Armageddon Outta Here ~ Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir

Oh, boy. It's been a long time since I've released a video or blog entry and I feel really bad about that! I'm not without my reasons, though, principal among them the fact that I've spent just about every minute of my free time over the past three weeks feverishly playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II. I'm considering releasing some kind of video/blog entry combo for that sometime soon, but first I need to work on my backlog! Since my last article, I've completed Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, Ys Origin, and the aforementioned Cold Steel II. I released an informal video on Leifthrasir that I dubbed a "game chat" but lacked confidence in it and therefore didn't advertise it much. It can be viewed below.

At the time, however, I hadn't written an actual article which organized my thoughts in a coherent way. I have now remedied that. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir.

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Odin Sphere was Vanillaware’s sophomore release as a company and their first entry in a line of 2D action RPGs that include the excellent Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Dragon’s Crown. It was released in 2007, when the only other entry under the company’s belt was GrimGrimoire, a quirky real-time strategy game. Leifthrasir updates and expands Odin Sphere in a lot of important ways, chief among them the removal of the original’s dreaded slowdowns, which ruined a lot of the game’s boss encounters. Despite enjoying other games from Vanillaware, I'd put off playing Odin Sphere for years because of those slowdowns. When I heard about Leifthrasir, I was eager to finally give the game a try.

You're not the boss of me, Dad.

Odin Sphere is a side-scrolling action game with plenty of RPG elements. Characters learn an array of skills and level up by acquiring experience both from defeating foes and absorbing phozons from food. Exploration is done in the traditional Metroid style with a series of branching pathways with a variety of different treasures to find. As is typical for Vanillaware, the characters and backgrounds are depicted in a beautiful hand-drawn style with occasionally freakishly exaggerated proportions. The Queen of the Netherworld’s bizarrely inflated chest or Odin’s massive upper torso and tiny legs spring immediately to mind.

That looks really uncomfortable.

Even if the game had only featured one playable character, Odin Sphere would not have been terribly lacking in content. Sure, seven hours doesn't generally warrant paying $40 for a game, but there are plenty of games (in this genre, even) that are about that long or even shorter, many of which are excellent titles. The valkyrie Gwendolyn is the first playable character and her story alone would have made for an acceptable narrative, perhaps with a little more of the story fleshed out--but Vanillaware went the extra mile by including a whopping five playable characters, all of which have interesting and distinct play styles.

Is. . .is this Snake Way?

Gwendolyn is a spear-wielding valkyrie claiming dominion over the element of ice. She is as adept at gliding across the screen, unleashing a series of frenetic spear strikes as she is at summoning fearsome blizzards to pelt and freeze her foes. Her arc takes her from reconciling her role as a valkyrie to coming to terms with her father’s role in arranging a marriage between her and Oswald, the dark knight.

Ooh, silver!

Cornelius is a prince cursed to live as a pooka, an adorable, furry little guy. As far as curses go, there are worse fates, but he’d still much rather regain his human form so he can have a relationship with the beautiful and enigmatic sorceress (and homeless princess), Velvet. Despite his diminutive form, Cornelius is a heavy sword user that whirls around the battlefield acrobatically, although he can’t glide like Gwendolyn. He also possesses the power to summon whirlwinds and tornadoes, although his magic isn’t nearly as impactful.  

That sounds like something a liar would say.

Mercedes is the fairy queen of Ringford and is unique among the cast in that she’s entirely ranged, wielding a magic crossbow. Because she’s ranged, she stands out the most in terms of play style; she never really has to get close to deal damage. However, she also runs out of Power pretty quickly, forcing her to pause to “reload.” Other characters can attack with impunity, leaving Power and SP for their special skills. Mercedes does not have this benefit and therefore must play more tactically. She also has access to a variety of floating allies that fire off magical spells to assist her, allowing her to theoretically fill the screen with projectiles, provided she has the resources to allow it.

Kapow!

