5/5 ★ – stephenhill777's review of Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir.

This is a game that most people should be talking about. They should, but don't, and we'll come to the "Why" of that at the end. I've never played the original Odin Sphere but Leifthrasir is a game that has been expertly tweaked to feel exquisite to play. Every character moves at a satisfying speed and they all have some form of aerial traversal that makes moving from screen-to-screen a breeze (some can fly, others swing, one enters a shadow dimension to keep afloat, you know, the usual stuff). The combat is the juicy main course of this whole experience. You rarely have less than 10 enemies attacking you at once. However, your characters have such a terrific arsenal of moves that cutting through them pleasingly calls back to games like Dynasty Warriors, albeit in 2D. It's not without its challenges. I saw a handful of game-over screens when I became too invested in the fight to notice my health had dropped. And late game bosses offer serious challenges when they are literally too big for a single screen to contain them. But the beauty of it is that, even after levelling up to the point where you're massively overpowered, the combat never stops feeling fun. A lot of this is down to the visual and audio design. Sprites are beatifully rendered, their visual design and attack animations keeping the action very fresh. Fighting Salamanders and Vulcans feels notably different from fighting Geists and Wraiths, but never jarringly so. The rushing sound of your special moves powering up, or the satisfying death rattle of the last enemy on screen similarly adds to the sense of accomplishment. And the fanfare for every fight you complete (accompanied with your rank and subsequent rewards) means that no fight feels like a waste of time. The game itself is really, well and truly, beautiful to look at. The characters have a quasi-anime style to their design, while the backdrops have a painterly aspect to them that begs to be admired. Serious effort has been made here, and it would be difficult for any player not to acknowlege that. It excels in depicting the sublime, the stunning night sky of Ragnanival being a particular highlight. Yet, it also triumphs in depicting the smaller, cozier areas in the game. The narrative-framing attic-space depicted in the beginning of the game is achingly picturesque, and even has a cat whose belly you can pet between the earth-shattering battles. So, why don't people talk about this game? In my opionion, it's because it's twee. It's as twee as hell and there is no cure. Any game that has fairies in pig-tails tip-toeing around a wooded glen and anthropomorphic rabbits who talk in dreamy overtones is only ever going to appeal to a certain kind of gamer. And that's a shame because, if you can get past that, the story itself is actually pretty excellent. It uses a Rashomon-style framing device, with different characters offering different perspectives on events. It's hard to say who the definitive heroes and villains even are by the end of the game. It shows a level of emotional maturity that is sadly not reflected in the tone or character design. So yes, you do have to come to terms with the fact that one of the characters you play as is literally a fairy princess. But if you can get past that, it's worth noting that said princess has a crossbow that is basically a machine gun, and she uses it to shoot fireballs at frogs and demons indiscriminately.