One of the first traditional RPG's comes to the
Saturn, after much delay and fingers being crossed
over it's release. One has to wonder if the game
was even worth taking a look at, or playing at all.
Set your minds at ease, it is. Since the recent
release of Shining the Holy Ark, most people would
debate over which RPG they should get, however
this isn't a review of Shining, so you'll have to look
elsewhere. Here is my overall view of the game,
after playing it about five to six hours.
Graphics 95%- Ever play Chrono Trigger? The
characters were highly detailed, and played as good
as they looked. The backgrounds were just as
good, and I considered it the best animation I had
seen in quite a while. Not any longer, kids. Albert
Odyssey has the best animation that I have seen on
any RPG, and the best hand drawn backgrounds.
The characters look as good as they animate,
and the towns and areas are animated heavily, with
smoke from smokestacks, clouds roaming the sky,
animals, all the expected fanfare, but it just looks so
damn good. The battle sequences are cool, with
exception of the slight load time. All the characters
actually talk during battle, and they also have
several animations considering on each affliction.
(Poison, Sleep, etc.) There is even a death
animation for each character, I mean, the animation
is simply incredible. And so far when you equip
your character with certain weapons, they will
change their attack animation. For this type of genre
RPG I give the graphics a high rating. While it's
nothing new, it is certainly flashy.
Music/Sound Effects 90% - Okay, first off the
music is standard RPG fair, with battle music and
the various town music. I'll say that it is done fairly
well, but some of the music is to short, and
therefore tends to repeat itself. Now the sound
effects are a different matter. So far all my
characters have little voices for their attacks and
magic, along with the basic sound effects of battle
magic and when a weapon hits a monster. Monsters
also have their own little voices as well. This
category got only a 90 cause the music for some of
the areas was annoying. The sound could be rated
as a hundred, as it contains more sounds than any
other RPG, which makes the battles fun to watch.
Control 100% - What do expect? It's a RPG, not
a fighting game. But if you have played games such
as Final Fantasy, or Breath of Fire, the fighting
system is simplistic in itself. Don't worry about the
simplistic value, it's the same with most RPG's.
Gameplay 90% - Since I have not played it for
that long, I cannot give it a real fair value, but so far
I am very impressed with this game, and that is hard
to do for me. I love everything about it. The
graphics, the animation, the sounds, the story. And
that is what really counts here. The story is cool,
and you can change it around by selecting things to
do at many points in the game. There is a lot of
humor in the game, mostly centered around sexual
jokes, but they aren't perverted or anything. The
characters are fairly cool, mostly cause they have
awesome attacks and spells. The story won't leave
you with no idea of where to go. Overall, this game
is my favorite Saturn RPG hands down, with
Shining my second. If you are RPG starved and
want something old, then tune in to AO. Not
entirely original, just entirely cool.
SCORE: 9.0
