Odin Sphere DONE! Final Thoughts

Done! And we got to hear Alice speak! I was half expecting Socrates the cat to start talking too.

Odin sphere has a neat endgame structure – once you finish the five character campaigns, a sixth “Armageddon” book is unlocked, which chronicles the end of the world that the previous books were leading up to. When all hell breaks loose in Erion, you get to pick which of your characters face off against the different bosses. Each endgame boss might be closely intertwined with certain characters – for example, the Onyx has special significance to Oswald and Gwen, so using those two to take him down will result in unique scenes. Thus, depending which characters you use to fight the Armageddon bosses, you unlock different scenes. Initially I chose the “correct” matchups as detailed in Master Krois’ prophecy notes, which gives you the “true” ending, but later I went back to explore the other possiblities and achieve 100% unlock status. Of course, if you use the incorrect matchups, you get to see a ton of depressing “bad ending” scenes. This is frighteningly reminiscent of dating sim games, which worries me. Be sure to wait after the “FIN” scene; you’ll get an extra tidbit that shines light on the author of the mysterious books. Read on for more thoughts.

One annoying thing about Armageddon chapter is that if you want to go back and power up your characters some more or make them more potions in preparation for the endgame fights, you have to play through their campaign again (keeping your current stats, of course). This is incredibly irritating since the early stages don’t have any of the materials or items you would want or need, and you don’t get access to the Pooka Village till midgame. A better implementation would have simply based you at the Pooka Village and allowed access to the unlocked world map.

It’s kind of neat to revisit all the characters and see if your opinion of them has changed over time. Velvet is probably my second least favorite character in terms of fighting style. Her rather weak seeking chain take too long to charge up, and her trapeze swing is like a slow version of Gwen’s flight (though I think it does give limited invulnerability for a short period of time). Her spinning chain attacks are decent for deflecting projectiles, but Cornelius’ somersault slash does a much better job of that, and he can also reverse spin directions for incredibly agile mid-air control. Oswald is a bit annoying to use against trash mobs since his range is a bit limited and his combo finisher leaps forward past the enemy, but he’s probably the best boss-killer since his shadow trace stacks with the overload spell and all the potion effects.

My Gwendolyn was immensely underpowered compared to my other characters (psyher level 27, health level 26), so I did have to spend a good amount of time building up her stats. Looking back, I finally realize that Gwen is quite possibly the worst character in terms of damage-dealing ability, making her campaign one of the most difficult. Her combos are not particularly good, and her lack of a simple double-jump makes her air combos somewhat frustrating to pull off. More often than not I accidentally end up sending her into flight mode instead of a mid-air attack, leading to controller-slamming moments during the Cauldron boss of the Armaggeddon chapter. Not only that, but she doesn’t get two key utility spells (Phozon Release and Psypher Heal) until very high psypher levels that conceivably aren’t attained by the time you finish her campaign. No wonder so many people get turned off by the difficulty level of Odin Sphere; the first campaign is like a “weed-out” class in college.

*Love* the odin sphere theme, especially the french lyrics version. The entire soundtrack is incredibly good, in fact! Odin’s palace theme is one of my favorites as well, sounding appropriately heroic and epic, set against the stunning background of falling stars and soaring parapets. I also love the voice work; it’s crazy that there are so many familiar anime seiyuu voicing the large cast. For instance, they’ve got Norio Wakamoto and Seki Tomokazu playing minor bit parts. Seriously. Still, I feel that the developers could have done even MORE with this game given more time and funds – perhaps a little more freeform gameplay, though that would break the “opera” presentation style. With that in mind, I eagerly look forward to Vanillaware’s successor to Odin Sphere! In the meantime, their latest RTS offering GrimGrimoire will have to suffice .

Related posts:

1. Odin Sphere Bowled Me Over
2. Thoughts on Blassreiter 01-12
3. Shallow Thoughts