Planting fruit and eating food is also a fantastic way to ensure you're always keeping yourself at a proper level, since everything you consume earns you XP. There are plenty of alchemy recipes to find and concoct which help out either defensively with various stat boosts or health restoratives, or offensively, allowing you to summon giant whirlwinds or volcanic blasts out of the ground.
Leifthrasir ensures that even when you're not in combat, you're still engaged in other activities. So if you want a challenge, don't play on Normal, since it's a little too easy. I never had a hard time getting an S ranking in a lot of the fights, and never got anything lower than an A ranking. However, with that said, the combat is a lot easier this time around. You'll go from ground based attacks, chaining it with a skill that knocks your enemy up into the air, where you air dash around them, knocking them even further, laying down one more combo attack before smashing them down into the ground and following that up with an extremely satisfying ground pound. If I could equate the combat to another Vanillaware game, it would be closest to Muramasa: The Demon Blade: Much like Muramasa: The Demon Blade, the combat revolves around "flow," chaining attacks together to basically juggle your enemies around, and watching your combo meter go up in the hundreds. But that doesn't mean it becomes a mindless button masher. Now, your stamina or POW gauge only goes down when executing various skills, meaning you can hack and slash your way to victory in each fight. Those that enjoyed Odin Sphere's original more stamina-based combat might scoff at Leifthrasir's more action-based combat, but there is a lot of nuance to it. Sure, you do retread levels you've already been in, but given how different each character plays, it makes those retreads worth it.Īside from the different weapons each character wields which fundamentally changes how each character behaves in combat, they also have access to a variety of skills and magic spells that you can acquire and level up as you play, with each easily accessible either through button presses, button combo inputs, or even simply selecting them from a menu while the game is paused. Odin Sphere deals with some depressing storylines and is able to convey each character's emotion on its 2D plane.Īll of the characters also interweave through each other's stories, meaning you get to see the entirety of each conflict from multiple point of views. It also proves you don't need fancy 3D cutscenes for stellar character development. Beating each character's story mode will take somewhere between 6-8 hours, depending on how thorough you want to be with exploring each stage. Part of what makes Odin Sphere such a great game is how it subverts the notion that 2D beat 'em ups should be short affairs. Combining items is a breeze and even things like planting seeds and harvesting them is changed up, since you can now release Phozons yourself, instead of relying on them from enemies. Gaining a good combat grade is easier now that you can actively see the grade as you're fighting. But I'll get to the combat a bit later.Įverything else is also streamlined.
While it was a more strategic take on combat, ensuring the game doesn't become a button masher, Leifthrasir is certainly more action based. Every action would take away stamina, forcing your character to stop and take a breather, leaving them open to attacks. Had I not re-familiarized myself with the original, I probably wouldn't have remembered the sluggish, more stamina based combat. In this day and age of remasters and remakes, Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir is a shining example in this area, as it's essentially a whole new game, at least in many of its mechanics. Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir is an updated version of the original 2007 game. I remember loving it when I first played it back in 2007, thinking of it as a near flawless game. Its unique art style which Vanillaware established in a previous game titled GrimGrimoire, was even more gorgeous here, and featured five playable characters, each with their own personal storylines. While I would hope that Odin Sphere needs no introduction, as it was one of the most unique games I played on PS2, the reality is that it was quite a niche game.
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