Odin Sphere gameplay notes

So I came to a compromise on the review issue. I'm not going to do much discussion of the aspects of a video game that don't relate directly to the theme or the atmosphere, which are the subjects I want to focus on in the critiques. At the same time, there are going to be some instances, like this one, where a game really deserves some additional criticism or discussion for some of the design aspects. In some cases this will be because of exceptionally good choices that were made in the design process, but in others it will be because of the flaws in the process. And the simple fact is that Odin Sphere had several flaws, some of which nearly made me toss the controller down and take the disc out.

Odin Sphere is an example of a rare case in which the coding, rather than the artistic direction or the writing, was the weakest link in the game. Music, graphics, story, and design create the experience for the player. Coding can't create a good experience if these elements are trash. It can, however, work against them by pushing a player's mind out of the world of the game. It's a thankless task to be a programmer, I'm sure. The designers, artists, and musicians get all the print. But it's the people in the trenches writing the game engine that make all the other aspects work together to create art. In this case, unfortunately, the programming (and perhaps the hardware) wasn't equal to the task that the experiential elements demanded.

Although it is graphically beautiful, Odin Sphere doesn't seem to run on very efficient code. Anytime a large number of moving elements are present on screen the framerate drops, sometimes significantly. This isn't just a problem with too many enemies—the frequent slowdown in the Netherworld stages is associated with background elements. Even stages with relatively few enemies can suffer significant drops if too many phozons are left floating in the air. Because several of the boss battles are very complex, with lots of moving elements, they can be especially afflicted. The battles against Odette and Belial get to be very frustrating because of the framerate failures. The feeling that you could punch in a combo and go make a sandwich before the animation stopped really removes you from a fight.

Speaking of going to make a sandwich, Odin Sphere features some truly amazing load times, especially when going between the Pooka Village and the restaurants. No number of charming little animations will hide the time it takes to move between screens and stages. Often there is substantial loading after you enter a stage as well. Slowdown and load screens kill a player's engagement in a game.

Aside from the technical base, a few design elements were notably off. The controls were a bit muddy, and made to feel more so by the fact that cancels were impossible. Once you start a combo your only option is to see it through or stop acting entirely, which was something of a problem in the more complex boss fights. The inventory system also could have been much improved—it seemed like half the time you weren't fighting was spent managing the tightly constrained inventory. Shrinking that down so much didn't feel like it served much of a purpose; there's no need to be "realistic" about the inventory size in a game where each level ends with a gigantic treasure chest falling from the sky. The inventory management was a needless distraction from the game's better elements.

Another flaw was that the revelation of recipes for alchemy and the restaurants didn't match up with the modular nature of the story. You find a recipe for a moderate healing potion in the first book of the story, but the stronger healing potion isn't found until the fourth book. In the meantime, however, you have brought several characters to a point where the "H" potion isn't of any benefit. There was no gameplay or story reason to hold the Elixir back, and doing so forces the players to replay books in order to give their characters a meaningful healing potion for the final stages. Revealing the recipes piecemeal would have been more acceptable if the player was free to experiment and find things on his own. However, you aren't allowed to make any alchemy mix for which you don't have the recipe.

As for the restaurant, the fact that the story is told very much out of order makes its recipe system seem extremely strange. Why can Velvet buy "egg on toast" right away, when in the linear timeline that recipe won't be found until much time has passed? This complaint can also be leveled at the alchemy recipes. In short, the recipe system was illogical and needlessly forced a replay of previous books.

The reason the replay of previous books was a problem was that you literally had to replay them. That is, once you finished all five main books and wanted to buff your characters for the final battle, you had to start each of those books from the beginning, rather than entering each one at a point later on where you had access to all or most of its levels. As a result, you had to play rather a long time to reach a point where you could buy the bags you needed for inventory or get the raw materials necessary to make elixirs. It seems like this could have been avoided.

For the most part, however, Odin Sphere features reasonable design choices. The diversity of fighting styles of the main characters means that the repetition of levels and bosses never gets boring. The character development system is intuitive and still manages to feature an intelligent trade-off. And for the most part, the game is very forgiving about providing you with materials to produce the potions you need in the areas where they're needed (the notable exception being Titania). While most battles allow you to get by just by whacking at your enemies and using special powers, you can usually find additional strategies or tricks for each particular fight that makes it easier. The game is balanced, has a relatively even difficulty progression, and only one really unreasonable enemy (the slimes). The choices are solid but not spectacular; for the most part this is a game where the mechanics try to make themselves as unobtrusive as possible. That's why the smaller failings seemed so glaring.

