Albert Odyssey:
Legend of Eldean

STORY

The story begins in the Harpy Forest where our hero, Pike is getting prepared for dinner. His sister asked him to go out and fetch some water at the well. Which he does. But unfortunately as bad luck goes, while Pike is getting the water at the well, Belnard, the villian of the story, shows up at the village to steal the power crystal from the Harpy village. Apparently Belnard is searching for power crystals to add to his own magical powers inorder to rule the world. Since stealing the village crystal wasn't enough, Belnard decided to turn Pike to stone for added measure. Pike sister, Laia, soon arrived to give Pike a hand. But Laia ended up turned into stone instead. With Belnard leaving after this, Pike is then set forth on a journey to find a priest that can turn Laia back from stone to human flesh. This pretty much sum up what the story quest is about.
Now the story itself is really broken into two parts. The first part involve going on a quest to find a cure for Laia and the second part is the help out Kai, one of your party member, to look for her grandmother. The story is more of a comedy relief story and should give you a few laughs here and there. You should have a good time with this story, but the story is pretty short. I'm not sure if it's the lack of in depth gameplay or the story itself as it's not a really in-depth story. Still the story serve it's purpose by giving you a good time. The only problem is that the story doesn't really have anything to do with the title Albert Odyssey. It should be called Pike Odyssey.

Score: 8/10

CHARACTERS

Albert Odyssey gives you 6 main characters to play with in this rpg. Plus many colorful supporting character as well as villians. Since this is a comedy rpg story. You don't really expect too much of an in-depth character developement. Some of the characters are pretty funny including Pike himself. I do love the many characters though.

Score: 8/10

GRAPHICS

The graphic is your basic 16 bit graphics but pumped up for the Saturn. You're basically looking at a 2-D world with sprites for characters. The sprites are very detailed and done nicely. The colors are amazing. Some people say that the Saturn has better colors than the Playstation, and if you play this game, you better believe it. To this date, I still have not seen a game that has better colors than Albert Odyssey. Tales of Destiny comes close but that's about it. One of the best 2-D graphics around.

Score: 10/10

MUSIC

This is probably one of the weak points of the game. Yes, there are some good tunes, but overrall the music isn't that good. I guess since it's a comedy rpg, the gamemakers decided not to focus too much on the music aspect. It's not like there's any real serious moment or love scene in the game that require a good scene tune to back it up.

Score: 5/10

GAMEPLAY

Now as for gameplay, Albert Odyssey put the words basic traditional turn base rpg to good use here. This is as basic as basic can get. You have up to 5 party members in each battle taking turn attacking, using magic, or special attack. You know the drill. All battle is of course random. The game is very straightforward. You shouldn't have any trouble with this game at all except for the last dungeon. If a boss is too hard to take down at first, then walk around and level up. I do like the town or world map scene where your guy Pike is walking around. In most rpg games, you only see the main hero. However in Albert Odyssey, the entire party walks with Pike which makes it more realistic I guess. Square should take a note and have all FF member parties walking with the main hero too. Since the game is so basic, it's pretty short as there's really not much to do here. This is one of the drawback. Too short and leaves you wanting to see if there's anything more to do.

Score: 6/10

EXTRAS/REPLAY

Hmm, there's really no extras feature in this game. None that's worth a mention anyways. Replay?? None really as this is pretty much a one shot game unless you absolutely have a good time and want to give it another go.

Score: 3/10

In today's world, Albert Odyssey would be considered bad or average at best. The game doesn't offer anything that remotely say 32 bit at all. Still the game gives us a chance to see what a good 16 bit rpg game is all about out. Albert Odyssey isn't really a bad rpg game on it's own. But when you compare it to other 32 bit rpg games out there, it does look bad. This is a good one shot game that you will have a good time with. Nothing more and nothing less.

Final Score: 8/10

~Chi