Lost Odyssey

As you may recall, one of the games I got for my birthday was a turn-based RPG called Lost Odyssey, and as I've mentioned many times before, I had a hard time getting into this game. I initially tried to give it a fair chance, but everything about it was frustrating, even for someone who liked other turn-based RPGs (like Shining Force), so it eventually got put on the bottom of my gaming priority list. Recently however, I decided to pull it out again and give it another shot, largely because I was in a sort of lull following my two full playthroughs of Dead Space. After about fifteen minutes of gameplay though, I was so fed up with Lost Odyssey that I decided to just trade it in to GameStop (despite the fact that they only gave me $10 for it). In its place, I purchased a very well-reviewed action-RPG called Mass Effect which I had been a bit apprehensive about, even when purchasing it.

As it turns out though, Mass Effect is absolutely incredible, and I'm pretty sure I couldn't have made a better choice for a replacement for Lost Odyssey. So many things in Lost Odyssey were poorly realized: everything from the save system, the combat, the method of delivery for the narrative, and the exploration of the world, all the way to the voice acting, plot, load times, and incredibly small (and therefore unreadable) text size. Fortunately, Mass Effect got ALL of this right, and there's plenty more on top of that. I got Mass Effect only five days ago and already I've played over 20 hours of the game. I'm highly addicted to it at this point, and the good news is that I've probably got about 40 more hours of gameplay left before I finish it!

I'll be sure to give a full review of Mass Effect at that time, but until then, suffice it to say that I'm extremely glad to have found an RPG that is fun to play, as Lost Odyssey had all but destroyed my interest in playing another RPG, at least for a very long time...