The Economics of Odin Sphere

Odin Sphere is a cult classic PS2 action/rpg that's known for being one of the most gorgeous games to come out in its generation.

When discussing games like this, it's easy to focus on the story or the combat, but those aren't the reasons why I enjoy it.  For me, the draw of Odin Sphere is that it's the best farming game I have ever played.

Odin Sphere is the only game that I've ever played features mid-combat mixology, gardening, and animal husbandry.  It's a shame more games don't use these mechanics.

Here's how it works.  In this game, you need to take seeds and phozons (spirits that you can absorb to replenish mana) and use them to create plants.  The plants will grow to create phozons and food.  Any of the items in the game can be used for alchemy.  The process of alchemy will create phozons and potions.  It's important to save most of this process for the middle of combat, because phozons can't be stored and will disappear, but are the main way that you can regenerate your mana.  If you run out of mana on a boss, you can kill lesser enemies or plant a Rosemile seed to generate more phozons, to replenish your mana pool and cast more spells.  Alternatively, if you run low on healing, you could instead use those phozons to grow food.

Tending the Garden

If this sounds pretty complicated, it's because it is.  In addition to worrying about short-term resources like mana, phozons, and healing, you also have to worry about your experience level.  Absorbing phozons into your mana pool will level up your weapon, giving you new spells, a larger mana pool, and more powerful attacks.  Most foods will level up your character, increasing your maximum health.  This means that you have to balance your experience pools so that you aren't deficient in either of them.  You can also use any of your healing items to instead create potions.  Potions have a wide variety of effects, but don't give you any experience, so if you spend too many of your food items in alchemy, your health pool will be too low.  However, if you use alchemy wisely, you'll be able to create many more phozons than you would if you don't invest in alchemy, so your attacks will be much stronger.

There are also a few more elements that are at play that aren't so crucial during combat.  As with most RPGs, enemies drop money when they die.  Normally, currency is a very simple mechanic.  You kill monsters, the number next to the $ symbol goes up, you spend money, the number goes down, and that's it.  In Odin Sphere, monsters give you individual coins and not plain, generic, fungible money.  Each coin in the game is worth a certain amount, and when you spend your coins, you have to select specific coins to give the merchant and they give you change in whichever currency they feel like.  There are several different types of coins in a variety of denominations, so this mechanic can get a bit fiddly.  There is a reason behind it, other than making the player's life more difficult.  Merchants are picky in terms of the currency that they will accept from you.  If you want to buy a meal at the restaurant, you'll need to save some of the rarer coins.

I made a diagram that represents how all of this works.

As you can see, all the resources feed into each other.  In my experience, systems like this make for richer, deeper gameplay.  The games that I enjoy the most employ complex mechanics in how players acquire, spend, and transform their resources, and force you to make difficult decisions about which resources you need to prioritize.