THREE SHADOWS
by Cyril Pedrosa

The deal: Three Shadows is a graphic novel from a publisher I haven’t encountered before, called First Second. Everything about the type on the cover, binding and back is tightly styled, and meshes well with the colors and imagery. It’s 8.5 x 6″, which is about the size of an over-sized novel – it rests nicely in your hands.

The summary: Three Shadows is the surreal journey of a father, mother and son as they run from three, looming shadows. Their flight takes them through cities and ports, over the ocean, to unknown lands. Everywhere the father takes his son, the three shadows follow, until all he can think of is how to run from them. His son is afraid but believes utterly that his father will protect him from what is coming.

The review: The summary for Three Shadows is short because the premise and execution are remarkably easy to explain. However, don’t let that deceive you – there is a great deal of depth in this book, in the sparse dialogue, movement of story, and richness of imagery and expression. The story has the feel of an allegory, and that is because it ultimately is, as explained on the inside back flap (although I’d recommend against looking at that before you read the story.) The story is melancholy from beginning to end, but it has a building intensity that keeps you tacked to your seat, even as you wait for the other shoe to drop.

The story is done very much in the spirit of the magical realism apparent in books by Garcia Marquez, Allende, and Murakami – strange things happen but are taken for granted as the mundane becomes the focal point of the story. I was personally impressed – it seems tricky to transfer that style to a graphic novel because it’s so easy to overdo the strangeness with the visuals suddenly fully presented rather than described.

The recommendation: This is a melancholy story, but it’s quite good. Despite it’s simplicity – or perhaps because of it – the story resonates. Three Shadows was actually translated from it’s native language (French … thanks commenter darkwind!) very very well – the English translation does the story justice, and this is a beautifully written and illustrated book.

from First Second, International Comics, 272 pages, $15.95 ($10.85 at Amazon right now)

LOST ODYSSEY
by Mistwalker

The deal: Lost Odyssey for the XBOX 360 is an RPG from Mistwalker and Hironobu Sakaguchi, the famed creator of the Final Fantasy series. This is his third game outside of the franchise. It is a 4-disc game.

The summary: The story of Lost Odyssey revolves around Kaim, a one thousand year old man who cannot remember his past. When the game begins, he is quiet and moody, a lot like many RPG protagonists that we know – but as the story unravels, we are given a good explanation as to why – and (surprisingly), Kaim begins to open up.

Kaim is joined by several immortals and a few mortals, who begin a long and arduous journey to defeat a man name Gongora, who it seems is somehow linked to these immortals. Their quest takes them all over the world, to a lot of colorful places. It’s worth noting that the world in which these characters reside is pretty full of … well, stuff. It’s just very fleshed out, and the time period – thirty years into a sort of magic-industrial revolution – is interesting and novel.

I’m going to stop here – the world is unique and definitely it’s own, so it won’t feel recycled.

The review: I’m going to go ahead and say that the team behind this game is pretty good. Hironobu Sakaguchi is the founder of FF, the writer is Japanese novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu, and the composer is Nobuo Uematsu. The Mistwalker team is actually joined by Feel Plus, a studio made up of people who worked on Shadow Hearts, a lesser known RPG that is one of my favorites, hands down – I’ll probably review it some time.

This game is different from the FF franchise in a lot of notable ways, but the best way to sum up is that this is FF “grown up”. Characters are given plausible motivation, they show emotion, and dialogue is more than just filler between action and play. I enjoy me a good FF, don’t get me wrong – but these characters on the whole are older and more adult-like than their FF counterparts. Themes like parenthood and marriage come up again and again.

The battle system is novel, complex and interesting. Attack rings keep you paying attention and interested during fights (time a button press right to increase damage, something like Squall’s gunblade – on steroids). It’s similar to the system in Shadow Hearts, but you’re also provided with a menu option called Ring Assembly that allows you to assemble new attack rings to capitalize on specific weaknesses that particular foes have. You can switch equipment out in the middle of battle, so this becomes very useful.

Also of note is the guard system – your characters are divided into front and back row during combat, and the front row provides a defensive wall that can be worn down over time – but the higher your GC, the (significantly) less damage your back row takes.

Leveling up takes attention as well – immortals can learn any skill from any mortal, but they can’t learn new skills themselves – mortals learn skills as they level up on their own. This means that you have incentive to switch characters in and out (usually I end up picking a main party and ignoring the rest). If immortals die in the middle of a battle, they will automatically come back to life after a few turns, which is very cool – it is fun in battle and also helps reinforce the storyline.

The voice-acting is pretty good, actually – some of the voice actors are very recognizable – and they all manage to do some pretty nuanced speech.

One interesting feature is The Thousand Years of Dreams – occasionally, when you talk to someone or see something, it will spark a memory in Kaim and then you’ll be treated to a long text story. Of all the things in the game, this is what makes Kaim’s age of one thousand years believable. Sometimes the stories are violent, sometimes sweet, sometimes poignant – they run the gamut, but they really help to flesh out Kaim’s character, as well as the world around him. Some people may balk at all those words in a row, but you’re given the option to skip them, so it’s not a big deal.

I could go on about all the neat features this game has tucked away, but I actually want to move on to the negative now. I only have one really big complaint, and that is the character design. I hated it right from the opening scene. There’s all these soldiers fighting on a battlefield and then something crazy happens, but these soldiers are all wearing stupid hats and I can’t stop thinking about dumb they are. If they were stupid but believable, that would be okay, but they are entirely implausible and impractical. This is compounded when Kaim shows up – he rips through the enemy ranks and it’s all very badass, but he’s wearing armor that exposes his midriff. What the hell? That’s stupid. I was thinking to myself, well, maybe it’s just a fluke – they wanted to make it visually interesting and the protagonist of these games always has to be some slightly effeminate pretty boy – but no, the costumes only get dumber and dumber. And the architecture, don’t get me started – it is ridiculous. Feel free to ignore this entire previous paragraph, but I like my character and world design with a bit of research behind them, and I get the crushing feeling that there was none. Everything is gaudy and impractical, and it sometimes detracts from the overall experience.

That being said, it doesn’t detract enough for me to put the game down. I’m right at the beginning of disc 3 right now, so maybe I’ll do a follow-up review when I’m done. Maybe they’ll explain the stupid costumes and the wacky buildings (all their tailors and architects are monkeys on LSD?).

The recommendation: If you can get past the weird visual aesthetic, this is actually a pretty rich game. The story is interesting, the game mechanics are engrossing, the music is good, and the tone of it is a good deal fresher than what you’re probably used to.

by Mistwalker, for XBOX 360, $59.99

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 12:01 AM and is filed under Rant, Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.