When comparing Lost Odyssey vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best story driven games on Xbox One?” NieR: Automata is ranked 10th while Lost Odyssey is ranked 28th. The most important reason people chose NieR: Automata is:
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Beautiful visuals that hold up well on Xbox One
Impressive character models and gorgeous oceans, sweeping vistas, and detailed cyberpunk cities in Lost Odyssey feel like they could easily belong on Xbox One. You'll get to see every level of detail in Kaim's expressions as he goes through many hardships in the story. Exploring the lush forests and rocky mountains of overworld levels is exciting because of how real everything looks and feels in Lost Odyssey's detailed style. The opening cinematic that shows Kaim fighting against a legion of soldiers is especially great, with a seamless transition from the cutscene into a battle, almost like something out of a tech demo.
Pro Backward compatible on Xbox One from Xbox 360 with improved loading times
Lost Odyssey's graphics were ahead of their time on the Xbox 360, but these unfortunately came with the limitations of long loading times. Thanks to backward compatibility on Xbox One, you don't have to worry about waiting for two minutes or more each time you zone into a new area. The loading screens are reasonable, and you'll most likely go through the game without many performance issues.
Pro Well-executed traditional turn-based combat
Lost Odyssey's turn-based combat captures the traditional feel that JRPG fans love, with elemental magic for exploiting enemy weaknesses, plenty of skills to learn, and lots of gear management. Your magic casters stay in the back row to shoot out spells, and your physical attackers will hold the line in the front to protect the casters. For tougher battles, you'll be able to rely on your immortal characters who can't die in combat, but they're really limited when it comes to learning new skills. Your mortal characters will get knocked out if they take too much damage, but they're free to learn new spells and skills like normal. There's also a cool and unique system where mortal characters can teach their skills to immortal characters to keep battles from getting stale.
With managing your gear, you'll find a lot to play around with through the game's equippable rings. These rings have certain resistances to different elements, so you'll want to make sure that your team has the best rings for any challenges in your way. If you're having a hard time with a thunder boss, you can spend some time tweaking your ring loadouts for your characters instead of throwing yourself at the fight and losing over and over with no real strategy.
Pro Epic soundtrack
Lost Odyssey has an epic soundtrack with a huge scope, capturing all of the emotions behind war, family, and tragedy. The battle themes have piano and percussion melodies that sound tough enough to fit right in with war movies. For large overworld locations like snowy plains in the middle of blizzards, the wintry xylophone sounds and menacing synths really make you feel like you're trekking through a harsh environment. More tragic songs for cutscenes pull at your heartstrings with harpischords and violins. But then there are other songs with harps and violins that give you hope that the story will turn out okay for Kaim and his friends. The composer, Nobuo Uematsu, covers a lot of emotions in this soundtrack, fitting perfectly with the game's mature story and themes.
Pro Mature story that grapples with the downfalls of immortality
As you play as Kaim, you'll get to relive his lost memories of his family that he can't remember. Even though he's immortal, he can't remember the things that should matter most to him. He struggles with this transience in his life while fighting to save the world. It's an interesting and mature take on the tropes of immortality and amnesia, putting you in Kaim's shoes as he struggles with these tragedies alongside his companions who support him along the way.
Pro Fast-paced, action-packed combat
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Pro Unique storytelling with a real emotional impact
NieR: Automata's outlook on storytelling is incredibly special. To get the full experience, you have to run multiple playthroughs of the game, each of which offers a new experience and perspective. Your world view of the story events and characters expands drastically as you complete each playthrough, playing on your expectations to help you develop a deeper emotional bond with the protagonists and become invested in their plight.
Things take a real turn on your third playthrough, putting you on an emotional roller coaster all the way to the true ending. The plot twists and knocks on the fourth wall elevate the story to a truly unique place. Getting all the way to the very end can be a religious experience from how much heart and meaning you discover in the symbolism.
Pro It's got a hauntingly beautiful environment
NieR: Automata is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape after Earth has been overrun by hostile machines, and the artists really nailed what that would feel like. Abandoned and overgrown cities litter the landscape along with old refineries, graveyards, and eerie forests. When you add the beautiful soundtrack to the experience, it fills you with a bittersweet mix of loneliness and hope.
Pro Varied genre-spanning gameplay elements
NieR: Automata has different types of gameplay to keep things interesting. From the very start, you're on an on-rails bullet hell section, and then you switch over to the more traditional action RPG style of fast-paced combat. Things change up again not long after with some side-scrolling platforming from a 2D view. Later on in the story, there's a hacking mini-game where you navigate a tiny ship through a short puzzle, with the music changing to a charming retro sound to fit the theme and mood. This is a game that doesn't stay boxed in a single genre.
Pro An incredible amount of content
Outside of the main story, there's plenty of optional content to dive into. The side quests are the best way to get to know the characters and lore of the world, with some of them giving clever and subtle foreshadowing of the game's most critical events. There are also weapons to collect and upgrade, each of which offer nice little tidbits of lore after you get them to max level. And after reaching a certain point in the story, you get access to Chapter Select that lets you go back and replay whatever you want. You can easily spend 60+ hours exploring the world and still have much more to do.
Pro Gorgeous, ethereal soundtrack with amazing vocals
NieR: Automata's music is out of this world. It's so stunning and elegant in a way that nothing else can really live up to. The soundtrack manages to emotionalize the game through music, from the action-packed tracks with hard-hitting wind instruments and percussion, to the softer, somber songs that encapsulate the hauntingly beautiful environments and story moments you encounter. Vocals in the lore's indescribable language makes the music even more memorable, adding to the ethereal quality of the sound. This soundtrack is definitely one that you can go back to again and again without getting sick of it.
Cons
Con JRPG tropes dilute the overarching plot
If you're not into JRPGs because of the tropes, then Lost Odyssey may not change your mind about the genre. The plot with a cast of characters coming together to defeat a destructive evil force isn't too original. Although there are other details that help the game stand out from the crowd, like the focus on immortality, they won't do much to bring in anyone who dislikes the predictable tropes.
Con Limited open world
Even though NieR: Automata is technically an open world game, it doesn't always feel like it. It's more that there's a big open space in the center of the ruined city you explore, with branches that lead off to vastly different environments, like a desert, a village, and a few other places. These locations aren't that spacious, either, and it's a bit of a stretch to even imagine all of these places being so close together in the first place. It's not too much of an issue as long as you find the story and combat engaging enough.
Con Second playthrough can get repetitive
Once you get to Route B, your second playthrough, you may find that too much is the same. There are some big differences, such as the new way you get to see things play out, but a lot of it rehashes Route A, your first playthrough. There's a ton of hacking you have to do as well, which gets pretty boring after repeating it over and over again. But if you stick with it, Route C and onward are absolutely worth the time spent getting to that point.
Con Some boring fetch quests
The pacing gets messed up when you're forced to run certain fetch quests near the start of the game. This is somewhat forgivable after the fun and action-packed introductory level, but the quests themselves are still a drag to play through. Some of the side quests can also boil down to the same thing. Even though these quests give a lot of useful information about the world, they're not all that fulfilling, and you may dread having to repeat them when playing through the game again.
Con Buggy on PC
Some players complain about the game crashing, freezing, their save files mysteriously disappearing, and more. As of June 2018, over a year after the game's initial release, there is still no patch to fix these problems. Not everyone on PC will have these bugs, but it's still quite prevalent. If you continually run into issues, your best bet is to find a mod or play the console versions instead of waiting on an official patch that may never happen.