I’m a fan of old school, open ended RPGs from the 80s and early 90s, while others prefer the Japanese-style RPGs rich in story but with few choices to character development.  The newest entry of Etrian Odyssey attempts to cater to both types of fans, and does a pretty good job.

Old school RPGs are often dungeon (or overland, or wherever) crawls where one takes a party of heroes and fight their way through monsters to fight the final big bad boss.  Hallmarks of the genre are flexibility in character development – allowing characters to develop and gain expertise in whatever statistics one prefers.  This results in very unique party composition and games (if you have the time) can even have a different feel if played through with a party of different classes, races, and abilities.

 
Japanese RPGs, on the other hand, have a large focus on setting and story.  By limiting character development to just a few characters and few choices, the game can present a cohesive story, rich with character interactions.

 
Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight manages to span both genres, with offerings to fans of both styles of play.  The game is primarily a dungeon crawl through the depths of tal dungeon (actually a tree) but gives players the choice of two modes of play.  The first is a sort of Japanese style with set characters met along the way.  These characters (mostly) have their race and class set from the beghe locinning so a player only customizes characters with options only within that class.  However, one can play through the dungeon (and not have most of the story encounters) with a free form party, choosing from a much larger number of character class options (even with a “beast” class.)  It is essentially two styles of game in one package – play it as a singleor with any party mix you want (even swapping out characters,)  Of course, the two games both use the same set of dungeons so there will be a fair bit of repetition on the dungeon side of things.

The overarcing story lies with a hero (and his companions) attempting to assist a royal girl in performing a magical ritual that will save the kingdom for another few years/centuries/whatever.  A party consists of a maximum of six characters, so five main characters (at the start) head out into various dungeons to try and figure out what must be done.  Of note, in the story mode you (the main character) also have some special developments to add to your cool factor in combat.

 
As with games of this type, combat is where it is at.  Combat is turn based and fairly standard with lots of choices of how to specialize your team, each class having roughly two main types of abilities to develop (as well as some mix and match options.)  An example would be a fighter type emphasizing his defensive abilities or emphasizing his ability to spur his teammates on to more effective combat.

 
Progressing through the mazes/dungeons/levels of “tree” presents players with some minor puzzles – many of which revolve around extra-hard monsters that walk around with a set path and must be avoided through clever turn-based movement.  The party can harvest resources in the dungeons (both monster carcasses and herbs/rocks/etc they find lying around.)  These in turn fuel the local store with better and better equipment.   As is standard in this series, players are presented with the opportunity to draw their own maps of the dungeon as they go along.  A handy interface gives players plenty of resources to draw the boundaries and place handy markers for particularly dangerous or fruitful locations.  However, the designers realize mapping everything out may not be what modern RPG players want, so an auto-mapping feature is available (which I immediately turned on.)

The end result of all these options is a game that attempts to be all things to all players.  This is almost accomplished.  The old school dungeon crawl is there for some, and the story mode is there for others.  Both use turn-based strategic combat, which is not always the case in true Japanese style RPGs, but for most that is not a deal breaker.  The game uses a tried and true standard storyline of kill the big bad guy, finish the quest, etc… but at least the story provides some nice conversations and character development.  I recommend it to fans of either type of RPG.

 
Kid Factor:  

With plenty of text and some strategic choices, the game is best for confident readers, although a smarter kid could muddle through most of it.  There’s combat and death, but most of the monsters are of the cartoon-y scary rather than ugly-scary.  I’d be comfortable letting my mid-elementary school kids give it a try.

Tags: Game Reviews