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IGN to scrub Filip Miucin from the site almost completely after even more plagiarism surfaces
- Thread starter B-Dubs
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Thread of the year.
Yeah, that Sailor Moon thread is pretty good.
This dude never should've left Youtube and became a shameful game "reviewer" at IGN. Butsmeeshrrrrrrr!
I love how his disgusting attempt at discrediting Schreier lead to the discovery of countless more instance of plagiarism.
So I'm 10 years late but finally getting around to this. Since I never owned an Xbox or an Xbox 360, there's a ton of old exclusives I've been catching up on since buying an XOX.
Lost Odyssey was high on my list, since I remember the buzz around it when it came out. Final Fantasy VII/VIII/IX are some of my favorite games ever, and I had heard of this game being similar. But god damn I was not expecting it to be *this* similar. I love it!
If you played this right after FF7-9 and were told this was FF10, there is absolutely no way you'd find it to be an inconsistent evolution of the franchise. Hell, it's a closer successor to 7-9 than 10 was (not to mention 12, 13 and 15), for better or worse.
The combat/skill system draws from several older FF titles. The "Ring" setup (timed trigger mechanic to boost damage) is a clever variation on FF8's Gunblade trigger, only this time you get to mix and match elemental and status bonuses depending on who you're fighting. The Skill system seems inspired by FF9's, where you can equip items but after a certain amount of experience with it equipped, you "learn" the ability and can use it without the accessory. The twist here is that only Immortal characters can do this, while Mortals learn skills by leveling up (and then, in a somewhat FF8 style, you junction Mortal skills on your Immortals so they can learn them). They made the classic front/back row setup more significant this time around, by having your back row's bonus defense be tied to your front row's remaining HP.
One welcome change though is the overall encounter rate / leveling balance. The encounter rate is mercifully low. This is offset by battles being, overall, longer than the average "trash mob" single-hit affairs typical in a FF game. Each level requires only 100 XP. How much XP you get from a fight depends on your level relative to the enemies'. So for instance, you might reach a new area and find each battle gives you 20 XP - meaning 5 battles is a level up for your characters. Once you level up though, identical battles in that area might start giving you 3-4 XP. This makes it really quick to "catch up" to an area's suggested level, while making it grindy and unattractive to actually overlevel. If there's a character whose level fell behind the group's? Swap them into the party, and they might level up in a single battle (while the on-level peers gain 3-4 XP), making them catch up in no time. This makes it easier to swap characters out frequently instead of focusing exclusively on a "main party".
You have the same magic and enemy types, the same recovery items and status effects, the same map design (see a narrow path branching off the map? Go down and there's an item or chest there). Hell, when I first gained control of a boat to sail the overworld I actually chuckled - it's 100% a PSX-era FF overworld.
A lot of the reviews I've checked for the game criticize it for being this stuck in the past, but I've been loving it. If this had been called Final Fantasy instead of Lost Odyssey (and perhaps not been exclusive to a platform with a smaller RPG player base), I'm certain it would rank well (not the top, but definitely not near the bottom) in FF rankings.
I'm still on "disc 2" (a weird metric given it's a digital title) and so far I've been impressed. I came in looking for a PSX style Final Fantasy experience, and what I found was literally a fourth mainline PSX Final Fantasy - with better visuals and a different name.
One aspect that makes this game stand out are the dream sequences. These are text-Heavy snippets you trigger while exploring where the protagonist, who is a thousand years old, remembers stories of his long life. These are just sublime short stories. They discuss the hardship of war, the absurd aimlessness of a life with no end, small characters he's made along the road who made a big impact on him, cultures and rituals from countries long since vanished... I can see some people finding them tiresome because of how they're paced (I recently reached a town with like 3-4 of these in quick succession, leading to a fairly long time reading with little gameplay in between), but the stories are so damn good that I give them a pass.
The music falls somewhat short of the franchise's greatest hits (and yes, this is absolutely part of the FF franchise in my opinion - this is too far beyond "inspired"), but is still fantastic. Framerate and general movement / combat speed is much improved compared to how I remember PSX FFs playing (specially IX), but I don't know how much of that is down to X optimization.
The party is unusual. Right now I have a family of four (protagonist, his wife and two grandchildren), along with an obnoxious playboy, a tough no nonsense pirate girl, and a very inappropriately dressed runaway Queen. The kids, oddly enough, aren't hyper annoying. The queen and pirate are great. The drunk playboy dude ranges from occasionally funny to (more often) annoying and creepy. The actual protagonist seems balanced. He's rather silent overall, but not a moody little shit like Squall, not as arrogant as Cloud, and sadly lacks Zidane's charm. Still, he's tough but still displays strong emotional reactions when his memories or family (or memories of his family) are involved.
It's still too early for me to rate the actual plot, but for the moment I'm intrigued. So far it's about as interesting and well written as these things usually are: somewhat above average by gaming standards, laughable by literary standards. Par for the course and just what I wanted out of it.
