The pack contains a new series of quests involving an asteroid that has been hijacked by Batarian terrorists and sent careening through space towards a large human colony world. As Commander Shepard, you must unravel the plot threatening four million human lives, and prevent the asteroid from continuing on its deadly course.

This quest at first looks to unfortunately be just another barren uncharted world which you explore in your MAKO. This is a disappointment for Mass Effect nuts like myself who completed all of the repetitive UCW sidequests. There is, however, a lot more offered here. Including the introduction of the Batarians, a new race, into the game… This is already cool, but made cooler if you read the prequel novel in which they play a major part. The plot, played out over a span of a couple hours, is fairly compelling, and the asteroid offers some amazing vistas of the planet it is hurtling towards. Finally, a new 50 point achievement is given for beating this quest.

It certainly doesn’t do anything revolutionary, but Bring Down the Sky offers more than enough high quality content to keep Mass Effect fans very happy for a couple hours, and it justifies its price point of $5. This is a good start on the DLC, BioWare… hopefully we’ll see more soon.

Lost Odyssey tells the story of Kaim Argonar, an immortal who has lived 1000 years. In that time, he has participated in many a brutal battle, seen countless empires rise and fall, and watched the deaths of innumerable friends. Without spoiling anything, about thirty years before the game starts, he lost his all his memory of his 1000 years. As the story progresses, he joins up with other immortals who have lost their memories as well. They slowly gain them back and uncover a grand plot that threatens the entire world. Overall, the story is presented well. It drags in a few places, but spanning four discs, this is quite an epic. It creates several memorable characters, including the morose and totally badass Kaim, who fits his role perfectly, and Jansen, sort of a ladies’ man kind of guy who has some of the funniest lines I’ve seen in a game in a long time. The party you eventually gain fits well together. Everyone has something to add, all of them change over the course of the story, and they’re each likable in their own way. You grow attached to the characters, and there are a couple really emotional parts in here that really got to me.

The graphics in this game are hit and miss. I would say that there are about four different levels of cutscene, ranging from the low-end graphics that look like in-engine gameplay to the gorgeous FMVs that cause this game to take up four discs. Certain areas during gameplay are really well modeled and have high-quality textures, but there are some that are noticeably worse, and your well-textured characters against these lower-res backgrounds can be a bit jarring. As I said before, the FMVs are absolutely beautiful, and make the game even more epic than it already is. The characters are well-animated throughout, and the lip-syncing is very good for a game made in Japanese.

The voice-acting is also, very good. There aren’t any really annoying voices or jarring lines that are fairly prevalent in games translated from Japanese to English. The characters sound like they should, and are well-acted. The sound is as good as you could expect for a JRPG. The sounds of magical and physical attacks in combat are satisfying, and ambient sound in the fields and cities is not overdone, but there when you’d expect it to be. The soundtrack is the best part of the audio package here. Fitting and unique themes are composed for each city and dungeon. Some of them are pretty catchy, and they all give their locations a good atmosphere.

All of this is well and good, but the most important part of a JRPG is the combat. This is where Lost Odyssey hits a home run for those of us who like classic turn-based combat. As in any other turn-based game, you’ll give each of your characters a command, which they will then execute based on their skill which dictates the speed of that particular action. By the end, you’ll have four schools of magic, all of which have eight levels of spells. Some of these spells you get near the end are very impressive. You’ll also have the usual RPG assortment of items, a defend mode, and of course, the generic attack with a sword or other physical weapon. This though, is where the combat system innovates on the usual turn based game. You can equip items called “rings” which you either find or create with components you find in dungeons or get off dead enemies. There are a wide range of effects which these can add to your physical attacks, ranging from increased elemental damage, to increased critical hit percentage, to inflicting various status ailments. There is a wide variety here, and this is one of the things that will keep you hunting into the farthest corners of the game to find rare rings or ring components. When one of your characters has a ring equipped during combat, and it is his turn to attack, large ring will come up on screen, surrounding a smaller one. You must hold the right trigger and release it when it small ring and the large ring are exactly the same size. The potency of the effects of the rings you have equipped increase as your timing gets better. This may sound weird when I try to describe it here, but it practice it works marvellously to keep you engaged and add some variety to the combat.

