factions: the Aesir lead by King Odin, and the Fairies led by Queen Elfaria, as they fight over a large machine called the Cauldron. While this is the main issue of the story, the actual meat and potatoes of the story is in the five heroes, all from different walks of life, who find themselves caught up in the war in one way or another, for different reasons.
The five main stories, in the order that they appear are as follows:
Valkyrie: Starring Gwendolyn, the daughter of Odin, king of the Aesir. After the death of her older sister, Greselda, Gwendolyn finds herself on a journey to become the ultimate warrior in order to earn her father's love and approval. As her journey progresses, she meets a man who changes her life forever, and finds herself having to choose which matters more to her: the man that she loves, or the father that never truly saw her.
The Pooka Prince: Starring Prince Cornelius of Titania, a country caught in the middle of all the fighting. Going to see the love of his life, Cornelius awakens in the Netherworld to find that he's been cursed in the form of a tiny creature called a pooka. After being given a magical sword, Cornelius ventures out on a quest to learn how to return to his human shape and save the woman he loves. But his journey leads him to uncover secrets in the world, as there are people taking advantage of the war in order to gain power themselves.
Fairyland: Starring Mercedes, the fairy Princess and daughter of Elfaria. She's a free spirit who's somewhat frivolous and a bit spoiled, but when tragedy strikes, she finds herself in the position where she has to be a leader long before she's ready. It's here that she must face betrayal from people she thought she could trust, learn what it means to become a leader, and eventually face the man who killed the person she loved the most. Her journey is a coming of age story, as we learn more about the fairies, their reasons for fighting, and see Mercedes become a queen just as, if not BETTER, than her mother before her.
The Black Sword: Starring Oswald, the Shadow Knight. Raised by the fairies to become the ultimate killing machine, Oswald never questioned his life. His father tells him to kill, and he does so without hesitation. However, what Oswald doesn't know is that his dark powers come at a price, one that his father paid for him just so he'd become his weapon. Upon learning this, Oswald would have fallen into darkness, assuming that he didn't meet a woman who makes his heart soar. Will his heart descend into the abyss, or will he find salvation in the love of Odin's daughter, Gwendolyn.
Fate: Starring Velvet, Princess of the fallen kingdom of Valentine, and the woman that Cornelius loves. She and her twin brother Ingwey were exiled from their land shortly before it was destroyed, and were given a cursed fate by their mother. While Ingwey is understandably bitter about this, Velvet seeks a means to change her and her brother's fates. Upon learning of the war between the Fairies and Aesir, Velvet takes matters into her own hands to try and stop it. Sadly, the spirit of her abusive grandfather returns, desiring to use the Cauldron for his own evil schemes. Velvet must find the courage to not only face him, but to also do what's necessary to save the entire world and stop Armageddon.
Upon finishing these stories you unlock the final book called "Armageddon", in which YOU have to match each character with their respective final fights based off the clues found in the prophesies you get later in the story.
The characters are probably the best part of this story. No one is one note here: everyone has their own reasons for what they're doing. Because of this, one character will be a villain in one story, but then be a protagonist in another, and it's BELIEVABLE, is the amazing part. For example: when you first see King Odin and Queen Elfaria, it seems pretty clear that Odin is the good guy, and Elfaria is evil. But as the story goes on, and you eventually play through more of the game, you learn that technically Odin was the bad guy in this war, as he just wants the Cauldron for power, while Elfaria needs the Cauldron so her kingdom can continue to live. Also is Queen Odette of the Netherworld. She's seems like truly a bad person when you first meet her, I mean, she is the queen of the Netherworld. However, not even THAT'S black and white, as while she is a bitch, she's also keeping a horrible monster imprisoned so it CAN'T leave for the surface and destroy everything. Yeah, she's one of the good guys, surprisingly enough.
Not to say that there aren't characters who are straight up good or straight up bad. Most of the protagonists are actually genuinely good people, just willing to do questionable things for their cause. Gwendolyn and Mercedes are probably at the top of the protagonist spectrum, with Cornelius and Velvet being right under them, and finally Oswald being more of a neutral party throughout. You also have Velvet's grandfather, King Valentine, who's technically the reason things get so out of hand later in the game.
I'm not going to go much more in depth with the story. Just... experience it for yourself.
PRESENTATION
This game is beautiful, in terms of both graphics and music.
The game was made by the same people who made Dragon's Crown, which if you've played that game you know just how beautiful it is. Characters are perfectly designed so you can see every little detail, and truly see how they're truly feeling in this story. It's so much that during scenes with Velvet, when she's in the presence of her grandfather and he mentions she's trembling, you can ACTUALLY SEE HER TREMBLING!
I'm not exaggerating, every motion for every character is perfectly detailed and animated.
