History VideoGame / LostOdyssey

The game was made backwards compatible with the UsefulNotes/XboxOne and was re-released for free for the last two weeks of 2016.

''Lost Odyssey'' was the second of two [[EasternRPG Japanese-style RPGs]] developed for the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 by Creator/{{Mistwalker}}, the other being ''VideoGame/BlueDragon''. The game was released in 2008, and was produced and written by ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, scored by Creator/NobuoUematsu, co-written by award-winning novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu, with character designs by Takehiko Inoue, the manga artist who single-handedly popularized basketball in Japan with the ''Manga/SlamDunk'' series.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: You will have two monarchs: Queen Ming and King Tolten, at the end of the game.

* SpiritualSuccessor: To Franchise/FinalFantasy [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyI I]]-[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX X]].

* {{Expy}}: Sed is this to the Cids from the Final Fantasy games, not only his name pronounced almost the same way but he takes up the same mechanical role. The Kelolons also have the same shape as Moogles and serve a similar comic relief role. On a meta-level Lost Odyssey is an expy to the classic Final Fantasy games.

* FateWorseThanDeath: Since he couldn't kill his fellow immortals, [[spoiler:Gongora]] had to get ''creative''.

* BonusBoss:
** Lots. Persona, [[ShoutOut Blue]] [[VideoGame/BlueDragon Dragon]], Holy Beast, Cave Worm, King Kelolon, Ghost of Eastern Ruins, Golden Knight, and Killalon from the DLC dungeon.
** The Immortal probably counts too, seeing as he is the toughest boss in the game.

* ShoutOut: A couple of these, such as the Kelolon and the BonusBoss Blue Dragon, both references to fellow Mistwalker game, Blue Dragon.

Its plot centered around Kaim Argonar, TheHero, an [[LaserGuidedAmnesia amnesiac]] mercenary who is apparently [[{{Immortality}} immortal]]. As the game opens, he is serving in the army of the [[TheFederation Magic Republic of Uhra]], a nation still in turmoil from the abolition of its monarchy, in their war against the beastmen of Khent. The game opens with the final battle of the war, which is concluded by a meteor strike (which takes the form of lava pouring out of the sky) that wipes out nearly everyone on both sides save Kaim and another amnesiac immortal, a woman named Seth Balmore.

* CrutchCharacter: Jansen could be seen as playing this role. He is no more competent at his primary role as BlackMage in the start of the game then later on; however, he also starts the game with a very small repertoire of low level WhiteMagic spells. He is the only person with access to healing in the first section of the game, which is important since [[HealerSignsOnEarly every starting party must have a healer]]. He will never learn new healing spells, and his white magic will quickly fade in usefulness as enemies grow stronger; however, his healing is just solid enough to last until a proper dedicated healer joins the team, allowing Jensen to fall back to his primary role of black mage.

* EarlyGameHell: New players may struggle in the first section of the game. Part of the problem is the that your smaller team size means your dependent one one Jensen doing both your BlackMagic and WhiteMagic, causing difficulty in prioritizing healing your party and doing your main form of damage. However, a bigger problem is the lack of the potential GameBreaker abilities of [[RegeneratingMana Relax]], which you gain access to right after the first major dungeon, and [[DeflectorShields Cover]], which is gained not too longer after Relax. For experience players who know how to properly combine skills and manipulate [[DefendCommand defend]] and GC to build Kalm up as a tank the start isn't as painful, but not everyone is going to figure this out on their first play through.

* EvilChancellor: Both Gongora and Kakanas

* TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask: Ming Numara.
** That's the consequence of her amnesia: her dream segment and what the party can learn by talking to her subjects shows us that without her memory loss she is a ruler with over nine centuries of experience in leadership under her belt who's frighteningly good at her job and is able to [[DetectEvil see whether a person is trustworthy]] from their eyes far before they've ever even considered of betraying her yet remain exceptionnally casual with her subjects outside of her working hours to the point that they treat her like their favorite aunt: the Queenly Mask is meant to hide her crippled memory.

* BareYourMidriff: Cooke.

* PrisonEpisode: Kaim and company are at one point obliged to escape from the brig of a royal yacht, dodging security drones and pussy-footing across pressure-sensitive floor tiles. Hilariously, they begin their escape by wiping the memory of their guard and convincing him that they were jailed by accident, so even if the player makes a mistake and the party gets caught again, the guard will apologize and let them back out.

* ILoveNuclearPower - Magic, for the most part, is treated as an energy source that allows many complex machines (like cars) to be built, but, well, being magic, it's capable of so much more. Your first major quest is going to a giant magic reactor, Grand Staff, which is leaking magical energy and mutating the local wildlife into monsters.

* {{Meganekko}}: Sarah.

* SayingTooMuch: One of Kaim's dreams, "Little Liar", focuses on Kaim befriending a young girl that became a CompulsiveLiar after her mother died and her father seemingly abandoned her, alienating her from the rest of the market she's sleeping at. Eventually, she tells Kaim that if he wants enough money to leave and continue his journeys, [[IHaveThisFriend her "friend"]] was supposed to be receiving money from her father after he got a job in the city, but the local tailor has been stealing all of her mail, so Kaim should steal from him. The next morning, an angry mob forms from the shopkeepers at the market because they think the girl has stolen the tailor's money. Kaim confesses to the crime instead and says he found the letters in the tailor's house as well; the tailor claims that's impossible, because he threw them all away...and then the mob immediately turns on the tailor.

* SayingTooMuch: One of Kaim's dreams, "Little Liar", focuses on Kaim befriending a young girl that became a CompulsiveLiar after her mother died and her father seemingly abandoned her, alienating her from the rest of the market she's sleeping at. Eventually, she tells Kaim that if he wants enough money, [[IHaveThisFriend her "friend"]] was supposed to be receiving money from her father after he got a job in the city, but the local tailor has been stealing all of her mail. The next morning, an angry mob forms from the shopkeepers at the market because they think the girl has stolen the tailor's money. Kaim confesses to the crime instead and says he found the letters in the tailor's house as well; the tailor claims that's impossible, because he threw them all away...and then the mob immediately turns on the tailor.

* ApocalypticLog: The spheres the group finds scattered through [[spoiler: Experimental Grand Staff]], especially the entries detailing what happens to the security guards ordered to "test the prototype's interceptor skills throughout the facility" by [[spoiler: Professor K]].

* BackForTheDead: Much of disc one is spent on the identity of the girl in Kaim's dreams, eventually revealed to be [[spoiler: Kaim's daughter Lirum]]. Almost immediately upon finding her, she dies of a long illness and you aid her children, Cooke and Mack, in holding her funeral.

* {{Bathos}}: Given that all accessories show up on the characters during cutscenes, and some accessories are absurd, this happens. Nothing likehaving a tense confrontation with enemy soldiers while your party is wearing cat ears.

** The Khents, a race of dogpeople resembling dobermans.

** Inverted by the end of the game: when [[spoiler: the love of your life is also an immortal]], immortality suddenly [[CursedWithAwesome does not sound so bad]]

* BreakTheCutie: A necessary part of [[spoiler: Gongora's]] plan. Sarah gets it very hard, but the other Immortals get it too.

* CharacterSelectForcing: [[spoiler: The FinalBoss locks out all of your mortals. Hope you trained your immortals!]]
* ChekhovsGun: Wandering around in Numara's Ghost Town early in the game, you can see [[spoiler:one of the petrified monsters that Gongora used to hold the country hostage, which you'll have to fight much later on.]]

* DeathOfAChild: Mack [[spoiler: can actually die if you bring his HP down to zero in the boss battle where he's possessed in the Crimson Forest. Cue Cooke sobbing over her brother's corpse. Worse when you remember this is basically right after Lirum's funeral.]]
* DefrostingIceQueen: Male version with Kaim; starts as TheStoic then begins to warm up once he [[spoiler:meets his grandchildren and reunites with his wife, Sarah.]]

* EvilPlan: Being an immortal, genius, and extremely powerful mage, Gongora's got almost everything he needs to secure an eternal rule over the world. However, there is a key vulnerability: [[spoiler: the Tower of Mirrors, the point uniting the human world and his home plane, the latter being a place where he's perfectly mortal. As long as it exists, there's the lingering threat of someone forcing him back home where he's not nearly as unstoppable. As such, Gongora builds Grand Staff, a massive magical reactor, under the pretense of bringing energy and prosperity to the kingdom of Uhra. Grand Staff's true purpose is as a weapon, to be used first to destroy the Tower of Mirrors and cut off the Immortal plane from the human world, and then to enforce his will on everything and everyone who would dare defy him.]]

