Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard

"Trudge and Die"

In Homer's Odyssey, the hero and his party wander around for what seems like forever, crisscrossing and backtracking. Occasionally, they encounter ridiculously powerful monsters that bite their heads off before they have time to draw their weapons. After these encounters, they often find themselves farther away from their goal than before.

Coincidentally, this is also the plot for Atlus's dungeon-crawler, Etrian Odyssey II.

Traditional Tunnel Traipsing

As in the original Etrian Odyssey—which I once played for about an hour—you start in a hub town. There you have a menu for selecting the castle, the inn, the hospital, the shop run by the cute wide-eyed jailbait shopkeeper's daughter, etc. You select from 12 character classes to make a party of five, then send them out to be abused by labyrinth wildlife.

The labyrinth appears on the top screen of your DS in the same first-person perspective used in Wizardry and Might and Magic. The bottom screen shows a map of the maze, made by you and your stylus. Drawing walls and floors is intuitive, and there's a tray of icons to mark things like stairs and treasure chests. You can even leave memos on dungeon squares, allowing your characters to carve “Rathgar + Lorellia 4EVR” in the ancient dungeon trees.

All of this is very pretty, with anime character portraits, Thomas Kinkade forest paths, and monsters that are rarely palette-swapped.

The music is pretty as well, featuring typical RPG movements. Especially good are the maze-crawling compositions, which are meditative and pleasant even after hours of meandering around the map.

Awful Abilities Anonymous

For me, however, none of the game's prettiness could make up for its tediousness. I was so bored playing Etrian Odyssey II that I asked my wife to come in to the room and play Chrono Trigger, just so I'd have something interesting to watch while I was telling my party for the fiftieth time to attack the Venomfly first and the Ladybug second.

I had faced this particular iteration of insects so many times because I was grinding to beat the boss on the fifth floor. The grindfest was especially frustrating because I had realized that constantly working up levels is really all that matters in progressing through the game—not strategy and certainly not the customizable ability system.

Many of the game's abilities have support effects like poisoning enemies, lowering defense, stopping special attacks, and so on. But, even after I pumped several skill points into those abilities, they hardly ever worked or made a difference.

One of my first characters, for example, was a Hexer named Persepha. I gave four of her skill points (out of a possible 10) to a defense-lowering spell called “Frailty.” Every skill point I assigned to the spell increased its magic point use, so that she could only cast it four times during each trip. How effective was Frailty? It made one of my characters do 14 damage instead of 11. So Persepha got to increase the party's damage by 25% a few times and then do 3 damage with her staff until I returned to town.

My other magic users were about as helpful. Even my Alchemist—a dedicated attack-spell caster—did only a little more damage with his spells than my fighters did with their regular attacks. So, in the end, I filled my party with classes that could deal damage without using special abilities, and I sent the rest to peel potatoes in the Explorer's Guild.

Perhaps, with better ability management, those characters could have been useful. The game, however, never seemed particularly keen on helping, thanks to the vague descriptions of the abilities on which I was spending skill points. Why couldn't the game tell me, up front, that each skill point of Frailty would increase damage by 6%? Or that maxing out my Survivalist's “Ambush” skill would increase my preemptive attack rate by only 20%?

More in-depth descriptions would have been especially helpful for the groups of abilities that appear to do the same thing. For example, the Landsknecht can spend skill points on strength (increasing attack power), on “Swords” (increasing damage with swords), or on the “Cleaver” technique (increasing that sword technique's damage). Without actual numbers in the descriptions, I had little idea how one option compared to another.

I'm not sure that it mattered much, anyway, since after leveling up and gaining a point of strength and a point of “Swords,” my Landsknecht was doing the exact same amount of damage as before.

The result of all this was that I never felt very excited about gaining a level, since I was never convinced that gaining a level was very helpful. And, in a dungeon crawler, gaining levels is supposed to be half the fun.

FOEs and Other Thoughts Beginning with F

What made the game worse was that I often had to gain the same unexciting level over and over again, thanks to overpowered monsters frequently blindsiding and slaughtering my party. I felt like I was Gary Coleman invading the headquarters of Munchkin Land, doing just fine, until I opened the wrong door and found an angry Jesse Ventura wielding a sack of cinder blocks.

The Jesse Ventura in question was often a FOE. “FOE” is always spelled in caps, like an acronym, but I never found out what it means. I just assumed that FOE stood for “Flagellation, Obliteration, or Emasculation,” because those words might as well have been my party's only three menu options after I ran into one. If my party somehow escaped alive, they didn't have enough resources to go any farther into the labyrinth, so I had to warp out and regroup.

FOEs do create an interesting game mechanic. They appear on the map on the bottom screen, and they take steps every time your party does. First you have to identify their movement patterns: for example, circle, straight charge, or random direction. Then, you must either maneuver around them in the dungeon hallways, or use an item or ability that stuns them or lures them away.

But having to restart the adventure back at town because of one misstep is a bit much.

Sometimes the random encounters were even more ridiculous. One time, I had mapped out most of the floor when I found an item collection spot. I tapped it, only to be ambushed by a dinosaur (appropriately named “Poseidon”). On the first turn, the dinosaur charged up an attack. On the second, he killed three members of my party and left the other two near death. Neither one could escape, and I soon found myself staring at the familiar game over screen, with a half-hour of playing time wasted.

Go for the Other Odyssey

Some of you have been snorting in disdain at my quibbles: You probably like sadistic old-school dungeon crawls, and you'll probably like Etrian Odyssey II.

For everyone else, go read the original Odyssey instead. At least when someone dies in that, you don't have to read the last five pages over again. And again.

And again.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/08

Game Release: Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard (US, 06/13/08)