Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis is a story-driven Western RPG, created by Paranoid Productions and released by Bungie for the Macintosh in 1995. Later, it was re-released as freeware with numerous bug fixes, and can be found here
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The hero is an adventurer sent to find a powerful magical staff to cure a famine in their homeland. After acquiring the staff, their ship is wrecked in a freak storm, and they wash up on a strange island, the staff nowhere in sight. They must now find a way off this mysterious archipelago and possibly recover the staff. However, each island has a problem that can be solved in a number of ways.
This game provides examples of:
- Armor of Invincibility: Pitor's Armor, the reward for the McTeague quest line.
- Bald of Evil: Nemesis. Just look at the box art.
- City Guards: Elba, Niac, the Billsvilles, and Flog all have them in some form. However, they don't seem to enforce any laws other than those against murder and wearing the wrong color.
- Closed Circle: As part of his experiment, Nemesis separated the Archipelago from the world, and each of the islands in the Archipelago from each other.
- Deadly Gas: Both damage-dealing Aeromancy psionics create clouds of poison gas, rather than being straight-up Blow You Away as the name would imply.
- Developer's Foresight: It's possible to get the Glowing Key from Red's quarters without killing him. If you do so, then some of Nemesis' dialogue will change accordingly.
- Elemental Powers: The psionic disciplines of Aeromancy, Cryomancy, Electromancy, Hydromancy, and Pyromancy.
- Escort Mission: There are a lot of them. Specifically, with Clifford and Eric on Elba, Pitor on McTeague, Russel and Deborah on Morage, and Jay on Agressat.
- Fat Bastard: Ronan is described as such. Later, it's revealed that he was actually an unwitting pawn.
- Forced Transformation: The people of Morage aren't being killed or captured by monsters, they're being turned into monsters. Fortunately, you can fix it.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Flog, the capital of Agressat.
- Infinity +1 Sword: Edwards' Trident, the reward for the Morage quest line.
- Load-Bearing Boss: After you defeat Nemesis, his lair begins to self-destruct, catching on fire, and crumbling into rubble. A fitting and perhaps honorable coincidence is that while you are escaping his lair's self-destruction, "The Sunken Cathedral" by Claude Debussy plays in the background (though it was played before confronting Nemesis), given that his lair is on an island. Something similar happens to Ronan's tower if you kill him.
- MacGuffin: The staff. It's vaguely described as having "great magical power" that may help the player character's homeland recover from famine, and is later revealed to be part of the source of Nemesis' control over the islands, but you never actually get to use it because taking it kills you.
- Magic Mirror: The Vex Chambers are accessed by entering glowing mirrors, and Ronan uses another one as a portal to summon his minions from Nemesis' castle.
- Meaningful Name: Un is called that because it's the first island, and its inhabitants believe it to be the only island in the world.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Carl, the cave-dwelling philosopher on McTeague, is an obvious allusion to Karl Marx. He will even break the fourth wall to indirectly acknowledge this if you ask him about "marx".
- Non-Standard Game Over: If you accept Nemesis' offer to become his assistant, he brainwashes you into compliance, complete with a disturbing close-up image of his face.
- One-Hit Kill: In addition to its obvious effect, Extinguish will instantly kill anything except Red and Nemesis.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are two characters named Elizabeth, although they live on different islands, and the first one you meet goes by Beth, anyway.
- Path of Inspiration: The priests on Culn.
- Pocket Dimension: The Vex Chambers on each island are implied to be this.
- Poison Mushroom: The Sweet Red Potion reduces your psionic points to zero when used.
- Psychic Powers: The "magic" system in this game involves psionics, but they really are pretty much magic for all intents and purposes.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: The soundtrack is composed of classical piano music. A complete list can be found here.
- Read the Freaking Manual: A rare in-universe example appears in the Emas control cave, which requires you to read an in-game manual to figure out how the rather complicated device there works.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The people of Elba, who are largely peace-loving gourmets and healers, wear blue. The more warlike Niacians wear red.
- Reverse Escort Mission: There are a few of these, too.
- Sdrawkcab Name: Elba and Niac, the two towns on Un, are "Able" (sic) and "Cain" spelled backwards. Emas is "same" spelled backwards, referring to the magically-influenced conformity of the towns of Billsville, Billsville, and Billsville.
- Shout-Out:
- The game's monsters include CHUDs, Blue Meanies, and Monsters from the Id.
- There's a book called Quest for a Clue, a parody of a series of computer game strategy guides called Quest for Clues.
- A lot of the psionics are named after contemporary songs. For example, Angel of Death, Infinite Dreams, Pyromania, Ride the Lightning, and White Heat Red Hot.
- The psionic that allows you to disguise yourself as a monster is called Zelig Power.
- Shout-Out Theme Naming: The librarians in Wain are named Bertrand and Russel.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Sara of Elba and Eric of Niac.
- Storming the Castle: Both paths on the island of Agressat involve storming Ronan's tower, which leads to a further invasion of Nemesis' Castle Rochelle.
- The Dragon / The Starscream: Red, Nemesis' assistant.
- The Lost Lenore: Peter is a gender-flipped example for Beth in Niac.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable:
- If you close the door to Pollux's house in Billsville, it will automatically lock. Since no NPCs ever open the door, closing it while inside the house will leave you trapped forever.
- It's also possible to be trapped in Vex Chamber II by pushing one of the blocks into the escape path. Since you can't pull the blocks, you won't be able to bring it back out to solve the puzzle, and you can't use the escape path either, for obvious reasons.