* FirstGirlWins: AND LastGirlWins at the same time! [[spoiler: Sarah somehow qualifies for ''both'' tropes at the same time, due to the particular origin of the immortals. Since all immortals are actually aliens from another dimension and all knowingly came across to the gameworld dimension with the same mission. This means that they all likely knew each other prior to arriving in the in-game world, including Sarah and Kaim, making Sarah the [[FirstGirlWins 'first girl']] potential love interest that Kaim would know. However, apparently all immortals decided to go their own separate ways, except for occasionally coming across each other on their respective travels. Whereas Kaim went on to live a fairly mortal-like life and settling down and having multiple families over time, from what little in-game clues are given it seems that Sarah mentions it was only when Kaim actually 'found' her that they even met, married, and had their daughter. By then they were so close to their deadline to return to their homeworld, that they had to opt to abandon their mission just to raise Lirum to adulthood. Kaim on his part has proclaimed that Sarah is effectively the 'love of his life', despite his previous wives, and considering their convenient mutual immortality, it seems certain that Sarah would remain the [[LastGirlWins last wife]] Kaim would take.]]

* HarmlessFreezing: Horrifyingly averted when [[spoiler: Gohtza and all it's inhabitants are killed in a freezing holocaust.]]

* HumanAliens: [[spoiler: The nature of Immortals as a whole is unclear, but they're not human: they are beings from a parallel world that attained human form upon reaching the game's world. Their immortality, in fact, is a consequence of their world and the human world being so fundamentally different.]]

* {{Immortality}}: Kaim, Seth, Sarah, Ming and [[spoiler: Gongora]] are effectively immortal.

* PointOfNoReturn: Subverted twice with Grand Staff 1+2 and then played straight with the [[spoiler: Tower of Mirrors]]. A particularly JustForFun/{{egregious}} example in that while you are warned both times you try to enter Grand Staff, the ''actual'' point of no return gives no warning outside of an automatic save point that's rarely seen beyond disc change prompts.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Ming, and Chancellor Roxian of Uhra. [[spoiler: Unwilling to let capable rulers interfere with his plan, Gongora has Roxian eaten by a giant snake.]]

* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Ming and eventually [[spoiler: Tolten]].

* SealedEvilInADuel: Exactly what [[spoiler:Gongora]] wants to prevent. The fact that [[spoiler:he tremendously pissed off Kaim, Seth, Sarah, and Ming ''does not'' work in his favor.]]

* UnderratedAndOverleveled: The game appears to be a pretty horrible offender. Seth and Kaim are immortal beings who spent the nearly a thousand years fighting and developing as warriors, Jensen was picked by the strongest mage in the capital to be an ally for them, and Queen Ming (who is received only shortly later) is an immortal queen known for stopping an invasion of powerful magic beings single handedly with her powerful magics. Fighting along beside this team are... two little kids with no combat training at all. Cooke, at least, has the combat abilities befitting a little girl, and uses White Magic, in a world where magic is plentiful, and where she had to help her sick mother. Mack doesn't have this, but [[spoiler: his encounter in the Crimson Forest]] gave him abilities unknown to the world for hundreds of years.

* UnwittingPawn: Tolten is such a well-meaning idiot it's almost painful to watch. [[spoiler: Thank God for CharacterDevelopment to knock it out of him.]]

* WeAreAsMayflies: [[spoiler: Immortality is not genetic, so Kaim outlives his daughter and Seth looks at least 30 years younger than her own son.]]

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: General Kakanas' ultimate fate isn't entirely shown: [[spoiler: while he comes off as comical for a large amount of time and would normally be expected to rot in jail for the rest of their life, he did essentially stage a coup and later tried to unsuccessfully murder his queen in her sleep and like the dream involving her shows, [[LeaveBehindAPistol she's not beyond letting traitors get what they deserve]]]].
** This question gets answered if you talk to Maya, Ming's lady in waiting, after his defeat [[spoiler: she had him placed on the construction crew responsible for cleaning up the mess he and his tanks made of the palace. Maya that is, not Ming; really says how little of a threat he is to the Queen now that she's got her memories back.]]

