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Lost Odyssey might be one of the most touching games I've ever played. I remember meeting that dying woman in the village who turned out to be my - lead character Kaim's - long-lost daughter, even though we looked roughly the same age. Then there was the gnarled old pirate your team meets (and recruits) who turns out to be the son of a lady in your party, who looks much younger than he does. This is possible because Kaim and a few others are immortals and have lived for hundreds of years.But these moments aren't even the game's best. Emotionally poignant and philosophical, the true highlights come in sections with barely any gameplay at all: text-based dream sequences that represent memories awoken inside your amnesiac brain, touching on what it would be to live as an immortal, to outlive those who return your love, over and over again. Visually, these dreams are barely more than lightly animated text against cloudy colours, with gentle piano accompaniment and a few sound effects. But they're deep and ruminative, far more so than the bread-and-butter gameplay they're interspersed in.
These sequences can be 10 minutes long, and they unfold gently in their own time, enforcing a kind of calm appropriate to thoughtful contemplation - a mental contrast to the menu-juggling mindset Lost Odyssey generally requires.
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