A side-scrolling action RPG – you don't see many of those…that is of course if you've ever seen one before. Mixing side-scrolling action with a quirky leveling system and some of the most beautiful sprites and hand drawn characters you've ever seen, Odin Sphere is a unique game that chronicles the lives of five different heroes. Could this RPG be as good as its lush visuals?

THE STORY SO FAR
Odin Sphere follows several different heroes, though never all at once. You've got a valkyrie warrior desperately seeking the love and acceptance of her father; a young prince in love turned into a creature; and a dark knight just to name three of the five characters you'll be controlling.

All of the story happens during in-game cutscenes, where you can sit back and watch the story unfold, or moments where you control the character, running through a pre-level level, and being able to chat with some people to see just what is going on. Though you'll control five different heroes throughout their journeys, the game is really almost the story of this world instead of the characters, because nobody ever really shines more than the other, and instead they blend into a strange Pulp Fiction meets RPG world where individual stories are told, and yet there are constant interactions between the parties involved. Some of the narratives are better than others, but still as a whole Odin Sphere offers up a nice, solid storytelling effort, which will manage to move you in many ways, as you really get to know these characters and watch them become more rounded than the 2D side-scrolling levels they run on.

GAMEPLAY
Each of the five characters share the same controls, though they all have different attacks and unique abilities, such as Gwendolyn's glide attack or Cornelius' spinning sword attack. But outside of those abilities, when you are talking about the attacks, jumps, item usage, and ducks, though the characters and animations might change, they are all still doing the same maneuvers in the end.

The way the story unfolds is that you'll move to the next story point level, which is a series of side-scrolling levels connected by points. Though the levels are side-scrolling, they are actually built around a circle, so you'll never run all the way to one side and then hit an end, but rather it's like running on a treadmill. On each of these treadmill levels, you'll have to fight all the enemies and kill them – doing so will then give you a ranking based on how well you did, some spoils of war, and then you'll use one of the exit points to move to the next level, do the same thing, and so on and so on until you reach the boss, beat them, then move on.

You'll need some strategy involved when fighting, because it's easy to take damage and die fairly rapidly and quickly. However, though you know when to fight, run, and block, ultimately it will all boil down to hacking and slashing and repeatedly pressing the same buttons over and over for combat. Combat and how you use your characters will change things up a bit as you go along, but still the fighting becomes pretty boring after a while, which is hampered even more by the leveling system. The combat is especially hurt by your fatigue bar, which if it depletes, leaves you momentarily defenseless and in a daze while you recover.

The leveling system of Odin Sphere is certainly unique, and kudos for trying it, but jeez is it cumbersome, tedious, and plain annoying. Leveling up is all about phozon, which are shimmering sparkles of light that you get from killing enemies and completing levels. As they float around, you can absorb them into your weapon by holding down the R1 button, and magically calling them towards you so that you can absorb them; by absorbing them this way, you can increase your phozon level so you have more skills and abilities. However, the phozon is also used to increase your health points, which will be a very much-needed necessity given the hardness of the game.

First off you need a seed, which you'll then plant in a level. Each seed requires a given amount of phozon in order to grow and give you its vegetable or fruit (or sheep?), which you can then eat to not only replenish your health, but give you experience that goes towards raising your health – eat enough and your health points rise. The problem is that some of the higher experience foods requires more phozons than the others, and if you don't kill enough enemies to give you the phozon you need, you've suddenly just wasted a seed. You also don't have an infinite amount of inventory room, and so you'll often find yourself having to juggle food to heal and potions for attacks. Potions are a tricky thing too, where you can use food creatures you find in levels by jumping on them, and besides one that creates an ultimate heal, the potions are pretty worthless.

If the idea of retracing your steps back to older levels just so you can raise food to eat so that your levels will grow sounds fun to you, then by all means Odin Sphere is definitely the game for you. But if the idea of micromanaging something that should be automatically done like in other RPGs sounds more boring than listening to a class lecture, then you'll need to look through its faults to fall in love with the game, or else you'll despise it immensely.

GRAPHICS
Whether you're talking about the world, the effects, the characters, the enemies, or the animation, there isn't a single stylish fault that can be had with Odin Sphere. Odin Sphere is simply one of the most gorgeous games ever to grace the PS2, and possibly any console for that matter. The lush anime inspired world is so overabundant with life through bright popping colors and fluid animation you'll constantly find yourself amazed at the television screen.

The only fault graphically is that the game suffers from slowdown – a lot! Given the amount of animation being processed and all the things that can be happening at one time, slowdown is something you shouldn't be surprised by. What is surprising, though, is the fact that it happens so frequently and crawls so slowly. There is one boss in particular, which is so finely detailed and has such intricate attacks, that the game crawls so slowly it's like watching molasses pour or a snail crawl. It's just so slow.

SOUND
Yeah yeah yeah, the sound of fire being breathed, creatures popping up from the ground, and enemies being slashed all sound proper and good. The music is also amazing, mixing moments of miniscule loveliness with full on orchestra battles, that you'll constantly find these songs getting into you and affecting you in one way or another; the sound does an excellent job at heightening the drama of the story unfolding. The really surprising thing is that besides offering the original Japanese language track, there is an equally great English track that doesn't feature any of the hokey or badly done lines like you might expect a RPG to contain. You aren't listening to the likes of Morgan Freeman narrate or anything, but still it will surprise you just how good these actors were when compared to all those bad ones you've probably heard in a hundred other games.

IN CONCLUSION
If you're looking at Odin Sphere from a strictly technical standpoint, the only complaint there would be about this game is the slowdown. However, there's actual gameplay mixed in with this game, and sadly it's hampered by repetition and tedium; constantly hitting the same button with recklessness and having to grow food to get stronger is not a fun time to be had. RPG completists might love it, but those new to RPGs (or really anyone for that matter) just might not simply enjoy some of the mechanics that so dominate the majority of the game.

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