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The ring of death and life

The beginning of Odin Sphere seems to have little to do with the operatic introductory sequence or the characters shown in it. A young girl, exploring with her cat, finds a library of old books in a musty attic. She begins to read, and as the storybooks come (gloriously) to life, she finds herself lost in an earlier world, one that is tied to her own by a cycle of death and birth.

Spoilers follow below the fold.

One need look no further than the title to recognize that Odin Sphere is aiming to evoke the feeling of Nordic sagas and the Ring of the Nibelung. There are some direct parallels to be found, and persistent references to these stories help establish the mythic atmosphere. Like the sagas, the story emphasizes destiny and prophecy; the more the characters struggle to avoid their fate, the closer they bring it. The player controls five characters (in different "books"), but the story is not presented linearly. Instead, each chapter opens a new angle into events that have already occurred.

The image of the ring lies at the heart of Odin Sphere. Much of the story is concerned with the struggle for a literal ring, called Titrel, that controls an enormous spherical Cauldron with the power to create immensely powerful weapons called Psyphers. Odin captures the Cauldron, but his illegitimate daughter Velvet, fearing the Cauldron's destructive power, feeds Titrel to an enormous dragon named Wagner. Odin's legitimate daughter Gwendolyn saves Velvet from the vengeance of Odin's armies, but in doing so defies her father and so she must be put to sleep. She is told that she will love the first man she sees on waking.

In the meantime, the Shadow Knight Oswald (left), one of Odin's enemies, has fallen in love with Gwendolyn. In order to win her hand, he defeats Wagner, giving the ring to Gwendolyn as a symbol of his love. Seeking her father's approval, Gwendolyn gives Titrel to Odin. The remainder of her story consists of her efforts to win back the ring and rescue Oswald from death, as she has fallen in love with him. In the end she refuses to yield up the ring to her father.

Events spill off from this core narrative in all directions, and the player takes up the part of Velvet, Oswald, the fairy princess Mercedes, and the hapless prince Cornelius as they struggle futilely against fate. Cornelius, cursed by Velvet's brother Ingway, accidentally releases Velvet's mad grandfather from the Netherworld, who wreaks havoc and brings a world-ending dragon to life with the aid of the Cauldron. Mercedes, trying to save her kingdom from Odin, unwittingly destroys the only weapon that had a chance of restraining the cataclysm. Oswald learns that Gwendolyn was lied to, that when she wakes her heart will still be her own, yet decides to awaken her anyway in hopes that he can make her happy. Each of them comes into contact with the ring, as well as confronting many of the same enemies (and each other) in combat. The repetition of areas and bosses (especially the dragon Belial, seen at right) is itself a kind of cycle within the game. It should be noted that this never actually gets dull, because each of the characters plays in a different and interesting way.

The game contributes another kind of cycle in that each of its two-dimensional stages is actually a circle. If you continue far enough in any direction you will come back to the spot that you left. From a gameplay perspective this allows the construction of rather complex level maps in the context of what amounts to an old-school side-scroller. But the circular level structure also emphasizes what the player should expect from the game.

Similarly, the results of combat foreshadow the end of the game. In death each enemy releases a number of brightly glowing "phozons". The player can choose to absorb these into the character's weapon, enabling special attacks and increasing the character's combat strength. If, however, the player has planted certain seeds in the stage, those plants will draw in the phozons as they grow and bear fruit. The character can eat these to heal and increase HP. In this regard, deaths are made to literally produce life. Even the phozons drawn into the psyphers have the same ultimate effect, because at the end of the game these weapons are used to power the Cauldron so that it can cover the world with new life after Armageddon. Why not Ragnarok or Gotterdammerung? I have no idea.

This outcome of the game's final cataclysm again echoes the Nordic myths. As the great serpent falls from the sky, Velvet uses Titrel to command the Cauldron, and a lush new world is born from the death of the old. Only Gwendolyn and Oswald, who were bound together by the ring, have survived the apocalypse to repopulate the world. Again we are treated to the circle, the emergence of death from life, reaching the end of all things only to find yourself at the beginning of all things.

The characters of Odin Sphere struggle against fate, striving to avoid their own deaths, the death of their loved ones, and the death of the world. But it is the nature of all things to die. And it is the nature of the world for new life to arise from death. In the epilogue, even Velvet, who struggled hardest to avoid the death fated to her, comes to accept this.

One way or another, every world ends, and then, another begins.

As of 4/2008 Odin Sphere is still available new from its publisher, Atlus.

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