At the moment, I am playing my way through Mistwalker and Microsoft Game Studios' latest action-RPG, Lost Odyssey . I've played the game for approximately three hours now – not much time to truly get the full scope of a game this large, but certainly enough time to start forming some impressions. I should mention, when I say large, I don't just mean that it's because it's a fully scripted, story-driven RPG, I'm also talking about the amount of disk space the game takes up (a total of four DVDs).

During the short time I've played through the game I've noticed a few things. The first is that it's presented in a highly cinematic style. To say that it's a cinematic masterpiece at this point would be rather forward, but from what I've seen so far, it looks to be promising. When I said that the game is story-driven, I meant it. A large part of the game centres around the protagonist, Kaim Argonar's dreams, which are essentially little books you get to read through (the presentation is a lot more compelling than it sounds).

You get introduced to Kaim's personality very early on in the game during the cutscenes where he speaks with other characters. At first I thought he was a poorly created, completely indifferent character. Then I realized that he is not actually indifferent, but tired of his existence. His immortality has forced him to live through much of the same thing over and over again, so he is not surprised when specific people act in specific ways, because he has seen it all before. Some of the other characters are quite unique too, though that may have been brought about not just by the scripting, but by the voice acting as well.

One of the city environments in Lost Odyssey

I'm finding the gameplay to be both inviting and interesting. I'm enjoying exploring the game's environments, though the field paths I've encountered to this point have been quite linear and bare. The city environments I've seen so far though, are quite full. I like the combat system. It's easy to work with, and I like the ability to pick my character's attacks at the beginning of each attack round. Of course, that said, yes, it is a turn-based battle system. So, if you're more into real-time combat, this may be a bit of a let down. This brings me to the Final Fantasy -style random battles. I still don't get the reasoning behind this other than making sure a player can't purposely avoid a fight. I'm not fully opposed to it, but there's just something strange about walking in a completely empty field by yourself, and suddenly Bam!, you're in a battle with enemies you didn't see a quarter of a second ago.

Other than the complaints about the currently bare field paths and random battles though, I'm quite happy with Lost Odyssey so far. I'm looking forward to continuing through, all the way to the end of the fourth disc, if not because of absolutely great gameplay, because I want to read all of Kaim's dream stories and watch the game's story unfold.