I've been hearing similar things from people I know. I might check it out by renting it, after I check everything else. If anything this will be on the backburner and I purchase when I have some money burning a hole in my pocket and I've bought the games I already want.

It isn't a bad game if you can get past all of the crying. And there is a lot of crying. I am fairly early on in disc two and my party consists of two physical attackers and three mages, which really bothers me. I don't really need to have two black mages and a white mage. I would really be ok with one of each.

Game is fairly fun and the dreams are all pretty well written. The music has ranged from unnoticed to really good. So far I really only have one character who isn't weepy, but he is awesome enough to more or less make up for all the crying. Graphically, it looks better than I was expecting, though I wish that the designers would have thought to give Kaim a little shampoo. I have noticed some minor framerate issues, but nothing to get worked up over just yet. The dungeons seem to be a comfortable length, though the town/non-dungeon sequences tend to drag a little bit, which may be the result of reading several dreams during your "in between dungeons" period. I am sure that it is simply because have missed them, but there have been a distinct lack of weapon upgrades throughout the game. As I mentioned before, I am early in disc 2 and I have upgraded Kaim's weapon once, Jansen's once, and there have literally been no other weapon upgrades. While I am sure that this is mostly my own fault for not finding weapons, but they really shouldn't make it this hard to find them.

All in all, I have not regretted my purchase yet. Maybe whenever the inevitable plot twist happens, and we learn that Kaim is the seemingly impossible lovechild of Squall and Keanu Reeves, I will feel differently.

Yeah, it's definately not an OMFG kind of game to get worked up about, however it is a solid JRPG. My take on the music is similar to Russ's. Though the battle theme of the third boss (the worm) was pretty cool.

While I still wish the stories were just done in small flashback vignettes, at least the wiring is done by a famous Japanese writer and a very compitent Japanese translator. If it wern't for thoes two things the written format for the stories would have been a complete throw away.

A tip for all those not yet on disc 3: Make sure you try to keep all your characters at roughly the same level, since you will be utilizing everyone in separate parties soon. (And yes, you'll get pure mage parties!)

So basically you are saying that once I hit the expected party level (as in the people in the party are gaining very little experience in each fight) in each dungeon, I should swap in my lesser used folks and run around until they stop getting a full level per fight. Thanks for the tip, that should be an easy thing to do along the way that will save some headaches down the line. Also full mage parties are lame. Where are my fighters in this game, they are missing.

The only issue I'm having with the game is the battle system is SO DAMN SLOW and it's mostly because they did a horrible job optimizing battle animations to a reasonable level.

The slight framerate hitches when it's loading battles, and particuarly in cinematics is really distracting. At first I thought my 360 was having problems or something, but I'm seeing tons of other people mention it, and even looked at some footage online, same thing.

Russ, I'm still on the first disc and I've gotten 3 upgrades for Kaim/Seth, and two for Jansen >_>

Yeah, spme of the cutscenes can take up to a minute to load.

One thing that I do keep getting with this game are constant DREs. Especially when I don't have my external fan on. I play a lot of Vegas (and for longer sits) and I don't have this problem with it.

So is it just touchy coding or a bad disc? (the condition is emaculate)

I've never had a disc error with this game. BD and LO both ran pretty solid, framerate slowdown notwithstanding.

I recommend reading a guide for this game (if you can read some Japanese, ロストオデッセイまとめwiki is a great resource) since there are plenty of good items -- particularly accessories -- that are easily missable. Heck, simply entering a map from the wrong direction at a particular time can put some subquests out of your reach until the last disc.

Is this better than FFXII? I played it and just gave up about 70% of the way through; it was simply a pain to play. Generally I've heard its more old school, which is what I like especially in the ATB department.

I want to play this with a passion but don't want to waste 20-40 hours if its going to epically suck donkey schlong like FFXII.

I don't know if it's better. I don't think it can match XII's presentation, however it's still solid. And it's a mature themed JRPG which makes it actually kind of unique in some sense.

My only problem with XII was the pacing. There was WAAAAAAAAAAY too much gameplay inbetween story developments where it felt like nothing was ever getting solved at times. But hey to each their own. I know that some out there hate cinematics so XII would be good for them.

For me I enjoyed Xenosaga and MGS's 30minute + cinematics so XII had poor pacing for me.

Personally i think it is better then FFXII in every possible aspect. Like you, i grew tired of FFXII, but i did manage to push myself through to the end and doing so left an even sourer taste in my mouth.

