I don't know if I would call Lost Odyssey a successor to Final Fantasy. The RPG it brings to mind most for me is Legend of Dragoon. I can't really articulate why, and it's more than just the timing element of combat sequences. Something about the monster and world design, immortals with mysterious pasts I think. There's also a jungle in Legend of Dragoon (where you fight the green dragon) that feels almost identical to a jungle in Lost Odyssey. The oceanside dungeons also remind me of a couple places in legend of dragoon. I actually saw someone claim that some of the people who made Legend of Dragoon worked on Shadow Hearts and that some of those who worked on Shadow Hearts worked on Lost Odyssey, thus the connection is strengthened by tenuous, secondhand evidence. Not that any of this is a bad thing. While legend of dragoon's characterization and overall plot where kind of dull, the world was visually stunning and pretty interesting to explore.I need to get an XBOX so I can play the true successors to FF, the Mistwalker games Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey.
The main story hasn't been too engaging so far. However, the main character is an immortal who's forgotten his own past, but can remember fragments of it through a kind of deja vu (though of experiences he has presumably had before). The stories that are revealed in his dreams ARE really well written and interesting, though they are almost always completely unrelated to the larger plot.
Actually, it does have a bit of FFX in it in that each boss battle (especially early on) seems to revolve around a particular kind of gimic that makes the mechanics of the boss different from the rest of the game. But although it was made by mistwalker, I don't think you'll find it to feel that much like earlier FF games - again, I could be wrong. I've also heard Blue Dragon is more like Dragon Quest - again, this is not a bad thing, as Dragon Quest is a great RPG series.
I haven't finished it myself though. Only about 1/2 way through the game.
I would agree that most of Square Enix's material seems to be kinda meh. I really liked XII actually, but otherwise it seems like a lot of their best work recently is ports of their older games. One can only hope that Front Mission Evolved is a worth successor to that somewhat overshadowed mech series that - going by Front Mission 3 and 4, and what I've heard about japan only front mission 5 - may be the best thing SE has to offer.
EDIT-Given that it's a console game, Front Mission 5 being japan only may be the most disappointing japan-only release I'm aware of.
