You don't see a lot of straight-up dungeon crawlers anymore. Building a party from scratch and navigating a maze filled with bloodthirsty monsters purely for experience and the promise of treasure is so old school, it graduated from the University of Gary Gygax in 1983. The modern role-playing game is built around narrative and character development, often starring angsty-faced heroes with a ragtag band of friends on dramatic quests to save entire worlds from destruction. A party searching for adventure and gold is almost quaint by comparison.
Etrian Odyssey embraces this, going so old school that it requires players to draw their own map on the touch screen of the Nintendo DS. The game has a sprawling labyrinth to explore, a forest instead of a dank dungeon, and offers little more reward than experience and treasure. And that's ultimately the problem with Etrian; the risk to reward ratio just isn't high enough.
The game takes place in the sleepy village of Etria, the fantasy genre equivalent of a tourist attraction town. Etria's claim to fame is the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, a subterranean forest recently discovered outside of town. Apparently everyone in the village is too lazy to map out the Labyrinth themselves, so the town council issues a proclamation inviting any foolhardy adventures to come and explore its depths. Any meathead with a short sword can conquer a forest, right?
Players start by creating a guild in the Explorer's Hall and forming a party of five adventurers. All the standard classes are represented: fighters and knights, healers and bards, mages and rangers. Two classes, the Ronin and Hexer, have to be unlocked later in the game. Once you've got your party set, you're given a quest to map the first level of the forest, proving you won't get lost and your family won't sue the village. Pack your gear, ready your sword, and down into the forest depths you go.
When Etrian Odyssey says you need to map out the game, it's not joking. Players are given a partial map of the first level, but from there it's a blank page. Navigating through the forest is done through a first person perspective, one step at a time, just like old-timey RPGs like Might & Magic or Wizardry. The touchpad and stylus are used to sketch the twisting paths out, and icons and memos can be used as reminders for special areas and events. It's an easy system to use, but the game's dependence on this mechanic quickly becomes tiresome. Every couple of steps results in more sketching, often with the only reward being that you won't get completely lost. A few quests involving map comparisons would have gone a long way toward keeping the mapping interesting.
Eventually, your party will encounter some of the forest's many inhabitants. Prepare for a turn-based beating, as starting parties don't have the skills necessary to put down simple moles or oversized insects without needing to limp back to town afterwards.
Survive enough fights and your party will level up, granting points you can spend in complex skill trees for each class. In time, your Defender will drop that smarmy mole in one turn, but getting over that barrier takes patience. After the first forest level, your party will encounter FOEs, mighty creatures that patrol a specific area and are displayed on your map. These creatures can (and will) one-shot kill party members, but can often be avoided until you're powerful enough to face them.
So what's the reward for these dangerous battles? Monsters in Etrian Odyssey don't drop money or equipment, but they've got plenty of monster parts that shopkeepers use to make new items. Of course, you've got to make it back to town to sell these bits of beastie, and that means backtracking. Later in the game, your party can warp to every fifth level of the forest, but until then you have to make your way from town back down to where you left off, which is about as much fun as it sounds.
Inevitably you will forget to buy a warp wire before leaving town, lose three teammates in a big encounter, and limp their way up four levels to safety, fleeing from monstrous butterflies with a taste for flesh. When the party dies, and they will, make sure the DS is turned off before you fling it across the room.
Etrian Odyssey can be extremely frustrating, but that doesn't mean there aren't fun moments. Mapping the forest is fun at first, and even when it feels tedious it adds a level of involvement to the standard dungeon hacking formula. Surviving a tough boss fight is exhilarating, and the skills unlocked when leveling a party offer a lot of customization options. However, none of these ever outweigh the punishing difficulty of the game, or the amount of time required to accomplish the smallest of goals. Etrian Odyssey requires patience and resolve to unlock the mysteries of the Labyrinth, with not enough reward in return. This is a game only for the hardcore. All others need not apply.
