The Odin 2 for gaming and visual novels

The Odin is a gaming handheld made by the Chinese company ayn. It comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen2 CPU, 8000mAh Battery, Hall Sticks and a 1080p 6" touch screen. It runs on android. You can choose between 8/12/16GB LPDDR5x RAM and 128/256/512GB for internal storage. The original Odin came out late 2022 and quickly got attention for its low price point compared to the power you get. 2023 saw the second version, with updated hardware and new features.

Since writing this in 2024, I sold my Odin 2 and got the Odin mini. The Odin mini has very similar hardware, with the biggest difference being the 5 inch MiniLED screen. The design is very close to the PS Vita. This blog post is meant as a general overview, not a step-by-step guide and may contain inaccurate details. Most of it is should be applicable to Android.

What systems and games can you play?

The Odin gives you access to native android games as well as emulation. Emulation makes it possible to play systems like the Famicom, Gameboy, Playstation Vita and even Nintendo Switch on non-original hardware. Through the capable Snapdragon processor you can play pretty much everything, but some of the more current systems still need more time put into the software. Due to legal desputes, some of the software development can be on hold - this is also why I will not put direct links to any of the mentioned emulators here.

Now let's go through some different emulators you can use:

The following emulators are not officially available anymore

This list is by no means exhaustive, and just meant as a starting point.

Playing fanpatches and fanmade game

Japan gets many VN releases, but a lot of them never get an official translation. There are fanmade translations that make some of those Japanese only games available for a global audience. The PSP still has an active community, with people doing translations for old games that never made it to the west, to name one example. Most of those projects will provide you with a patch that needs to be applied to the original game files, sometimes you can find the game with the patch already applied. If you need to apply the patch yourself, you are going to need a windows pc in most cases. Some patches only work on the original hardware and cannot be played through an emulator, make sure to read the instructions carefully. After the patch is applied, the game can be copied to the Odin and played like any other game.

What about games that only released for Windows?

A bunch of visual novels only ever released for Windows. Especially indie titles, where the developer might not have time or money to release the game on multiple platforms. There are two main ways to play windows games on the Odin. The easiest is streaming games, but it requires a Windows computer. I would recommend using Moonlight or Parsec for game streaming. Steam link ist another option, but I found it unreliable over wifi and laggy. There is no need for a high-end pc with crazy specs and the newest GPU, as most Visual Novels are not very demanding. Even 4GB of RAM and some integrated graphics will be enough.

You can then mirror your desktop and play anything you like on the Odin. There might be issues with mouse heavy games, as mouse input over touchscreen might not be seamless and most indie titles don’t support controller input. You can connect a bluetooth mouse or use Odin’s screen-mapping (more about that later). The second option is to use Exagear, a software that lets you execute windows programs on android. There might be a detailed post about this in the future, for now I recommend you join their discord for more information. Search for “Android Visual Novels wordpress” to get started.

Controller not supported: Odin’s screen-mapping

The Odin comes with built-in screen mapping, which can be a great tool for games that do not support controllers. It does the same as third party software like Mantis Pro gamepad, but you don’t need to pay extra for a pro version since it comes with the device. To access the menu, open the game you want to play and swipe from the right side of the screen slightly to the middle of the screen. If you want to add new controls, click “key adapter”. After you’re done, click the blue checkmark to save your controls for that game. To temporarily disable your configuration, tap on “screen mapping”.

Cost and accessories

I purchased my Odin2 at the end of October 2023, currency rates may have changed since.

All in all, I spent around 436€ to get the Odin2 plus accessories I deem absolutely necessary, plus another 39€ for adapters that can be used universally, coming out to 475€. Some numbers are slightly rounded.

While I view the case and screen protector as absolutely necessary, the microSD card is not necessarily. Some things to consider: Which systems do you want to emulate? Are there some storage heavy android games you wanna play, like Genshin Impact or Switch games? You can also hold off on purchasing extra storage right away and see how big your game library turns out to be before making a decision. Maybe you wanna wait for a sale to get a better deal. If you decide to wait you are gonna have to move around all the files though, which includes some hidden files. Many people will be fine with 512GB, coming to around 30€, while 1TB cards sell for 80€ and up.

Note: the case from ayn can slightly discolor the white color variant. If you want a white Odin, I would recommend looking at the current state of this issue or asking on discord and forums.

Which model? Is the base model enough?

I got the Pro model mostly for the color options and the bigger internal storage. The Pro version also feels more future proof, since I don’t plan to purchase another android gaming handheld any time soon (...well). With emulators improving and getting more efficient, pretty much everything should be playable on the base version. The main differences between the models are the RAM and the internal storage, with the latter being easily fixable through a bigger microSD card. I don’t see a reason to get the Max version with 16GB RAM and you certainly don’t need it to play visual novels. Some reasons for more RAM would be higher FPS for demanding games and overall smoother performance. Pick the base model if you’re on a tighter budget.

Some problems: A disclaimer

All of this sounds relatively good, right? There are some caveats here and there, but overall not much that cannot be overcome. Here comes the catch - you're gonna spend a lot of time setting everything up. Especially people not familiar with android emulation or emulation in general. It’s gonna require more than just a couple hours to collect all the information and files you need to do the setup and test it. It’s not done setting up once either, keeping up with software updates and bugs is an ongoing process. Since not all apps can be updated through app stores like Google Play, some apps have to be checked individually. There might be system updates that break your system and make it unplayable and you’re gonna have to go back to an older version.

Yuzu / Switch emulation in general are nowhere near finished. You might wanna look into setting up automatic backups to avoid data loss. Personally, I enjoy playing around with my system like that most of the time, but for many people that is gonna be a huge hassle, and ultimately a negative. Maybe you know someone who can help you with that, but otherwise many people might hold off because of that and understandably so. If you only have a couple of hours every week for gaming, you’re gonna think twice how you wanna spend that time. Setup might be fun for some people like me, but it's not for everyone.