Odin Sphere Leifthrasir is a game that will grab you immediately and leave you wanting to see more. A remake of the now almost decade old Odin Sphere (a 2007 game for the PlayStation 2), the game is rich and colorful and fantastic in so many ways. The distinctive style of the characters is set against storybook-like backgrounds. It’s not realism, but it feels so real that you’ll want to reach out and touch the soft leaves of vines, feel the cool breeze off a castle balcony, and most definitely, you’ll wish you could smell and taste all the mouth-watering food in Odin Sphere Leifthrasir. Gigantic enemy bosses and huge dragons that fill the screen are just the icing on the cake. Seriously, everything is so beautiful in this game, even places like the sewer levels look inviting.

The original game was gorgeous, but after a few minutes with Odin Sphere Leifthrasier, it feels like the game was just meant for widescreen, HD format. Every color pops, and the details in everything are crisp and clear. It really is like watching a moving storybook.

The sound of Odin Sphere has always been amazing, and in Odin Sphere Leifthrasier, it’s no different. From the moment the voices lift up in song in the opening of this game, you can feel there is something special. (The Refined Mode of the game even has a newly arranged a cappella version of the theme that is even more enchanting!) For the rest of the game, lovely orchestral arrangements are the mainstay. There are some classical guitar pieces as well. It’s all very good, very easy to listen to music; it all sounds very warm and lively, as if it were being performed live.

You can choose between English audio and Japanese, but I will caution that the English audio does have problems. Sometimes it seems like the voice actors were only given their dialogue half a sentence at a time, so the delivery and emotional impact seems a bit off. And sometimes the lines are read so slowly that it feels painful. But this is only sometimes; during the rest of the dialogue, the acting is powerful and emotional and right on target.

There’s one more thing about the look of the game that needs to be mentioned. This may sound strange, but one of the perks of this game is its food. You can go into restaurants and order lots of mouth-watering dishes like grilled lamb, french onion soup, seafood pasta, and chicken au gratin. That’s not even mentioning the desserts! Why is this such a big deal? It’s probably due to the fact that the game takes so much time to allow you to savor the experience. You sit down in a restaurant setting, you make an order, and the restaurant staff brings you out a delicious, beautiful meal, complete with animated steam rising off the top. Each character has their own eating animation, and will use a knife and fork to savor the meal. There’s just something about the way food is presented in Odin Sphere (and subsequent games by the same director and team, Muramasa: The Demon Blade for example) that makes you want to keep going back for more, even when you don’t need to.

It would be a fine thing if this game was simply an HD update to the original Odin Sphere; it would be just fine. After all, even during it’s era, it was a breath of fresh air. A gorgeous, side-scrolling beat-em-up with RPG elements such as potion-making, food, and leveling was rare for its time, but Odin Sphere was one of the best of its small niche - possibly the best in the category ever. Odin Sphere Leifthrasir, however, is a significant overhaul and improvement to that game in many ways. In the updated version, called Refined Mode, a lot of aggravating features of the original game have been removed or replaced. And there are some exciting new skills and abilities to learn that make things even more interesting. It feels like the best version of Odin Sphere - the version we were meant to have all along. Understandably, some may prefer the original, for reasons I’ll explore later. But never fear, the original version, called Classic Mode, is included in this game as well!

Odin Sphere Leifthrasir does not deviate from its source material in the story department. You start out as Gwendolyn, a Valkyrie and the daughter of Odin. She loses her sister in a terrible battle and receives her spear as a final gift. But what haunts her more is the fact that her father shows little emotional connection to the death of one of his daughters, and even less affection for his surviving daughter. Her inner battle between love and duty is a constant weight on her shoulders. Meanwhile, her father is absorbed in a war that will pull in the entire world, and risks the repeat of a great disaster.

Gwendolyn’s story is one of 5 in the game. You will also play as Oswald the shadow knight, Cornelius the cursed prince, Mercedes the fairy princess, and Velvet, a mysterious survivor of the now destroyed kingdom of Valentine. Their stories intertwine, so one character may go into the past of another character’s story. One character’s story may affect the outcome of another. It’s a linear game, but this interweaving of storylines keeps things interesting and makes you want to go back to play another character’s story to see how different it feels when you have new pieces of story provided by another character that can fill in the gaps.

