Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Looking over some stats of my last play-through of PSI reminded me of something about Odin. He's this strongman who is supposed to make defeating Lassic possible, yet he finishes with the least HP of any character, (even Noah!!! Come on!!!) He has the lowest Base Attack and Base Defense values: http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/sms/ ... ters.shtml

Despite getting the Laconian Armor and Mirror Shield, a level 30 Odin will only have 1 more Defense than Noah with a Frade Mantle and a Laser Shield, and he will only have significantly better Defense than Myau. His Attack is so lousy that it is usually better to equip him with the Laser Gun, and he usually misses the last two bosses with the Laconia Axe, even most of the time with Help! (Legendary equipment, huh?)

If I'm successful in finding enough information to make a good patch of PSI, he is going to get some statistical boosts for sure! Anyone else ticked off that this musclebound hulk is out-shined in combat by a lithe woman, a cat, and a frail magic user?

I noticed that about him, too. Such a shame that he's supposed to be strong and reliable, and yet his stats aren't that great for a fighter -- he comes off as average as far as stats go. You'd think that where he lacks magic, he'd make up with other things. :\

Although, I suppose he makes up for it with the Laser Gun that always hits everything at 20 later on...I forget the name of it, though. I'd have to open the game up to check.

Farthest I got in the game was the last tower, oddly enough. So I couldn't comment when it comes to the last two bosses.

The Laconian Axe was indeed a bit of a let down but the laser gun makes up for it, Odin with a Laser Gun is one of the most efficiënt thing against the final bosses. One of the Conversations in Elsydeon sums this up perfectly:
"All that trouble to get Laconia weapons, and the only thing which was effective was my gun and Noah's magic." I still get a laugh at reading that.

Fogeltje wrote:Conversations in Elsydeon sums this up perfectly:
"All that trouble to get Laconia weapons, and the only thing which was effective was my gun and Noah's magic." I still get a laugh at reading that.

How true! That's a good one. It really wasn't worth killing Medusa if you got the Laser Gun first.

Odin's strength is really in the range of equipment he can use. Other other characters don't have as many options, so Odin is the only one you can really adjust as you want. If you give him the Laconian Shield instead of the Mirror Shield, he winds up with the second highest defense stat.

But even with that, I did expect Odin to have higher stats. With the shield change, he's only got 11 points on Noah in defense. Noah's base stats seem too high for a magic user. I suppose that happened because the creators really liked that character.

I didn't know how versatile he was until recently. It's nice, but I certainly wanted more. It just seemed a letdown to me that this guy Alis's dying brother tells her to find... isn't as strong as his cat or the Esper... get back in the gym, musclehead!!!

If you think Odin is a let down, look at poor Myau. He only gets one armor for the whole game. That was a big disappointment to me.

I doubt Odin could have been much stronger in the original game. Weren't a lot of numbers maxed out at 255 because of memory limitations?

Yes they are, stats and hitpoints for example were maxed at 255, MES and XP at 65535.

Btw, Odin is the only character in the game that can be equipped with all Laconia gear. He obviously wears the armour. He can also wear the Laconian Shield as mentioned instead of the Mirror Shield and you can give him either the Laconian Sword or Axe as a weapon, making him Laco Man.

I always find Odin useful once he has his Laser Gun but before that, yes, he is a very big disappointment. Especially the beginning, his attack is simply negligible, especially when Myau gets first the Iron Fang and later the Silver Fang. Odin's attack just sucked.

A tad off-topic, but while I can't add any new equipment to this game, I will be upgrading, (a few dramatically,) so Myau will go Cat Scratch Fever crazy with his equips! Fogeltje is right; any worthwhile stat maxes at 255. Luckily no one is Maxed in PSI; the closest anyone comes is with Alis's 220+ Defense. There's actually a lot of room for changes.

Here's a question for all PSI veterans: which is more useless, the Needle Gun or the Heat Gun. I cast my vote with the Needle Gun. It can't even kill Sworms!