Etrian Odyssey 2

Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard is the second game in Atlus' Nintendo DS franchise, known for its cartography elements and old school role-playing tenets.The game was released on February 21, 2008 in Japan, and June 13, 2008 in America.

2013's recreated the first game in the series, focusing on the addition of elements that felt unnecessary. The deeper plot with defined player characters never grew past some boring cliches, and the increased character customization felt more sloppy and confusing than anything else.Both of these elements return in, but they're better developed and don't get in the way of what's always been great about the series. More impressively, The Fafnir Knight brings a new system to the series that feels absolutely essential.

With tweaks that are welcoming to new players and longtime fans alike, this quickly proves itself as the best introduction to Atlus' notoriously challenging series so far. Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold relies on its characters to find some much-needed light. I worried in Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold's first few hours that it would fall into the same traps as the previous Untold. It begins with an almost excessive amount of dialogue, its story an exercise in cliche: Arianna is a princess of a distant kingdom who has journeyed to the city of High Lagaard. Her goal is to perform a ceremony that's said to protect the land from great evil. To complete the ceremony, she needs support from the player-named main character, his childhood buddy Flavio and a couple other party members encountered along the way.It's pretty generic anime stuff, in other words, and it doesn't get much better as the heroes discover a long-buried ancient evil that just happens to be tied in directly to the main character's destiny.But where the last Untold dug its hole deeper toward mediocrity with its characters, Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold relies on them to find some much-needed light. Arianna and Flavio are anime trope standbys, but Bertrand and Chloe, the duo who fill out your five-person party a few hours into the game, are two of the most interesting and likable characters in a Japanese role-playing game in years.

At first Chloe and Bertrand seem cold, distant and frankly a little boring, but that's a hidden strength of the game's writing. They reveal their personalities over the course of hours of adventuring. As they warmed to the main character, I felt like I was getting to know them in the way that I'd get to know a friend while on a weeks-long road trip; each brief conversation in the inn at night or each reaction to a decision I made in the wild peeled back another layer of their personalities.Bertrand, for example, has a very hesitant approach to battle, which makes his combat role as the tank character all the more surprising. He presents himself as a guardian for Chloe, and in fact his class is literally 'Protector,' yet his main goal is often avoiding combat.

He feels like the opposite of the stereotypical older male guardian figure. Initially, this put me off; I viewed him as lazy, possibly even untrustworthy.

It wasn't until I was over 10 hours into Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold that I started to understand the truth: Bertrand's aggressive stance toward avoiding confrontation is specifically because he's trying to keep Chloe safe. He's neither an overeager fighter nor a stoic warrior; he's a quiet, but good-natured old man who frets over any situation that's going to put his ward in danger. That ward deserves her own praise as well. From her stylish witch hat to her straightforward, tell-it-like-it-is demeanor, Chloe at first comes across as a bratty little kid.

The more time I spent with her, the more I realized that her personality is much deeper than that. She never holds back from sharing what she's thinking, which can often be jarring. But over time, it becomes endearing, especially as she grows to respect the main character. Where Flavio and Arianna might hedge their emotions and choose their reactions carefully, I could always depend on Chloe to tell me what she actually thought.That's a lot of ink to devote to the party members in an RPG, but I cannot emphasize enough how much these two characters add to Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold. If the original game had the same main narrative but party members this interesting to be around, I almost certainly would have enjoyed myself much more. Even across the genre as a whole, Chloe and Bertrand are memorable in a way that few RPG characters ever achieve. Chloe and Bertrand are memorable in a way that few RPG characters ever achieveChloe is also obsessed with eating, an anime trope that may have caused me to roll my eyes normally.

But this personality quirk actually play into The Fafnir Knight's biggest addition to the Etrian Odyssey series. These games have always allowed you to sell the items you collect off of monsters in dungeon runs, which can then be crafted into better armor and weapons.

But now enemies also drop food ingredients, which can be delivered to a restaurant in town and used in a new, surprisingly deep cooking system.Here's how cooking works in Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The chef who runs the restaurant provides you with recipes describing the dish in question. Based on clues from those descriptions, you choose which foods to offer her. Pick the right ingredients, and you unlock a new dish, which can be cooked up at any time and consumed before you enter the dungeon for extra buffs such as healing between battles, a higher drop rate for items and more. This cooking system is especially notable for how it expands The Fafnir Knight's options without distracting from the heart of the game. As with every Etrian Odyssey game before it, most of 2 Untold's time is taken up by old-school, first-person dungeon crawling and tense turn-based combat.