Don’t get too hung up on the game’s Norse references. This is not a retelling of the story of Ragnarok or the gods of Norse mythology. Odin Sphere is a game that borrows a lot of names and loose references to the relationships or duties of those gods, but it picks and chooses and makes something completely new. It also throws in a lot of medieval themes, a bit of magic, and cursed bunnies. Just go with it, trust me.

With the interweaving stories, each character goes through many of the same areas and fights the same bosses and enemies as many of the other characters. However, their fighting styles, stories, and abilities make each playthrough feel different. For example, two characters may eventually fight the same boss, but they will have to use such different tactics that the fight will feel different. And their personal motivations for why they are involved in the fight may make the fight feel totally different for other reasons.

A very odd thing about this game is how little the enhanced features are being advertised. The new Refined Mode takes a lot of the aggravation out of the game, while still leaving in much of the challenge. For example, you can now release Phozons onto the battlefield, whereas in the original game, you could only store them or allow a plant to absorb them. That sentence probably meant a whole lot of nothing to someone who’s never played this game, but the short story is, now you can focus on battles instead of babysitting the Phozons that each fallen enemy releases. Another new feature is the traveling restaurant. Before, you’d have to save up ingredients and wait until you could go to a restaurant to offload said ingredients. You’d still have to pay money for each dish as well. Now, the paid dishes are separated from the ingredient-needing dishes. In the traveling restaurant, you can trade ingredients for food, making precious space in your bag as you are battling your way through a level and gaining XP in the process. When you go into the full restaurants, you can let loose and pay for food, not worrying about ingredients or recipes. Oh, and now you have item boxes. Wow, how a game changes when it gives you a place to store all your crap.

Oh, and there’s no "fatigue" meter, or Power meter in the Refined Mode either. The original game was a routine of "fight, rest, fight," while the Refined Mode doesn’t place such severe restrictions on fighting. You can simply keep fighting until you need to heal. This is a pretty big convenience, and a welcome one, in my opinion. However, it’s totally understandable how this would make the game feel too easy for some.

Odin Sphere Leifthrasir has the standard array of options in the difficulty department. Easy is super easy, almost a nap if you’ve played any sort of platformer or side-scrolling beat-em-up before in your life. Normal provides a bit of a challenge and will keep you on your toes. Hard is described in the game as "Requires unbreakable will." This is not a bad description. Hard will require you to use everything you know, utilize every technique, carefully manage resources, learn every attack pattern, and will punish you harshly for mistakes.

Now I’m not saying "Ain't nobody got time for that," but I found that years after I played the original, I really don't have that kind of time on my hands anymore.

I am mainly referring to the Refined Mode of the game in the above paragraph. While the Hard Mode of the Refined Mode of this game is no walk in the park, most things are harder in the Classic Mode. Many of those time-saving shortcuts, plus the lack of a power meter, make the Refined Mode inherently easier, and less attention-demanding. That’s probably as much of a draw for some folks as it is a turnoff for others, so it’s good to have the option to go back to Classic Mode.

Odin Sphere Leifthrasir was never a finicky game in the controls department. You can take some time to become very proficient, but the controls are intuitive enough that you can pick up and get started with little hindrance. A jump is a jump, and the timing between button press and attack is easy enough to learn. If you have any experience with platformers or side-scrolling adventure games, you should have little problem getting started in Odin Sphere Leifthrasir.

Another bonus that comes with this game is the significant boost of processing power that comes with the PS3 system (versus the PlayStation 2 that Odin Sphere was originally released on). No longer will everything come to a grinding slow down when there are many enemies on the screen. This means you can focus on the game, rather than negotiating with unpredictable slowdown. I know that this makes a difference for one boss in particular, the Queen of the Dead, who liked to release lots of small enemies on the screen and utilize multiple projectiles. Her fights just don’t feel the same without the sluggish bog downs, but I am glad to say goodbye to them.

Odin Sphere is one of those games that I never feel I can adequately describe in words. The gorgeous art, the sound, the classic gameplay: it’s really a unique experience. And there are so many different elements to the game that it will keep you coming back to find more. With the improvements to the gameplay in this new HD version, Odin Sphere Leifthrasir feels like the game it was always meant to be. I almost hope you read this last line first, because it's all you need. Just go play this game.