Time for sushi?
Squids Odyssey is a unique mix of action strategy and RPG: build your team of Squid heroes for epic turn-based battles against corrupted crabs and shrimps. Steev, Vahine and the rest of the Squids are in danger. An infectious black ooze is corrupting their world. The band of unlikely heroes need to fight back to save their lush underwater kingdoms.
At first glance, Squids Odyssey is a weird game. It has turn-based battles where you fling yourself at your enemies and shoot them from long range, as well as other moves. You level your characters up with the cash you earn, while collecting and earning stars for each stage will unlock later ones for you. The game is built into different levels for each main battle, some are quick and some will take some patience to finish. There’s a difficulty spike here, luck definitely plays a part in victory…and sometimes death can come at such an unfortunate moment that it will infuriate you.
Some areas have no edges to them and you can be knocked off to your doom or you can miss a shot and fly off yourself, it can be really unfair and cruel to die like this as you’ll probably have to restart the level as a result, which is annoying if you’ve already put like 5-10 minutes into it… I’m not saying it’s not without its issues, but if you can get past them then you’ll find an enjoyable turn-based RPG underneath it all.
The good thing is that you can switch between playing on the TV and the Gamepad, which is always a nice option that I wish more games would use. It’s a nice looking game, albeit simplistic in its design and the controls are a mixed bag, sometimes they feel really responsive and other times they can be frustrating…especially when lining up a shot only to fall off the edge like previously mentioned. There is some skill and luck involved, especially if you line up a shot which throws the enemy into some spikes or thorns, causing extra damage.
The Verdict
Squids Odyssey is a nice, but flawed tactical RPG. It can be incredibly frustrating at times and the story isn’t as great as it could have been, but if you can overlook its flaws there is a good game to be found here and will make a nice addition to your Wii U collection.
