Other than work, one of the little amusements in my life the past few weeks has been one of the greatest farming, restaurant and cocktails simulators to grace the PS2. I am, of course, talking about Odin Sphere, the titular title from Vanillaware.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them;
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bindoh wait wrong story.
Odin Sphere presents the intertwined stories of five frontier farmers in a fantastical setting. Intermingling Shakespeare, Nordic myth and classic fairytales in an epic tale of betrayal, intrigue, love and the Apocalypse, you won’t give a flying fuck about any of it as you grow rare and bizarre fruits with the blood of your enemies (well, their souls. Phozons. Whatever, the fruit ripens, that’s all the matters), mix esoteric beverages and collect secret recipes in far flung locations: the snowy peaks of Winterhorn Ridge; the verdant pastures of Ringford Forest; even the Netherworld itself is your field!
Your power levels will become stronger as you progress in the art of farmacy, satiating your own hunger and the appetites of the cafés, kitchens and restaurants across Erion, all who seem incapable of procuring ingredients or cooking anything unless you bring them a scroll with specific instructions. Occasionally, our protagonists (or antagonists, depending on whose story you’re currently in) will meet and duel to prove whose horticultural technique is superior in grand battles.
Actually, Odin Sphere has nothing to do with farming, although its inventory and upgrade system sometimes deludes you into thinking it is. It’s a beautiful, gorgeous scrolling action RPG beat-em-up that turns everything you knew about 2D on its head. There is no pixelation here. There are no quaint blocky sprites or two-layered parallax backgrounds. The colours are vibrant, the backgrounds are varied and lush, and the characters are wonderfully animated – You only have to watch Gwendolyn (pictured far left below) in motion to realise the amount of time and effort that has gone into making this game.
Our five protagonists’ in-game sprites. It’s not an exaggeration to say I wept.
Gameplay is typical of a 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up, with the addition of a power bar that limits the number of consecutive attacks you can perform. Run down your power meter, and you will be left helpless to defend yourself as it automatically begins to refill. Wading in while button-bashing will likely end with your early demise, so battles become a carefully orchestrated affair of dealing maximum damage in blitzkreig attacks, seperating enemies for easy disposal, building high hit combos for additional damage and maintaining the power juuust above empty. Each character has its nuances and techniques, preventing you from becoming complacent.
Now, for my only criticism, which is actually quite minor. This intense combat experience is combined with a character upgrade system that can, as hinted at earlier, be rather cumbersome. To upgrade your attack levels, you need phozons. To upgrade your hit points, you need food. To grow food, you need phozons and seeds. To mix potions, you need mandragora’s (vegetables with cutesy names) and materials. To really max your HP, you need a combination of food types and coin-types, which can only be combined outside of the combat levels.
One of the in-game stages.
To cut a long story short, you spend around a minute fighting and then around five to ten minutes organising your limited inventory: shuffling, growing, eating, discarding then moving on. You can ignore most of it, but if you’re like me who tries to expose and exploit every nook and cranny of a game, it does ruin the flow of an otherwise captivating experience.
Spoiler: Griselda dies. And Odin’s a bit of an asshole.
And it truly is captivating. Odin Sphere weaves a tale around the Cauldron, a device of immense power controlled through the ring Titrel, and the war that rages to capture the ring. Each character plays a part in the struggle, either actively or inadvertently, and it is quite enthralling to see, as you progress deeper into the game, how the stories connect to each other. What I thought was masterfully done was the integration of several existing literary and artistic works. Anyone even vaguely familiar with Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen cannot help but note the similarities to Odin Sphere’s plot, yet the game still manages to put its own unique spin on the tale.
All in all, I’ve wiled away 38 hours on this, and I’m only in the early stages of the fourth characters tale. Odin Sphere is a true gem for the PS2, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. And I totally lied about not using obscure gaming references anymore, but that’s okay.