Another important aspect of the combat is the skills system. For the mortal characters in your party, it works just as any typical JRPG would. As they level up, they gain new skills. They can also equip a couple of items for other benefits. For the immortals, though, the system is quite different. They level up, increasing their HP and MP, and improving their basic stats, but they don’t learn skills on their own. For this, they must either skill link to the mortal characters to learn their skills. Both the immortal and the linked mortal must participate in battle, and they’ll acquire points towards the immortal learning the skill after each win. This is a good mechanic, because while the immortals can be much more powerful than the mortals, you have to mix and match your party to learn all the skills you want. The immortals can also learn skills from having accessories equipped over several battles. They will then learn the effect given by the accessory, and can use it without equipping the accessory. The immortals have a limited number of skill slots which grows as you progress, enabling you to mix and match all of your learned skills to build the character of your choice. They still hold their individuality because of their base stats and what weapons they can equip, but you have quite a bit of room for customization, which makes this innovative skill system another very engaging part of the overall battle system.

The menus by which you manage this all in are plain, but they’re very easy and intuitive to navigate, and they give you all the information you could ask for. The battle menus are simple enough to allow quick commands when you know what you’re going to do, but give you the information you need to allow you to strategize in tough battles. Speaking of tough battles, this game starts out pretty tough. The first two real bosses are challenges, and require you to really think. As you power up your characters, the difficulty doesn’t increase as fast, and it gets pretty easy near the end. Especially if you’re like I am and fight the most you can in each area, and do some extra grinding on the side, the last boss of the main story will be pretty easy. You can definitely beat this game with zero grinding, though. Just by playing through the main story, you should be level 50-60 when you hit the last boss, and beating him will be tough, but you should be able to pull it off. My level 80+ party had little trouble with the final boss, but there are a couple sidequest bosses that posed a good challenge. The forgiving levelling system that eliminates grinding for the average player should allow less-experienced RPGers to get into this, but those who go after the bigger challenges are rewarded well.

I’ve spoken mostly of positives, but here are a few things that brought the experience down: There are couple badly done button pressing/mashing mini games that feel so out of place and interrupt the flow of the story. They really add nothing to the story (a little cutscene would have been way more effective), and are very tedious and repetitive. There is also one stealth section that is made worse by the somewhat unresponsive controls for running around the world that are common in this type of game. We don’t play JRPGs for tedious little stealth sections completely devoid of combat. These minigames and the stealth section were little attempts on the developer’s part to modernize the genre, but if you’re gonna interrupt the gameplay and story that we play this genre for, you’d better do it really well.

My final thing to discuss is the “Dream Sequences.” These are Kaim’s memories that you’ll unlock periodically throughout the game. Each “Dream,” is a ten minute long short story that you read onscreen, telling of an important series of events in Kaim’s 1000 years. Some may say that these are out of place in a video game, but they are so well written and well translated into English that they make for some very entertaining and often emotional reading. When I first heard about these, I questioned if I could bring myself to read all of this while playing a game. As the game went on, I found myself looking forward to each one of these. They’re well done, unique from each other, and add a ton to the backstory of Kaim.

In summary, Lost Odyssey is the best Japanese RPG that has been released on this generation of consoles. The old school, yet engaging combat, emotional and intriguing story, endearing characters, great music, beautiful cutscenes, wide variety of environments, and little touches like the Dreams combine to make a deep, addictive, and immersing RPG experience. This game will be remembered as the first great JRPG of this generation, and hopefully we’ll see many more in the coming years.

FINAL SCORE: 8.7/10
I would emphatically recommend this game to anyone who has ever played and enjoyed a turn-based Japanese RPG. For anyone new to the genre, this is a fine example of the best it has to offer, and if you’re looking to learn it this is a great game to do it with. Japanese RPGs aren’t for everyone, but Lost Odyssey is one of the best you’ll find.

I first got really into gaming hardcore on the PS2, so I’m fairly new to this compared to some of you old school guys. I enjoy playing everything from Music Rhythm games to FPS, though RPGs are definitely me favorite genre. They’re what really sucked me into video games, and what keep me so attached to this great art form today. Being predominantly a 360 gamer this generation, I’m not gonna be exposed to as many of the lesser known JRPGs as on PS2, but I’m getting a few great ones sprinkled in with all the outstanding shooters.

My game of the year last year was far and away Mass Effect, though Call of Duty 4 and Rock Band were outstanding candidates for me as well. Currently, I’m into Lost Odyssey (which I’d recommend to any JRPG fan… but more on that in another post.) In 2008, I’m most looking forward to Fable 2, Fallout 3, and GTA IV.

As far as this blog goes, with Ghost and I being mostly 360 gamers, I’d like to see us add writers focused on Wii and PS3, as well as PC, as we grow. If the blog takes off, I would like to start doing a weekly podcast. I know that growing this thing will take a lot of work and commitment, but the gaming industry is one that we love, so it should be a fun experience.

Contains mature content, may not be appropriate for children under age of 18.