If you trust these guys for your game reviews, I seriously recommend that you rethink your position....these guys aren't gamers and they don't know how to play or appreciate games for what they are.
From the IGN AU review:
"The game favours spellcasters like this, you see. Their spells (all elemental and strong or weak against certain elemental creatures) can turn the direction of a battle – but you're screwed if they die and you can't revive them (or, if the cheap AI repeatedly knocks them out on the next turn with a hideous counter attack).
The solution? Either backtracking and level grinding (oh god), or absolute strategic perfection that is far beyond your average player this early in the game. The AI is punishing at times; it loves nothing more than to kick you when you're down. Oh, and if you get past Bogimoray, there's a second one to fight immediately after the first, followed by another significant encounter with a small army. And no save point until all of this has run its course. It took us three hours.
Before you jump in with 'well, he's obviously crap, then', we made sure to do all the random battles, plus a few more, just to ensure we were on track for the encounter in terms of level. We also equipped our characters with weapons that had elemental Aim Rings attached and healed them all before battle. It's just one of many painfully tricky encounters that are made that much harder with the necessity and overemphasis on magic casting."
Grinding and equipping elemental rings? LOL! Did these guys even bother to figure out why they were losing in the first place? It wouldn't have taken them three hours if they put a little more effort into playing the game. If IGN's reviewers are incapable of understanding or solving a problem like this, then I don't see why they should even be trusted for reviews at all. This proves my old theory that most game reviewers speed run through most of their games on Easy mode, just to get their review out in time. They are NOT interested in being fair; rather, they're more interested in getting their paycheck at the end of the day instead of giving most games a fair shake.Beating Bogimoray (the second boss, the white worm creature) is NOT an impossible task and if you ask me, that boss fight is a great way to learn the skill system and the GC system for Lost Odyssey. It doesn't take three hours to beat this boss. I posted this on Teamxbox:
To beat Bogimoray you only need two items, the Yellow band (anti-paralysis) and the Knight's Guard (? the one that recharges GC on defend mode). You can get these from the base that you encounter before going to the Sea of Baus. There's a ladder there that leads to a small area where they are selling supplies....the ladder is guarded by two guards which you have to sneak by. It's a relatively easy task.
Gaining Anti-Paralysis and the recharging skill for GC takes only about 20 or so SP each. If you fight 4 enemies per battle, and get 4 SP from each battle, that's 5 fights to get 20 SP for anti-paralysis and another 5 fights to get 20 SP for the GC recharging skill. Doing that takes far less than three hours. A little bit of sitting down and thinking why Bogimoray kills you the second time around would let you figure out that you need those two skills, and earning them doesn't take too long. It does NOT take three hours of grind if you use your head a little. That's how turn based combat works, and that's how it stays interesting.
Bogimoray is also a great exercise in seeing how technical the game can get with its turn based combat. Complaints were lodged against Blue Dragon that it wasn't challenging enough and you didn't need to think through the fights, which is what made them boring for some. Lost Odyssey brings in the solution, and it turns into a point against the game. Go figure.
Meanwhile, a great game will get ignored by a lot of people because of a stupidly written review. And then next year there are going to be ten thousand "Why are there too many FPS games on XBOX 360???" threads on forums all over the Internet.
Great job IGN AU. You're doing a great favor for gamers everywhere when you trash good games with your casual gaming writers. Do us real gamers a favor and stick to Diner Dash, please.