Oh, and the music is superb. Atmospheric, energetic, whatever it needs to be to enhance the situation, especially in an emotional scene. What struck me as interesting was the final battle of the whole game, which used the world map music as background. It sounds odd, but it somehow works for the fight, as it really pushes home that "this is it. The final, FINAL fight of the game."
I can't NOT bring up the music in this game either. The voice work was fantastic. Mind you, I haven't listened to it in Japanese, but the English voices really worked for this title. Scenes felt like I was watching an anime or something, especially with the fact that everything is voiced. EVERYTHING.
Presentation wise, this is another thing that didn't need to really change, and so it didn't. It is more high definition, but that just makes it look even better. One thing I appreciated that changed though was the FPS of the game. In the original game you'd suffer through HORRIBLE lag whenever there was too much on the field. Thankfully though, they've fixed all of that, so the games moves at a smooth 60 frames per second almost all the time, no matter what's going on on screen.
I lost to the Netherworld Queen a lot in the original because of this. Leifthrasir, I'm pleased to say I was able to beat her on my first try EASILY.
GAMEPLAY
Okay, now we get to the parts of the game that were altered.
This game, like Dragon's Crown, is a side scrolling action adventure RPG beat-em-up hybrid. It works somehow though, which is interesting. The crux of the gameplay will be in action stages, which in Leifthrasir are broken up into circular maps that revolve around endlessly, where you have to defeat all the enemies in that map to proceed, or box like maps where you have to get from one side to another. The original Odin Sphere only had the circular stages, and they started to look the same after a while. But here, everything is more varied, making you feel more like you're exploring different environments as opposed to just different maps.
Depending on what the map is, the composition will change as well. If you're breaking into someplace, you feel like you're breaking in, needing to find keys and travel along rooftops. If you're trying to go up a mountain, there will be a lot of maps that have you climbing up. Those are just two examples of what I mean.
Two things that were in serious need of tweaking in this game were combat and leveling up. Both were needlessly complicated in the original game. In terms of leveling up, you had two levels: the psypher level and your health level. The psypher level controlled how much damage you did when you attacked, and the health level controlled how many hit points you had. The problem with this system was in order to level up your psypher you had to absorb Phozons, which are the souls of your enemies, but the only way to level up your health was by eating food, which would usually be fruits and stuff that ALSO required Phozons in order to grow, and you couldn't use your stored Phozons to grow plants. Meaning you had to often choose: do I want to take these Phozons for myself so I can hit stronger, but lose potential health? Or do I want to sacrifice my attack and these Phozons to the plants so I can have more health?
On the subject of combat, you had a POW meter at the top. This meter went down whenever you attacked, and once it went down all the way, you were stunned, leaving you WIDE open for attack. Also, the special attack system forced you to stop combat in order to cast spells, and every character more or less had the same spells they could access as time went on. Games like this need to be fast paced, but these two systems meant that the game would force you to go slower than you wanted.
All of that was adjusted in Leifthrasir though.
Now you only have the one single level, which accounts for all of your personal stats. You gain experience points in a more standard way, by defeating enemies. However, you CAN still eat foods, but those add to your natural experience meter. You can eat fruits and whatnot for small bursts of experience, or you can eat fully cooked meals and gain a TON of experience, sometimes even gaining whole levels from one meal.
So what use are Phozons now? Well, they can either be put to use by using them to power up your special attacks, weapon, and abilities, or you can use them for plants. How is that different than before? Well, this time you STORE Phozons within your weapon, and you, the player, get to decide for YOURSELF how you want to cash in your Phozons, but with all the resources you have, there's more freedom to choose, so you don't feel pressured.
In terms of combat, things have sped up considerably. The POW meter is still a thing, but it's function has changed. Instead of going down for EVERY ATTACK, it only goes down for special moves, which can now be connected to certain button combinations (yes, this includes the down quarter circle forward "punch" combination for you Street Fighter buffs). This means that instead of forcing you to slow down, fights are REALLY fast paced. Combine that with the lack of lag in the game, and you're in for chaotic combat scenarios all around.
With things like character exclusive skills all around, and tweaks in their fighting styles, all five character feel unique and in my opinion, all were fun to use. Even characters I thought I'd hate to use were a lot of fun once I got the hang of them. Gwendolyn was my favorite character for a while because I liked how graceful yet fast she moved, making me feel like an actual Valkyrie while fighting, but then I got to play as Mercedes and was amazed to see that she played almost like Contra, but able to fly infinitely. In the original, a lot of times the characters all felt the same but slightly different, with the exception of Mercedes who was a stark contrast from the rest of them. Now, all of the characters are different, with different strategies better suited for each of them.
Don't listen to anyone who says that certain characters suck in this game though. I looked online and saw that most people HATED playing as Mercedes and Velevet, and yet I didn't have any trouble with them. In fact, they both became my BEST characters by the time I learned how to play as them. That's the thing about this game. You have to learn how to play as each character, which I guess CAN be a little jarring. I remember after playing as Cornelius and finally getting to Mercedes' story, I was daunted for a while, as going from a Link expy to Contra style gameplay through me for a loop, but I learned it and adjusted.
