It's traditional, simple, and straighforward but that's the whole beauty of the game.
The Gameplay: Lost Odyssey is a turn-based with a standard menu system like Attcak, Magic, Item, and such. A battle menu system that you've found in Role Play Games about 20 years ago. It's traditional, simple, and straighforward but for me that's the whole beauty of the game.
Weapons in Lost Odyssey aren't really exciting as you can't power it up or hold any special properties or craft weapons whatsoever. Characters can wear a ring, an item that will do an extra damage againts enemies depend on what kind of ring you wear. In order to use the ring, whenever you order a party member to perform a standard attack, a circle will appear around your target while a larger one encircles the screen. To receive the full benefit of your ring, you hold a trigger down to shrink the larger circle and release it when it has shrunken to the size of the smaller one. The better your timing, the more potent the bonus, and if you are too far off, you don't get any benefit at all.
There is also magic system here. It's pretty basic magic system as well like fire, water, earth, and wind. Most of the enemies has their own elements, and this is where the magic comes in handy. For example, an enemy with fire element weak againts water so if you cast water magic on enemies, it will do extra/double damage on enemies. Enemy with water element weak againts earth, earth weak againts wind, wind weak againts fire and so on. You can earn stronger magics as you level up your characters. Score: 9.0
The Characters: Your party consists of 9 characters. 4 immortals and 5 mortals. Mortal characters will learn new spells and abilities as they level up, while immortal characters do not learn anything on their own. The immortals learn new abilities through the use of accessories, which when enough AP is gained (AP gained from winning a battle), they will permanently learn said ability and can equip it using one of their available skill slots. Immortal characters can also learn spells by skill linking with mortal characters, but they'll both need to participate in battle at the same time in order for the ability to gain enough AP to be learned. Score: 8.0
The Graphics: The game uses Unreal Engine 3. It's definitely not the best graphics I've seen so far but it's still gorgeous, especially the scenery. Everything from the cities, the ruins, the cutscenes all of them are well done. NPC characters are not as good as the others but it's still good looking. The beautiful graphics aren't without it's consequences. The long load time is one of the biggest issue in this game. You have to wait the game to load everytime you entered a new area and also you'll notice some slowdown in the cutscenes. You can minimize the load time by installing the game to your X360. Its quite noticeable when you installed the game, it runs faster. Score: 8.5
The Musics/Sounds : Nobuo Uematsu, once again, proves himself as a top notch videogame composer. I dont need to tell you how great the musics in this game, you can already tell by knowing who the composer is. The English voice acting is good enough. There is also Japanese voice acting as an option if you are not too comfortable with the English voice acting. Score: 8.5
Final Score: 9.0