There's no red lion-thing party member, no iconic weapon, no party member with cans the size of hot air balloons, no "materia".....ok... so maybe there is one theme that remains the same. Still you have Sed(Cid) the quintessential old mechanic guy (minus ffvii he wasn't that old), Ultimate weapons, sub bosses (ruby weapon, blue dragon etc etc), ultimate weapons, amnesiatic heroes.

I haven't exactly finished the game yet, thanks to (experiment No.1 in grandstaff) i'm forced to farm up additional levels, bastard kept regening almost all the life i was taking off. On top of forcing me to res sed and wasting my caster's attacks on heals. suffice to say i don't think a level 39-42 party is enough to finish the game.

This game feels, to me anyway like Final Fantasy 7 rehashed, sure Gongora is not was sephiroth was then (before sephiroth was milked for all the badassy-ness he had). The game takes me back to a time when rpgs ruled the playstation landscape, and fps was the ugly duckling of the gaming world. To me, this story is a distillation of everything that has been done over the years in JRPGs with a little thrown in to the combat system to keep your attention during turn based combat.

Now all we need is a Lost Odyssey: Tactics. Which plays out Kaims exploits as a mercenary. Sure it'd milk the story, but i want a pretty turn based strategy game which has more depth than Commanders: Attack of the Genos





(spoilers?)

Despite the games storyline amazingly well told story, every time i hear Kaim and the other immortals refer to their age and the fact that they aren't from this world, just inhabiting bodies here. I can't help but think of the sham that is Scientology.