It's a series that's unabashedly difficult and marketed to hardcore RPG fans. But the buffs provided by cooking serve both those longtime niche fans and a slightly wider audience that may be intimidated by the challenging gameplay. The tiny bonuses that food provides are never going to make or break any one expedition, but they provide a slightly bigger cushion than the series previously has.Or, if you're not interested in making things easier, you can always devour dishes that increase the encounter rate or remove the ability for your party to preemptively attack enemies.

Like much of Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold, the cooking system plays well to audiences across a range of comfort and interest levels in the series. Oh, and apropos of nothing, a dozen or so hours into the game, the restaurant expands to include a miniature town-building sim. You pour money into renovating different parts of High Lagaard, then choose which dishes to advertise in which parts of the city and rake in profits from the citizens who come to try out the recipes you helped perfect. Like the cooking system itself, this is a bizarre, unexpected addition to the Etrian Odyssey series that just happens to work perfectly. It's deep enough to feel meaningful, and it provides an easy path to more cash and a nice distraction between dungeon runs.

But it's also not required, a side system that you can safely ignore altogether if you're not feeling it. Wrap Up: Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold gets the series back on track and builds on its strengthsJust two years ago, I was worried that the Etrian Odyssey series may lose itself in trying to be something that it's not. Now, with its sixth game, it's re-established an identity. Where the first Untold spinoff felt like a step backward for the franchise, Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight stands with the series' best, building on Etrian Odyssey's strengths and fixing weaknesses it's never shown an interest in addressing before.Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight was reviewed using a final Nintendo 3DS download code provided by Atlus. You can find additional information about Polygon's ethics policy.

Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard^[1] is a dungeon crawlerrole-playing video game by Atlus for the Nintendo DS. Heroes of Lagaard is the sequel to Etrian Odyssey and is followed by Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City.

Story[edit]

Within the Grand Duchy of High Lagaard, a crisis has suddenly caused renewed interest in a floating castle which resides high in the clouds overhead. According to the available research, it can be reached by traversing a forested maze, the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, composed of many levels. In an effort to obtain the mythical 'Grail of Kings' said to be kept in the floating palace, the Duke of High Lagaard is now recruiting adventurers in order to explore the labyrinth and discover exactly how to reach the castle. The player takes the role of the leader of one such guild of adventurers.

Gameplay[edit]

Etrian Odyssey II requires players to slowly make their way up the trunk of a massive magical tree in order to reach a floating castle at the top while completing smaller quests along the way. The tree is represented by a series of vertically stacked levels which are explored one at a time with frequent return trips to town in order to rest and resupply.

In classic fashion, players navigate through the forest locales a single 'step' at a time, moving and turning in fixed increments. Time passes only when an action is taken, causing movement, encounters, and combat to all be entirely turn-based. While randomly generated enemies cannot be spotted in advance, certain more powerful 'FOEs' usually can be seen on the map and avoided if necessary, although 'FOEs' still respawn every three game days. The game uses a first-person view to present the labyrinth using a combination of relatively simple 3D computer graphics for environments and single-frame 2D sprites for enemies.

Similar to early role-playing video games that did not support automatic mapping, players of Etrian Odyssey II must maintain their own maps. This is done by using the stylus to manually fashion maps on the DS touchscreen, with whatever level of detail is desired. Periodic warp points allow players to escape the labyrinth in order to save the game, so being able to successfully return to these (with the assistance of an accurate map) can be quite important. When compared to the mapping system in the original Etrian Odyssey, there are now additional symbols which can be used.

Featuring no pre-made characters, the title instead requires players to create their own from twelve different character types, each with at least one special skill or aptitude. While only five characters can be in the party at once, up to thirty can be created and kept in waiting back at the 'guild hall'. Characters can be switched in and out when in town, so if a given specialty is needed for a specific obstacle, the party can be tailored appropriately. The player further customizes characters by allocating skill points to specific skills during level advancement.

