Here’s IGN‘s “10 hours in” preview of the upcoming Xbox 360 JRPG by Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Mistwalker:
“Xbox fans have long been starving for Japanese RPGs. Through the history of Microsoft’s two consoles, few JRPGs have been released and none of the caliber seen so often on PlayStation 2. So when the father of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, started Mistwalker studio with backing from Microsoft, the RPG-starved Xbox masses began to salivate. So far, Mistwalker has given us the disappointing Blue Dragon. But there’s a chance at salvation with the more traditional Lost Odyssey, set to arrive in North America on February 12. Ten hours in and one disc (of four) down, there’s reason to hold out hope for Mistwalker’s latest.”
Let’s get the bad out of the way. The preview build of Lost Odyssey suffers from the same issues that hurt the ’07 Japanese release. There are quite a lot of framerate issues and an unacceptable amount of loading. At times you will wait a good minute to load into a battle or one of Lost Odyssey’s numerous cut-scenes. The loading times vary greatly from one moment to the next. Sometimes it takes just a few seconds to load into a battle, but often that is not the case. If anything is going to be the downfall of this game, it may well be the technical issues. Here’s hoping the extra time for the North American release is being used to minimize the interruptions. Because with the technical issues aside, Lost Odyssey has promise.
