Albert Odyssey (Saturn)

Oh dear. Being a fan of 2d rpgs I’ve been wanting to play this for quite some time, I have to say however that I was really disappointed.
Let’s begin with the good, the graphics are gorgeous, typical high end Saturn 2d – prior to getting round to playing this I had played through three Snes games back to back (Chrono Trigger, Secret Of Mana & Zelda III) and the increase in both resolution and colour pallete made Albert Odyssey look very very impressive indeed.

Sound is a mixed bag, whilst many of the tracks are good on their own in my opinion they don’t really fit the feel of the game. The battle/boss battle tracks in particular are a bit non-descript
Story isn’t bad, bit generic but aren’t all RPG’s? Working Designs have done a decent job with the translation and for a change have pulled off all their attempts at humour successfully.

















It’s in the all important gameplay where Albert Odyssey really lets itself down, there are just far too many random battles. Apparently Working Designs toned this down from the Japanese release but it’s hard to see where, in some dungeons you often can’t go more than 2-3 seconds without an encounter which means it takes far too long just to figure out where you’re going.

This wouldn’t be so much of a problem I guess if the battle system wasn’t so unbelievably boring and lame. It’s just so basic and unexciting I struggled to keep awake to be honest. By the end of each dungeon I was just left with no enthusiasm to carry on and certainly no enthusiasm to grind to increase level.

So not the worst RPG on the Saturn but certainly not the best…..that title belongs the the fabulous Grandia!