What I really enjoyed about the game, though, is the freedom that’s afforded in its customization options. You should know what kind of gameplay to expect in a hunter and, for the most part, Ragnarok Odyssey pulls it off nicely. Not surprising for one of these types of games, the vast majority of your time will be spent visiting the same dozen or so locations and pummeling slightly different collections of enemies in order to grab loot and move further into the campaign. Boss battles are the real treat of Ragnarok Odyssey, however, each requiring actual tactics and attack pattern recognition to topple.
Regular enemies are decently varied but typically allow you to fall back on the same old series of combos you’ll inevitably become comfortable with in all of that button mashing goodness. Once you’ve picked your class (each with their own gear and abilities), it’s off into the world of monsters where your job is to adventure across a collection of interconnecting maps to achieve whatever your current mission’s goal requires and trounce baddies. There’s also a tavern for handling cooperative play but, again, we’ll get to that in a minute. There’s a place to take on missions and buy helpful items, as well as a host of NPCs just waiting to chat you up or progress the game’s admittedly light plot with conversation. In the hub, you’ll have access to a smith for crafting and upgrading weapons, seamstresses for selling and upgrading outfits and accessories, as well as an energetic dude who is very excited to give you a haircut and alter your appearance later in the game. Like most hunter games, players will spend quite a bit of their time at Fort Farthest, the standard hub world for this particular game. Their settings are typically very different, their fighting engines vary, the various systems that are at play are unique and the type of hub or hub world players spend their downtime in are usually a bit different. Games like Soul Sacrifice, Toukiden and the upcoming Freedom Wars jump to mind, each offering their own take on the same infrastructure.
As is becoming routine for these types of games, an upgraded version has now launched for the PlayStation 3 and Vita, Ragnarok Odyssey ACE, offering up new content and various other bells and whistles that are worth a look-see for fans of the original, and might even convert some of those who were originally unwilling to take the plunge.Įver since the original Ragnarok Odyssey hit the scene shortly following the launch of the PlayStation Vita, games that revolve around the simple formula of running around enclosed environments, beating the stuffing out of anything that moves, then returning to a hub to upgrade your gear, buy new items and repeat, have become commonplace. Over the past couple of years, the PlayStation Vita has become home to a number of games in the hunter genre, the first of which was Ragnarok Odyssey, released back in the fall of 2012.