Development[edit]

After his scenario work on the original Etrian Odyssey, Shigeo Komori took on the role of director for Etrian Odyssey II, replacing Kazuya Niino, who provided no input on the sequel.^[2] During an interview, Komori confirmed that it was indeed his goal to create a very 'old-school style of game', intending to evoke feelings of nostalgia from gamers who played similar games in years prior.^[3] In a separate interview, Komori noted that while the game engine was re-used from Etrian Odyssey, the character classes and enemies were given completely new artwork, as were the dungeon 'strata' (layers).^[4] Other enhancements which make the new title more convenient for players include being able to walk sideways in the labyrinth, displaying the characters' status inside stores, and being able to switch characters with the L and R Buttons.^[4]

Music for Heroes of Lagaard was provided by Yuzo Koshiro, who created the music on an NEC PC-88 before adapting it for the DS.^[2] Koshiro was left to his own devices in coming up with the score, using only descriptions of the game environments and scenes in doing so.

Trials frontier quagmire donkey game. Etrian Odyssey II originally shipped with a number of gameplay bugs in Japan, but many of these were addressed for the North American release, where the developers were pleased to have additional time to improve the game.^[5]

Reception[edit]

Etrian Odyssey II received 'favorable' reviews according to video game review aggregatorMetacritic.^[6] As before, the gameplay was described as being primarily intended for the most hardcore fans of the genre, causing IGN to declare, 'Etrian Odyssey is a tough as nails series, and only the hardest of hardcore RPG fans will get enjoyment out of it.'^[13] Nonetheless, most reviewers felt that there was a worthwhile experience beneath the difficult and sometimes painful adventure; the GameSpot review explained, 'It's rare to find a game that can sometimes feel like work yet still be enjoyable.'^[9]1UP.com concluded: 'Sure, we're all dying to know what 'La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo' means -- myself included. But it says something about our hobby that even in a week when the biggest-budget, highest-tech game imaginable hits stores, there's a seemingly anachronistic, equally engrossing labor of love available from a minuscule, hardworking crew with just as much heart as [Hideo] Kojima's team. The gaming world's got more than enough room for both, and I couldn't be happier.'^[7]

It was the 89th best-selling game in Japan in 2008, selling 145,421 copies.^[17]

References[edit]

1. ^Known in Japan as Sekaiju no Meikyū II: Shoō no Seihai (世界樹の迷宮II 諸王の聖杯, lit. Yggdrasil Labyrinth II: The Holy Grail of Kings)
2. ^ ^abParish, Jeremy (June 4, 2008). 'Etrian Odyssey II Director Q&A Preview'. 1UP.com. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
3. ^Bozon, Mark (June 12, 2008). 'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard Interview'. IGN. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
4. ^ ^abRPGamer staff. 'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard Interview'. RPGamer. Retrieved August 12, 2008.
5. ^Fitch, Andrew (July 8, 2008). 'Anime Expo: Atlus Talks Persona 4, Trauma Center's Future'. 1UP.com. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
6. ^ ^abc'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard for DS Reviews'. Metacritic.
7. ^ ^abFitch, Andrew (June 17, 2008). 'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard Review'. 1UP.com. Archived from the original on May 28, 2016. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
8. ^EGM staff (July 2008). 'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard'. Electronic Gaming Monthly: 81.
9. ^ ^abShau, Austin (July 8, 2008). 'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
10. ^Coates, John (June 18, 2008). 'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard review'. GamesRadar. Retrieved November 12, 2015.
11. ^'Etrian Odyssey: Heroes of Lagaard'. GamesTM: 121. September 2008.
12. ^Platt, Dylan (August 5, 2008). 'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard - NDS - Review'. GameZone. Archived from the original on October 7, 2008. Retrieved November 12, 2015.
13. ^ ^abBozon, Mark (June 18, 2008). 'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard Review'. IGN. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
14. ^'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard'. Nintendo Power. 230: 81. July 2008.
15. ^Trammell, David (June 17, 2008). 'Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard'. Nintendo World Report. Retrieved November 12, 2015.
16. ^Cavalli, Earnest (June 18, 2008). 'Review: Etrian Odyssey II Brings Back That Old-School Masochism'. Wired. Archived from the original on June 19, 2008. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
17. ^'2008 top 100'. Kyoto. Archived from the original on February 24, 2009. Retrieved January 21, 2009.

External links[edit]