The Art of Games: Odin Sphere

May 22, 2009 | David Raffauf

Every once in awhile a game comes along that blows my mind.  Odin Sphere comfortably fits into this category.  Released by Atlus, Odin Sphere is the most gorgeous 2D game that has been created.  It blows the competition out of the water.  Unfortunately from the time I spent playing it, the gameplay felt a little tedious.  It’s a shame that it had to come out on the aging PS2 and I would love to see an HD version at some point.

The game features gigantic sprites that are mostly animated in the way that hinged paper dolls would move.  Sure it sounds a little corny and lazy, but it allows for some gorgeous, hand-painted characters to come to life.  The King, for example, takes up almost half of the entire screen.  What’s awesome about this approach is that there is almost no gap between the concept art and the in-game graphics.

Unfortunately the game itself felt kind of boring.  It’s a mix of a beat’em up game with some annoying inventory management.  You get to rotate between many of the playable characters which helps to keep things fresh for awhile.  According to some reviews the gameplay can get pretty deep but it didn’t hold my interest long enough to find out.  For me, this was a title for which I should have picked up the art book in lieu of the game itself.

Vanillaware developed this title.  They took a similar approach with another beautiful game of theirs which I’ve yet to play: GrimGrimoire.  They’ve had the same art director, George Kamitani, on most of their projects, including the Princess Crown games of which Odin Sphere is the most recent installment.  Kamitani also served as Art Director for Vanillaware’s newest Wii exclusive, Muramasa: The Demon Blade.  This almost makes me went to get a Wii.  I feel like Wii is dealing me the Death of 1000 Cuts recently as they pile up some interesting 3rd Party titles.

Checkout some HD videos of this game if the art piqued your interest.  If you can find this game through a rental service then I’d suggest giving it a shot.  I think this game probably only appeals to a specific kind of nerd in a similar fashion of a Storm Trooper SD Bobblehead doll.  If, like me, you lament the death of 2D games and would love to see the limits pushed in the current generation of consoles, by all means, please purchase Odin Sphere.

Below are some of the characters from the game: