It’s been a long time since I really invested in some grinding time. For those who think an RPG is something to do with grenades, I’m talking about level grinding. Now I know leveling up is no longer limited to the world of fantasy role-playing games. We’ve all spent time building our characters in GTA, Crackdown and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 – fighting the same battles over and over for a few precious XP (or experience point to the unschooled in RPG terminology), but it’s not since the days of sprite based RPGs that I’ve had a grind of biblical proportions. Games like Enchanted Arms and Eternal Sonata might require you to run round in circles for a bit in some dungeon to get your stats up for the next big boss fight, but this seems to be just a nod to the genre’s roots.  It simply does not bare comparison to the grind fest I’ve just experienced in Lost Odyssey.

As Jam says in her recent blog, Lost Odyssey is no cutting edge game. It’s your straight up, traditional RPG, complete with camp characters and a bizarre skill development system. Everything about it is old fashioned except the graphics. You’ll spend incredible amounts of time in your menu changing around which skills your characters are learning. I haven’t seen such a focus on menu managing since Final Fantasy 8. Where Lost Odyssey really socked me one though was around about the beginning of Disc 2… that’s Disc 2 of 4 – oh the memories! The game has no opportunities for you to hang around areas picking up a few levels here and there. The paltry XP you’ll pick up off even the biggest of baddies just doesn’t stack over a quick enough time and you sometimes don’t get ANY XP for bosses. Yes, you heard me right – boss fight = NO XP!

Just because you can’t level up freely in Lost Odyssey doesn’t mean you’ll breeze through the boss battles. In fact you could easily find yourself under-leveled to the point of not being able to continue with the game if you aren’t careful. My mother has just experienced this outcome and as you can imagine is none too pleased! I however discovered that some time spent in a particular location in the game will garner you high XP from one enemy just as long as you have the right spells to hand to defeat it. Don’t expect it to be an easy ride though. You’ll still have to spend hours and days to get your characters leveled to a good point before moving on.

The content of this blog may have led you to assume that I don’t like Lost Odyssey, that I’m disappointed in it. You’d be wrong. There is something about a sneaky grind spot that makes me feel rather smug, as though I were beating the game developers at their own game. And I actually like menu managing. It appeals to a rather officious and meticulous part of my character, the part of me that would have been quite happy as an accountant. I realise now that I miss these things in RPGs, and it may well be what made it so hard for me to get back into them. It looks like Lost Odyssey has give both Jam and myself our RPG mojo back, and we thank Mistwalker for it. Okay, I have to go… just another ten levels and then I swear I’ll get on with the story.