Etrian Odyssey

"An old school dungeon crawler! Not for the faint of heart, though..."

Hey there. Let's get right into it. Etrian Odyssey is a series of dungeon crawler games for the DS. They're played in a very old school RPG style, as many of you who used to play these kinds of games will quickly notice this. For some of you, you may be reminded of games like Dungeon Magic or Shin Megami Tensei. This game is no different, though I will say it's very unforgiving to the innocent eye looking at it.

It's a popular game, and for many reasons. It's an incredibly difficult, mind-bending, and sometimes, aggravating kind of game, simply for its difficulty. It's grown famous among a lot of different people for mainly being difficult, and because of the hilarious FOE song that IOSYS brought out about this game. The game can be alluring to a lot of eyes, especially the innocent imagination driven kid who looks at the game in awe. The game looks innocent, but it's a game of teeth grinding, 3 minute pauses, shocks, disbelief, and masochism. Let's go into detail exactly... why.

STORY: 7/10
The story is interesting enough I suppose. You're a guild of adventurers who are eager to explore the Yggdrasil labyrinth in Etria. A mysterious forest which everyone wants to know the secrets to, and is the city's main source of attention thus. Many rewards and such are promised to adventurers who can explore it deep enough.

You begin with your guild, and you quickly become a government dog. You take missions from the people in charge, and explore the labyrinth in certain ways that they ask you to do. They'll ask you to do many different kinds of missions. As you go deeper, the story will progress deeply enough, and you'll run into some mysterious people. But I'll leave that to everyone else to see.

After mapping the first floor, the chieftain will begin giving you missions to explore and discover the mysteries. Yay! Later on though, you'll see that not everyone is quite as innocent as they may appear. You'll see as the game picks up. The story gets expanded quite far as well if you decide to go further after you have already beaten the game. Then things can get VERY interesting and become quite dark. An interesting story in my opinion, but I can be easily amused.

GAME PLAY: 9/10
This is where the game is at. This is also the biggest part that can turn people off from this game, and for good reason. For people who play a lot of RPGs, I promise this will be one of the most difficult games they have played in a long long time. Quite possibly for the rest of their life, especially if they actually defeat the game. Quite honestly, if you've read my Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne review, this game is no different in terms of difficulty. Every level of the labyrinth had me thinking I was going through kalpas again!

Compared to many other RPGs, this game's difficulty is higher than most I've ever played. Most RPGs start out relatively easy, and slowly ramp up in difficulty as the game progresses. Not Etrian Odyssey, no sir. It's hard from start to finish. This is something that can and will turn a lot of people off to the game. This however, is also what attracts a lot of people, since many RPGs nowadays are relatively easy, and simple to understand even on end game.

At the beginning, after you make your guild name, you need to make your party members. There are a lot of classes, and each one of them have a very specific purpose that they can fulfill. There are Protectors, basically the tanks of the game. There are the Alchemists, which are the spell casters, ie Mages. There's also Survivalists, Dark Hunters, Hexers, and plenty of other classes. The most interesting thing is that you can have 5 people of any classes that you choose. It's a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics in that sense.

After you've made your characters, you can now customize their skill builds. For any of you who have played an MMORPG, this is similar. You start off with three skills points to throw into skills. After that, each time you level, you get another skill point to throw into a skill. Spend your points wisely, as after you have spent them, you cannot take it back, you're stuck with what you chose. This is another part which can make the game hard. Having a bad skill build can get you killed a lot easier mid-way through the game, and later.

Now for the actual battle system. The battle system is a traditional turn based system. Turn order is determined by the AGI(or Agility) stat. Goes from highest to lowest to see the turn order. It's pretty straight forward from there. There's also the Boost skill that every character has. When they use this, their skills and powers are greatly increased, and can make their skills stronger and faster than they would normally be. Though it's a bit like a limit break from Final Fantasy, in that it needs to be charged with hits and damage taken.

Next is the map and the FOEs. In this game, you can draw your own map as you explore the labyrinth. This is very useful, since you can leave little notes for yourself on the map, and draw lines where you know you need them. Now FOEs. FOEs are bosses that roam the areas and appear as purple or red circles on your map. Sometimes, these bosses will chase you, in which case they'll turn red. The boss could be anything. You don't know what you'll be fighting when you run into it, and FOEs have a huge tendency to wipe your whole team out in a few hits if you aren't set up. A hard game indeed.

SOUND/MUSIC: 8/10
It's peaceful in a lot of areas, and can sound pretty epic when you're up against the right boss. It has its perks and such, and some of the music sounds mystical and slightly medieval. Not a ton to say about it. It sounds good, that's really all I think counts. I don't think the music will disappoint many people honestly.

OVERALL: 9/10
Now that you know all that, ask yourself this: are you willing to throw aside about a good 30-40 hours for an incredibly difficult, aggravating, intense, and very entertaining, as well as enthralling RPG? If yes, then don't hesitate to buy this game. This game has some very fun post game content as well to keep you entertained if you're the type that likes challenges, like myself.

If you like an easy RPG, where you're just trying to enjoy the story, and have a peaceful time through it all, then don't ever even glance at this game. The moment you pick it up, it will jump you, cut you, take your money, punch out your teeth, and will walk away without even looking back at you. This game is unforgiving, and if you couldn't already tell, I can't stress enough the difficulty of the game. I personally love the game, and it kept me entertained for many hours even after beating the game. Anyways, I hope this review was helpful. Thanks for taking a look.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/31/09

Game Release: Etrian Odyssey (US, 05/15/07)