With so many RPGs out on the market for portable systems, it’s easy to let some slip through the cracks. Despite word of mouth being strong for the Etrian Odyssey series, I had never had a chance to pick one up before, (or any first person dungeon-crawler for that matter). Taking on such a huge game can be intimidating to some, but thanks to Atlus and their newest 3DS release, Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight, and its new features to make the game more accessible to beginners, I decided it was finally time to dive in. After over 50 hours later, and what I discovered was a deep adventure with seemingly limitless content to uncover and a rewarding level of difficulty, but not without a few snags along the way.
Being the first Etrian Odyssey game I’ve ever even glanced at, I had a lot to orient myself to. Drawing and marking your maps is an integral part of properly exploring this game. Cartography is something I have never even considered the possibility of being a fun thing to do. Of course, I have been known to obsess over making sure that I uncover every darkened pixel of the map of [insert choice of RPG here] so I had an idea of how much time I would be spending with the map tools. The rewards are well worth the tedium though, as it will save you tons of time on back-tracking through the later floors trying to find certain items, locations or enemies if you have marked them previously.
From what I understand, the map-making elements in this latest Etrian Odyssey have been made much more accessible through animated map icons, such as the bridge icon that lets you know whether a bridge is up or down and what side it needs to be accessed from to be lowered or raised. You also have the ability to leave yourself notes on elements that you have found, there are a ton of different colors to mark your map with, and it is always visible from the lower touch screen of the 3DS. Auto-mapping is also super useful and saves you a ton of time while exploring by automatically drawing walls and floors where you walk.
As useful as the auto-map feature is, I ran into a snag within the first 20 minutes of the game. Auto-mapping is automatically turned to ON from the beginning of the game to help first-timers successfully complete the only mission in the game where completing your map matters at all. While exploring the cartography features and trying to map all of the little squares how I thought they should be, I attempted to fill in every square that’s auto-generating green with the red color and draw walls in places that made sense to me. Flash-forward to the next two hours full of despair, as I re-draw the map over and over, running back and forth to the town to see if it will let me turn in the mission as completed. I finally conceded defeat when I hit hour 3, asking my Geekscape compatriot to start a new file, and lo and behold, auto-mapping took care of the mission necessities and he was able to turn in the mission within the first half-hour. And the lesson of the day for this game is: Don’t be overzealous with your map-making. Not only so you don’t tire yourself of the game in the first hour, but there are a ton of floors to map.
With the first mission fiasco behind me, Sir KagoMegan and party continued on through the world, fighting in random battles, finding hidden items and secret events along the way. The game has a nifty color coded danger bar that alerts you with a short quip from one of the characters in your party if an enemy is about to pounce. This comes in handy when you are trying to avoid the large, stronger enemies that circle certain paths on the map, referred to cleverly as “F.O.E.”s. If you enter a random encounter in the visibility range or path of an F.O.E. (depending on the type), they will move towards you every turn until the random battle ends. Early in the game, it can be as good as a game over if you accidentally engage a F.O.E. before you’re ready to face it.
To defeat some of the stronger enemies in the game, you’ll need to enter battle with a sound strategy. Typical of a lot of RPGs, you may organize party members in FRONT or BACK lines according to their talents. Archers, healers, mages are best suited to the back row as they have the range, need to be protected and often have less defense and health while more defensive characters and strong attackers with melee weapons go in front. Of course, the choice on how to utilize your characters is entirely up to you, as you have the option to change a character’s weapon specialty and upgrade tree at any time in the game back in town.
Every character also has what are called FORCE abilities, which will be integral to your battle strategy when fighting some of the game’s more challenging enemies. For example, Ariana’s FORCE ability allows her to extend her ORDER command, which includes healing, attack up and defense up, to the entire party, as opposed to a single character or line of allies. FORCE BREAK will allow you to use a powerful move, but you will not be able to use your FORCE move again for that character until you return to town, so it should be used as a last resort.
The most efficient way to restore your Force Gauge is to stay at the hotel in town. Every time you stay, there is a chance to get extra dialogue with characters currently in your party. These are fun little additions which sometimes add a nice unlockable, animated picture to your in-game gallery. In town, you can accept extra missions, purchase new equipment and even cook recipes for useful stat bonuses in dungeons. In the bar where you accept your extra missions, you can access all of the DLC you have downloaded which includes a bunch of optional boss fights if the regular grind is just not enough of a challenge for you.
Grimoire stones are introduced a couple of hours into the game. They are created randomly through battling enemies and can produce a variety of skills including enemy skills, some of which can be quite useful early on. Grimoires allow the character that equips them to take on a new ability that they don’t have or enhance any ability that they do have available. You can visit the town to trade Grimoires with other players through Streetpass using stones you don’t need. You will also get the occasional random visitor with a nice stone or two, so make sure to check that area frequently.
The level of challenge that I experienced while playing Etrian Odyssey was refreshing to say the least. Being a person who enjoys a solid challenge in their games, I was thoroughly impressed by the level of strategy that I had to employ just to progress through the story of the game. There was never a sense of being over-leveled for any dungeon, and all of the bosses required a good amount of time and effort to beat, but it really just made me feel like I truly earned every victory. After almost 50 hours into this game and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. Etrian Odyssey is a fun, exploration-driven dungeon-crawler with great characters, and a crap-ton of content, which is sure to satisfy RPG lovers for a long, long time. Whether or not you’re new to the series or are a dungeon exploring veteran, you’d do well to check out The Fafnir Knight.
Verdict: Buy
Final Score: 4/5