With Lost Odyssey, i'm midway through the second disc and i'm still captivated and hooked. Something I haven't been able to say about any RPG since Suikoden V.

Are you having any problems with any other games? When I'm talking about hitching, I'm talking fraction of a second stuff, and I haven't had anything take longer than maybe 10 seconds to load.

The only way this thing'll have 60 second loads is if you've got an issue somewhere along the line. None of the cinematics, in game or otherwise, have taken a full minute. I can see so far as 15 seconds, but that's about pushing it. I'll time it next time I play.

The frame rate is abysmal whenever it's got to render more than a single character at a time though, hooooooooooooly shit. It's especially jarring during those camera cuts.

DREs plus extremely long loads sounds like either your disc or your 360 is shitting it's pants.

R6: Vegas has been freezing a lot lately too (has been for many of my friends too) but that's about it.

@Skills
I'm not sure that it's my 360 because while I've gotten an increase of R6: Vegas DREs so have my friends lately too. So I think it's just something with that game and them messing with the servers for R6: Vegas 2. As for LO, I'm thinking it's a disc issue.

Everytime I go to play the game for the first time of a day I seem to always get DREs about an hour in. Then if I restart the game no matter how long I play at this point it doesn't seem to DRE again. Or at least not until another day.

Kyndig/Godhand (forget what his tag is here) told me tonight he's had the game freeze on him several times now, also reporting no other problems with any other games. I'm inclined to say it's the system starting to die, and LO is more taxing on it than other games might be. With the 360 hardware it's hard to say, have you tried clearing your cache? I almost expect my 360 to be dead every time I turn it on despite having no problems with it.

Yeah sounds exactly like what my system starting doing right before the disc drive gave out. If you are lucky enough to avoid a RRoD then you still have this damn problem to worry about.

So I picked up this game a few days ago, its pretty fun so far. The game reminds me
of Shadow Hearts and Final Fantasy VIII, and seemed to toss in Metal Gear Solid 3's camera system.

Any spoiler-free tips I should know? I just got to the Sea past the Grand Staff construction site (Disc 1).

My tip?

Hope you like mages. xp

Seriously, though? Just keep trying to learn skills. But, hey, that's kinda obvious.

~
I'm in Disc 2... having 2 1/2 fighters and 3 1/2 mages suck. XD And I know one of the members I'll get soon is a mage too (damn that trailer in the game...). Man... it gets kinda hard to keep them alive...

I'm also aimlessly wandering around a mansion that is annoying as hell! Whee!

I still really like the game though... As for load times, I don't think it's ever gone beyond ten seconds. Then again, I just got my 360, soooo... um, yeah...

Don't worry, later on you get a terrible, frail fighter who you will only use when you absolutely have no choice, and a really tough, but not very strong fighter who you will keep in the party simply because he has some excellent passive skills. So you'll be rolling with your two fighters, your passive skill guy, and your two mages of choice.

ALRIGHT! Just what I always wanted! Well, guess it's better than more full-blown mages. xp

Why does everyone pretend they can't say who joins when they are all listed right in the manual? There is no spoilers in saying their names. :(

Sed is pretty decent though really for a mortal, simply cause at least he gets that 3 accessory skill so you can prep him up at least acceptably for the bosses.

He's got double item, potion boosting, and auto barrier/shield too so basically when you're done leeching skills you'll want to keep him not just for the double sp/exp/loot/etc skills but also because compared to the other mortals endgame, at least he doesn't blow over like a leaf in the wind. (high HP and all too)

It's lol looking at the mortal mages with their 2k HP compared to Kaim and Seth's 9999 and everyone elses 5~7k+.

Oh, I didn't even look at the manual. Silly book and ruining the game, ha ha ha...

I'm personally too lazy to look at the book, sooo, about Sed...

Alot of you have probably had enough time to complete the game by now; anobody want to share their overall opinion and/or conclusions??

I can't buy it for another 2 weeks until I've handed in my assignments so its good to get a heads up, still need to complete Mass Effect first.

I absolutely love the game, and I am by no means a huge RPG fan. I've played a few here and there, but this game had me addicted from the beginning.

Some character models I disliked, especially some of the characters that join your party really boggled my eyes on what details they added.

Every female has HUGE breasts which are pretty much uncovered. One character in particular, you can see veins popping out and, I am by no means against breasts, but C'MON!

I just started disc four, and I'm pretty much lost, but i'll figure it out sooner or later. I love the game, like the main story, I like the characters stories, and overall it's the most fun I have had with and RPG since Tales of Symphonia.