For a game trying desperately to be a new entity, Lost Odyssey feels precisely like the series it’s trying not to be. The resemblances to Final Fantasy are all over the place, and that’s not surprising considering where this game is coming from. Longtime Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi is at the helm of this project, and it definitely shows.

The battle system, locations, characters, and situations all seem ripped out of any of the latest FF installments. The feel of the world definitely has a sense of FFXII around it, and the characters all have the wonderful melodramatic sense that I would expect from FFVIII. There isn’t anything wrong with any of these things by themselves, as I’ve been a fan of this series since I was a kid, but when placed into an “all-new” adventure I start to cry foul about the mechanics of it all.

Visual-wise, this game is miles ahead of any other JRPG that has hit the market. The game has been given that shiny Unreal Engine polish which makes it look absolutely beautiful. The character models all have brilliant details that shine through even when simply navigating the world. The characters all have that certain Japanese flair for wearing unnecessary armor that doesn’t look like it is actually attached to anything. Of course, the main character has a troubled past, which starts to bother him more and more as the game goes on.

There is a slight twist to these memories though. Since the main character, Kaim, is an immortal he has what the game coins as “1000 years of memories”. This could be interesting, but these are played out through obscenely long sequences of nothing but long passage projected over bland backgrounds while boring music chimes along in the background. This is pretty damn annoying, especially when he starts remembering these things every 10 minutes or so. Luckily you can opt out of these sequences as they are not entirely essential to the story, which is lucky since that moves along slowly enough on its own.

The setting is in a city which seems to pride itself on the old ways of warrior-hood but is on the verge of an industrial revolution because of the discovery of magic in the earth and the special uses that it holds, FFVII anyone? There is a problem though, the main person behind the construction of one of the biggest magical towers is crooked and manipulating the former royalty to trust him and only him as he claims to want to re-establish the monarchy. This plot unfolds fairly early into the game, and doesn’t carry much of a surprised with it since you will automatically distrust the dude with the bleach blonde hair and brown goatee with the shifty eyes. No surprise there. What is surprising and highly aggravating is the inclusion of the assistant to this jerk, who will happily annoy you with his antics from the first time you see him. His voice can only be pinpointed as a bad impersonator of the Hades character James Woods played in Hercules, only twice as pretentious.