But not everyone is going to like that, I don't think. Then again, I could be wrong.
Honestly though, with how much you could do in this game and how fast paced it was, it felt more like a fighting game at certain points. This isn't a negative from me though. Odin Sphere works like this.
Finally, the game is just more balanced. It gives you enough leeway and resources to get the hang of each new character, and to me at least, it was just fun all around. In the original, I found myself dying quite a lot from what appeared to be instant kill moves. I don't know if they were completely taken out, or if I was just horribly under leveled in the original, but I didn't suffer through cheap deaths in this game. Anytime I died, it felt deserving, like I did something wrong. That's how it should be to me in a game. If I die, I want it to be because I made a mistake somewhere, not because the game threw me a curve ball I couldn't prepare for.
FINAL VERDICT
It might just sound like I'm gushing here, and maybe I am, but I'll be honest here, I couldn't find anything wrong with this game.
It was nicely paced, the voice acting was spot on, the characters were lovable, the graphics were beautiful, and I was invested in the story.
Look, when it comes to me and games, the thing I base my opinions on is how much fun I had playing it. Remember in my first review of Star Ocean, when I said that I had a hard time judging it? The reason was because there were certain things about the game that were a lot of fun for me, but there were just as many things that took that fun away.
Here, I find myself with another issue. As an aspiring reviewer, I have to be fair, and thus it seems almost like giving a game a perfect score is just being biased, or giving a game a super low score is being too negative. When I reviewed Shadow the Hedgehog, I didn't have fun with that game. Sure, there were MOMENTS where I enjoyed myself, but they didn't save the experience for me. With this game though, I had fun all around. Any problems I would have had were in the original, but this game fixed all of those issues.
And for those who might think that this game loses points for having a story just like the original, that to me means that now I have a reason to enjoy this game again and again. I'm not turned away by the thought of "that one character I hate playing as" or "that one fight that's too hard" or "that one thing that's just super annoying about the game". Now, I can enjoy the story again, as much as I want. Play it on any difficulty and get a powerful experience, and if I want to, even search for EVERYTHING. Yeah, this is a game that made me WANT to find every secret, earn every trophy, and even find the secret ending.
Am I biased? Maybe I am, but I can only be honest and give my own personal opinion of the game. In the end, this game was just... fun. It is, in my eyes, a masterpiece of a game, and one that I enjoyed playing from beginning to end.
So with everything I said plus my own enjoyment of the game has me awarding Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir a perfect score of...
10/10
And naturally I'm giving this game the special recommendation of Royally Guaranteed, a special rating I only give to those games I feel are too good to ignore.
For alternate titles I point you toward Dragon's Crown, as it's very similar title in terms of gameplay, but not so much in story. I'd recommend the original Odin Sphere as well, but Leifthrasir comes with that game in "Classic Mode", and honestly, this version is just superior to it in almost every way.
So that's all I have to say. Please comment on your thoughts of this review, if you played the game or were curious about it. Please follow me on Patreon if you so desire, and until next time, have yourselves a wonderful day. I love you lots.
Salute! 
hmmm I should look for this game but I got other games to beat
You know what a life trolish moment is? Downloading Odin Sphere on PSN, only for shortly after finishing it, this one gets announced
. I knew about this game for a long time, but I didn't had a PS2, though I wanted to play it, so I did downloaded a on PSN as soon as I've found out. It was fun and all, but you start to see it's flaws. Repetitiveness in the circular arenas and environments, and bosses. Seriously, by the time you finish Cornelius's story, you'd pretty much faced all bosses. Another BIG flaw I've seen is that each character was worse than the last gameplay-wise, and going over and over with the photons and food 
. It was still fun at the end though, and you get 'em feels when you finish Armageddon, specially if you unlock your classic thanks for playing 100% by the merchant you see around and the playable characters doing their own business around him.
You know what's funny? Stephanie Sheh voiced Mercedes, a fairy. She also worked in Bravely Default as Airy...... a fairy
. You should also try that game too if you love a classic JRPG
A game I want to fucking play the CRAP out of.
I fucking loved Odinsphere. That was my jam on ps2. I've been meaning to see about the remaster, but I haven't had any money to do so.
I never got to finish Odin Sphere. I was killing it thanks to a recipe list and a walk through, and I loved every bit of it... well, the Beauty and the Beast plot always bugged me, I HATE return transformations but that's a minor thing. Then my PS2 died in the middle. FML.
But now there's essentially the same thing on the PS3? And it's even better than the original? WANT! I'm getting myself the recipe lists and walk through and playing the crap out of this thing.
4230987 Please do! I know you're going to enjoy this game!