Oswald fulfills the game’s dark knight/berserker archetype and is pledged to be married to the vakyrie, Gwendolyn. His play style is probably the most straightforward of all the characters as it involves basically freaking out and hitting everything in front of him a lot. Fitting to his dark knight persona, he possesses dark-elemental magic--but his forte is morphing into a demon and unleashing hell upon his opponents.

Velvet's my favorite.

Velvet rounds out the roster with her mid-range playstyle, wielding a chain whip and an arsenal of fiery spells. She’s a tad slower than some of the other characters, but she really is a joy to play as she glides gracefully across the screen, her whip flitting around in every direction, pillars of fire toasting her assailants. She is of course involved with the cursed Cornelius, but she’s left in the dark about his furry condition for the majority of the game’s running time.

All of it. I want all of it.

Progression in Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir is anything but traditional. Although there is a system in place where you acquire experience for defeating foes, the amount awarded to you pales in comparison to that which is provided by the food prepared by your characters and by vendors scattered throughout the world. Food also boosts your HP in differing amounts, so it’s important for that reason as well. Acquiring different recipes and ingredients is an integral part of the gameplay and part of what makes traveling through the same environments as other characters rewarding--since each character has unique recipes available to them and all previously acquired recipes are available to future characters. The cooking system in Leifthrasir is interesting--more interesting, in fact than in most RPGs with cooking systems--but I still think it could have been expanded in some way. I think it would have been interesting if recipes affected your progression beyond just health and experience. Say, for instance, that a recipe boosted strength at the expense of defense. This would be an interesting extra layer of customization.

Oh yeah, I think I learned how to make tornadoes in a bottle in school.

Like cooking, alchemy also provides players with the opportunity to devise concoctions, but not for the purpose of progression. New alchemy recipes can be discovered by uncovering scrolls scattered throughout the game but also just through pure experimentation with different components. Tossing any two ingredients into a flask will frequently yield a unique result, whether it be a potion that whips up a fearsome tornado or an antidote to ward off the effects of poison. Healing potions serve as instant healing in the middle of combat although don’t award experience like food does, which also takes a few seconds to consume.

While the diversity of playable characters available in Leifthrasir is refreshing, the lack of variety in environments is not.There are seven or eight distinctly different areas in Odin Sphere and they all are rendered in Vanillaware’s patented hand-painted art style. They’re pretty to look at, but I would have very much appreciated if they’d been spread out among the characters a little bit--because you’ll find yourself revisiting each of these areas four or five times throughout the course of the game. I'm uncomfortably reminded of the endless cycle of repetition in Bravely Default's later half--but at least the plot evolves and expands in Odin Sphere's case even when revisiting old areas. Suffice to say, it does become grating when you're treated with the same areas over and over.

Holy crap.

Repeating old environments might have been more forgivable if each playable character was occasionally treated with a couple of unique new bosses, but once you're done with Gwendolyn's story, you've pretty much seen most of the bosses the game has to offer and you're going to be fighting them again with the other playable character. The only real difference in boss lineup comes from the occasional fight against another of the game's playable characters. There is a wide variety of bosses, but fighting them time and time again makes them feel less special. If we’re being honest, the only reason I can remember a lot of their characteristics is because I was forced to fight many of them five or more times with different characters. Their patterns may have stood out more if I’d played a higher difficulty, but in normal mode each boss can essentially be zerged with all of your most powerful skills and destroyed within a few minutes. The only real challenge comes from chewing through their unnecessarily large HP totals. Most bosses boil down to spamming the same set of 2-3 attacks for A Long Time until it is inevitably over. I'm regretting at this point not playing hard mode, but I feel the game would have taken so much more time than it was worth if I'd done so.

All told, Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir is a huge success as a remake, but it retains a lot of the flaws present to the original version. Repetition is the game’s greatest flaw. I still hold that the game’s flow would have been improved if each character had 3-4 areas to traverse instead of repeating the same environments for each character, albeit in different orders. By the time I’d finished with Leifthrasir’s 30-some hour runtime, I was dealing with some pretty serious fatigue--in spite of the radically different play styles inherent to the game’s playable characters.