Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche of Sandfall Interactive would very much like to play a remaster of Lost Odyssey, the mournful 2007-released Xbox 360 RPG from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and development studio Mistwalker. He feels the game was cruelly dinged by reviewers of the era for adhering to certain conventions. He also reckons it’d have done better if it had released for hardware other than the Xbox 360, which was trying to make in-roads among Japanese consumers at the time.
“It became a cult classic because few people played it, as it was available only on Xbox 360 while its core audience was probably more used to PlayStation consoles,” Broche told Eurogamer’s Ed Nightingale in a retrospective interview, published earlier today. “But that core audience who did play it loved it. The critical reception at the time was very unfair in my opinion, as the game was criticised for being ‘old school’ at a time where it felt like every game that was not an open world was viewed as ‘old school’ by the western press.
“I didn’t share that opinion at all and its linear structure, coupled with a world map, an amazing story, and fantastic music, made it one of the best games of its kind,” he added.
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I’m not sure I’d go that far, but sure, Lost Odyssey is very good and deserved more eyeballs than it got. There are a few aspects I dislike, such as achingly long treks between save points, and yes, it has random battles, which used to rustle the jimjams of European and North American critics, but have been out of fashion for so long among big budget RPG developers that they’ve sort of become an exciting novelty. Ah, remember when you couldn’t reach the end of a mountain path without hallucinating 12 fishbowl punch-ups with one and the same giant beetle/harpy duo.
The combat is quite elegant, mixing questions of duration and positioning with a magic ring QTE system. But I liked the game more for its absorbing visual novel interludes – memories reclaimed by your immortal protagonist Kaim – and its faded industrial fantasy setting, which feels like a post-apocalyptic edition of Final Fantasy X’s Spira.
Broche says the game “never had any real successor”, which is perhaps overlooking Sandfall’s own Clair Obscur, though I’ll leave it to you to debate the resemblance. “Justice for Lost Odyssey,” he told EG. “Remaster it now so more people can play it, please.”
