A playthrough of Working Designs' 1997 role-playing game for the Sega Saturn, Albert Odyssey: The Legend of Eldean. This is the first part of a two-part playthrough. The second half can be found here:
I show all of the optional cutscenes and side-quests as I go. Albert Odyssey isn't a name that tends to pop up a lot in conversations about old video games, likely due to the fact that this Saturn-exclusive JRPG is the only game in Sunsoft's series to ever be released in English. In Japan, the first two Albert Odyssey games are highly regarded strategy RPGs for the Super Famicom, with the first being considered a major classic and genre staple. Legend of Eldean diverges from that formula quite a bit, and its original name, Albert Odyssey Gaiden, makes that quite clear from the outset. In most ways, it is as traditional of a JRPG as you would find in the 1990s. It follows the typical set-up - a boy finds out that he's exceptional after bad things happen to his village, he wanders between towns and dungeons across an overworld map, he joins forces with others that agree that bad people are bad, and he gets pulled into random enemy encounters every five seconds. But that's not all. This was a Working Designs project, after all, and the script goes out of its way to regularly remind you of the fact. I've always had mixed feelings on the company's approach to localization, and while I agree that straight, literal translation is a poor way to handle things, WD goes way too far in the other direction this time. Any sense of gravitas or sweeping sense of grandeur the plot might have once carried is utterly wrecked by the attempts at humor here. Not only does the script give the sense that some actual substance was sacrificed for the English version, but it *constantly* breaks the fourth wall with random movie quotes, yo mama jokes, and stupid non-sequiturs. If the jokes served some sort of purpose, or were even the slightest bit clever or amusing, I wouldn't have minded as much as I do, but their frequency and tone undermined any chance I might've had to engage with the plot, and the humor is so snarky and mean-spirited (not to mention misogynistic) that I ended up finding myself rolling my eyes and heavily sighing through far too many of the dialogue exchanges. And since this is Working Designs, they didn't stop at merely rewriting the script into what might actually be a distant ancestor to Movie 43. They also had their way with the game's internal bits. They dramatically reduced the game's (still annoyingly long) load times and the encounter rate and jacked up the experience and gold awards. These changes do make for a much more streamlined game, but they also make it a far too easy one. Most enemies can be dropped in the first round of a fight, and boss fights never pose much challenge, though the later ones can easily last 20-30 minutes at a shot. The battle system was simple to begin with, but when the fights are this easy, you aren't left much to do but hit the confirm button over and over again. The presentation is fair but a bit underwhelming for 1997. The sprites look nice and there are some cool scaling effects and animation details, but it looks like a game that was shifted from SNES to Saturn mid-development. It's pleasant to look at in a generic, quaint sort of way, but it's far from a generational leap over games like Tales of Phantasia or Star Ocean. The same goes for the soundtrack. It's typical RPG fare, and it's of good quality, but it was composed by Naoki Kodaka! I couldn't help but be disappointed by how flavorless it was in comparison to his older works. I didn't hate Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean, and I could easily imagine someone having fond memories of playing it way back, but now that I've played it through twice, I'm all set. It's lackluster for a Sunsoft game, and it's all but destroyed by what is, in my personal opinion, one Working Designs' worst ever attempts at game localization. I'd put it right up (down?) there with Exile 2: Wicked Phenomenon in that regard. If you are considering playing it, I wouldn't recommend spending the coin that an original copy goes for. If you have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket and you want a rare Saturn RPG, go buy Panzer Dragoon Saga. It's a masterpiece. Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean is not. My Sega Saturn playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gSj_kh1fHusbY1pbK_ZLcNILDNra1Pd _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete (
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