I'll be giving you some feedback as I move forward with the game but in the meantime - what are your takes on this title?
No spoilers please :)
Lost Odyssey was high on my list, since I remember the buzz around it when it came out. Final Fantasy VII/VIII/IX are some of my favorite games ever, and I had heard of this game being similar. But god damn I was not expecting it to be *this* similar. I love it!
If you played this right after FF7-9 and were told this was FF10, there is absolutely no way you'd find it to be an inconsistent evolution of the franchise. Hell, it's a closer successor to 7-9 than 10 was (not to mention 12, 13 and 15), for better or worse.
The combat/skill system draws from several older FF titles. The "Ring" setup (timed trigger mechanic to boost damage) is a clever variation on FF8's Gunblade trigger, only this time you get to mix and match elemental and status bonuses depending on who you're fighting. The Skill system seems inspired by FF9's, where you can equip items but after a certain amount of experience with it equipped, you "learn" the ability and can use it without the accessory. The twist here is that only Immortal characters can do this, while Mortals learn skills by leveling up (and then, in a somewhat FF8 style, you junction Mortal skills on your Immortals so they can learn them). They made the classic front/back row setup more significant this time around, by having your back row's bonus defense be tied to your front row's remaining HP.
One welcome change though is the overall encounter rate / leveling balance. The encounter rate is mercifully low. This is offset by battles being, overall, longer than the average "trash mob" single-hit affairs typical in a FF game. Each level requires only 100 XP. How much XP you get from a fight depends on your level relative to the enemies'. So for instance, you might reach a new area and find each battle gives you 20 XP - meaning 5 battles is a level up for your characters. Once you level up though, identical battles in that area might start giving you 3-4 XP. This makes it really quick to "catch up" to an area's suggested level, while making it grindy and unattractive to actually overlevel. If there's a character whose level fell behind the group's? Swap them into the party, and they might level up in a single battle (while the on-level peers gain 3-4 XP), making them catch up in no time. This makes it easier to swap characters out frequently instead of focusing exclusively on a "main party".
You have the same magic and enemy types, the same recovery items and status effects, the same map design (see a narrow path branching off the map? Go down and there's an item or chest there). Hell, when I first gained control of a boat to sail the overworld I actually chuckled - it's 100% a PSX-era FF overworld.
A lot of the reviews I've checked for the game criticize it for being this stuck in the past, but I've been loving it. If this had been called Final Fantasy instead of Lost Odyssey (and perhaps not been exclusive to a platform with a smaller RPG player base), I'm certain it would rank well (not the top, but definitely not near the bottom) in FF rankings.
I'm still on "disc 2" (a weird metric given it's a digital title) and so far I've been impressed. I came in looking for a PSX style Final Fantasy experience, and what I found was literally a fourth mainline PSX Final Fantasy - with better visuals and a different name.
One aspect that makes this game stand out are the dream sequences. These are text-Heavy snippets you trigger while exploring where the protagonist, who is a thousand years old, remembers stories of his long life. These are just sublime short stories. They discuss the hardship of war, the absurd aimlessness of a life with no end, small characters he's made along the road who made a big impact on him, cultures and rituals from countries long since vanished... I can see some people finding them tiresome because of how they're paced (I recently reached a town with like 3-4 of these in quick succession, leading to a fairly long time reading with little gameplay in between), but the stories are so damn good that I give them a pass.
The music falls somewhat short of the franchise's greatest hits (and yes, this is absolutely part of the FF franchise in my opinion - this is too far beyond "inspired"), but is still fantastic. Framerate and general movement / combat speed is much improved compared to how I remember PSX FFs playing (specially IX), but I don't know how much of that is down to X optimization.
The party is unusual. Right now I have a family of four (protagonist, his wife and two grandchildren), along with an obnoxious playboy, a tough no nonsense pirate girl, and a very inappropriately dressed runaway Queen. The kids, oddly enough, aren't hyper annoying. The queen and pirate are great. The drunk playboy dude ranges from occasionally funny to (more often) annoying and creepy. The actual protagonist seems balanced. He's rather silent overall, but not a moody little shit like Squall, not as arrogant as Cloud, and sadly lacks Zidane's charm. Still, he's tough but still displays strong emotional reactions when his memories or family (or memories of his family) are involved.
It's still too early for me to rate the actual plot, but for the moment I'm intrigued. So far it's about as interesting and well written as these things usually are: somewhat above average by gaming standards, laughable by literary standards. Par for the course and just what I wanted out of it.
I'll be giving you some feedback as I move forward with the game but in the meantime - what are your takes on this title?
No spoilers please :)
So sad that people here are attacking Filip just to get clicks
Worst apology ever
This guy should've stayed on Youtube instead of becoming a disgraceful game "journalist" at IGN. Yeesh!
I don't know exactly what Filip did but damn if he hasn't upset Dreamcast guy. The guy was almost crying in his last video regarding the topic, worst feeling in the world when someone betrays you.
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