* GameBreaker: There are some very powerful late game abilities, but arguable the biggest two GameBreakers, especially when used in conjunction, become accessible early in the game. The first is the [[RegeneratingMana Relax]] skill, which allows regenerating mana when defending, and removes the need to conserve mana. Once mana problems are resolved the only real threat to your party is if you allow your GC to drop so low that your backline characters start taking damage faster then it can be healed. This threat in turn can be countered with the [[DeflectorShields Cover]] series of spells, which can be preemptively cast to absorb a certain amount of damage. Not only is cover more efficient use of mana then healing, the GC meter won't drop if damage is absorbed by cover. It's possible to survive dungeons at much lower level then intended by creating a party with only Kalm in the front row, built with tanking traits and potentially defending every turn, and one or more healers, armed with infinite mana thanks to Relax, casting Cover on Kalm as soon as it wears off. This set up will make your party effectively immortal so long as you remember to top off GC on the occasions where it drops due to do an ability breaking cover. This becomes even more broken if you equip Kalm with Stand Ready, to increase GC if attacked when defending, and then have him defend every turn. Now the entire party is taking scratch damage, since your always maxed out Guard protects anyone that isn't Kalm and Kalms defending every turn trivializes the damage he takes.

* MotorMouth: Jansen. Has the remarkable ability to pack over five times as many excuses, commiserations, and complaints into a sentence as the average person. And every word is [[EnsembleDarkhorse solid]] [[HamAndCheese gold]].

* SmugSnake:
** Gongora. He has enough power, intelligence and [[ManipulativeBastard "interpersonal skills"]] that you'd ''think'' he'd make a fine MagnificentBastard... but he's so obviously evil and completely lacking in charisma, pummeling the slimy little git is all you'll think about.
** Done literally when [[spoiler:Gongora turns into a giant snake to kill the head councilman.]]

* CrutchCharacter: Jansen could be seen as playing this role. He is no more competent at his primary role as BlackMage in the start of the game then later on; however, he also starts the game with a very small repertoire of low level WhiteMagic spells. He is the only person with access to healing in the first section of the game, which is important since[[HealerSignsOnEarly every starting party must have a healer]]. He will never learn new healing spells, and his white magic will quickly fade in usefulness as enemies grow stronger; however, his healing is just solid enough to last until a proper dedicated healer joins the team, allowing Jensen to fall back to his primary role of black mage.

* GameBreaker: There are some very powerful late game abilities, but arguable the biggest two GameBreakers, especially when used in conjunction, become accessible early in the game. The first is the [[RegeneratingMana Relax]] skill, which allows regenerating mana when defending, and removes the need to conserve mana. Once mana problems are resolved the only real threat to your party is if you allow your GC to drop so low that your backline characters start taking damage faster then it can be healed. This threat in turn can be countered with the [[DeflectorShields Cover]] series of spells, which can be preemptively cast to absorb a certain amount of damage. Not only is cover more efficient use of mana then healing, the GC meter won't drop if damage is absorbed by cover. It's possible to survive dungeons at much lower level then intended by creating a party with only Kalm in the front row, built with tanking traits and potentially defending every turn, and one or more healers, armed with infinite mana thanks to Relax, casting Cover on Kalm as soon as it rares off. This set up will make your party effectively immortal so long as you remember to top off GC on the occasions where it drops due to do an ability breaking cover. This becomes even more broken if you equip Kalm with Stand Ready, to increase GC if attacked when defending, and then have him defend every turn. Now the entire party is taking scratch damage, since your always maxed out Guard protects anyone that isn't Kalm and Kalms defending every turn trivializes the damage he takes.

* {{Adorkable}}: Gongora's public persona is humble, soft-spoken, stammering and endearingly awkward, playing up the image of a man not entirely comfortable with being the center of attention. His true nature, of course, is the exact polar opposite.

* GameBreaker: There are some very powerful late game abilities, but arguable the biggest two GameBreakers, especially when used in conjunction, become accessible early in the game. The first is the [[RegeneratingMana Relax]] skill, which allows regenerating mana when defending, and removes the need to conserve mana. Once mana problems are resolved the only real threat is allow GC to drop so low that your backline characters start taking damage faster then it can be healed. This threat in turn can be countered with the [[DeflectorShields Cover]] series of spells, which can be preemptively cast to absorb a certain amount of damage. Not only is cover more efficient use of mana then healing, the GC meter won't drop if damage is absorbed by cover. Create a party with Kalm in the front row, built with tanking traits and potentially defending every turn, and one or more healers, armed with infinate mana thanks to Relax, casting Cover on him as soon as it wares off will make your party effectively immortal so long as you occasionally top off the occasional drop in GC caused by an ability breaking cover. This becomes even more broken if you equip Kalm with Stand Ready, to increase GC if attacked when defending, and then have him defend every turn. Now the entire party is taking scratch damage, since your always maxed out Guard protects anyone that isn't Kalm and Kalms defending every turn trivializes the damage he takes.