Cheap Etrian Odyssey (Video Games) (Nintendo DS) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Etrian Odyssey

Etrian Odyssey, aka Yggdrasil Labyrinth
Formerly known as Yggdrasil Labyrinth, Etrian Odyssey is a very challenging, completely turn-based RPG. Think of it as an old-school RPG, but stripped down to its elements. There is very little story and your party characters have no distinguishing features except for their job class and character portrait, which you pick from 4 possible designs. Don't expect interesting environments--there are 5 different environments, which change every five floors you go through the dungeon. They're 3-D and quite pretty for a DS game, but extremely repetitive. They're really just a background. <
> <
>It's worth mentioning that although the game is ridiculously hard on the first floor, it gradually gets easier as you progress, although it's never as easy as most modern RPGs. <
> <
>If, like me, you thought Final Fantasy III (the best RPG available on the DS currently) was fairly easy, then you should be able to enjoy Etrian Odyssey despite its difficulty.

---

Simply a Must-Buy for Dungeoneers Everywhere
Quite the compelling dungeon crawl, and the first such game since Bard's Tale (from the days of the Commodore 64) that has managed to hook me with that "just one more task" style of fevered gameplay. The downside is that those who do not or cannot appreciate the gaming embodied by classics like Bard's Tale or Wizardry will find Etrian Odyssey overly nostalgic in tone. <
> <
>"Grinding" characters through level advancement is largely a natural outgrowth of exploration and rarely a chore forced on the player. As noted elsewhere, the gameworld is quite varied in most dimensions -- monsters, dungeons, items, characters, and quests -- and only rarely does one encounter lulls where new aspects to one or many of these aren't revealed. Tight coupling of game mechanics (reaching a new dungeon level usually unlocks new side quests, returning the spoils of conquest to town similarly unlocks new wares to equip), an air of uncertainty concerning what's around the next corner (hidden requirements for item unlocking, a limit on up-front monster information), and a great deal of choice in party management (branching skill trees for characters, a diversity of rarely overlapping base classes larger than full party size) all combine in a wonderful fashion. <
> <
>Etrian Odyssey balances freedom of exploration with plot fulfillment in a way that produces a game that is more challenging than usual fare but rarely to the extent where one wants to throw the DS across the room in disgust. Players with a "if it moves, it must be slain" mentality will find themselves hung up in a number of places, as it's a frequent occurrence for difficult monsters to be placed on patrol to encourage side-stepping encounters until one's party is truly up to the challenge. <
> <
>Graphics are crisp and well executed, and realms are nicely differentiated visibly (and in some cases audibly) from one another. Although a dungeon crawl, level design is at times rather inventive for the genre, introducing mechnics that go beyond "another corridor, another room" layout. By and large, controls are intuitive and contextually sound, with dungeon mapping proving to be more than a sales gimmick. An unexpected touch is that one can actually manipulate the map screen at the same time as they are going about the rounds in town or facing off in battle. <
> <
>All in all, there's really not much to fault the game for, with the exception of a few detail-oriented issues. <
> <
>There's at least one side quest that a ridiculous bore for a handheld game (spend five game days on a given dungeon level), but isn't required to complete the game. Mapping works well, though the simplicity of design falls short in a few cases: one level truly requires more icons than allowed by memory constraints and at times it's difficult to fit textual annotations in the space allotted. Item management handles inventory overflow well, but the lack of choice to drop excess when harvesting dungeon resources or looting chests is strangely absent compared to post-battle handling. The ability to refer to item and monster codices while "in dungeon" is also sorely missed, but for the most part can be overcome by those with good memories. Similarly, greater detail for side quests would help casual adventurers a bit, as often relevant information is provided only at the time a quest is accepted and later unavailable through the outstanding quest menu. <
> <
>On the whole, the game engine and plotting is relatively bug-free, with only a couple non-essential side quests suffering from the occasional hiccup in execution. In all cases where this was the case, it appeared to relate to a timing issue where events were triggered prematurely (presumably out of order) but never in a way that prevented successful completion. <
> <
>Minus these small gripes, this is one of the few titles for the Nintendo DS (along with Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords) that CRPGers simply must experience for themselves. Really, it's that good at what it aims to achieve as a game.

---

Old-School Gaming + New Twists = Lots of Fun!
Since my reviews tend to be a little long-winded, I'll short-form it for you here: if you're looking for an old-school (say early `90s) RPG you can take on the go and have as much fun with for twenty minutes as you can for two hours at a stretch, and you don't need flashy graphics, sound, or story, buy this game! I was very cautious about getting it after it was suggested as a "You Might Also Like" during an Amazon.com search, especially after having been quite disappointed with FF III on the DS, but I have not been able to put this down since I got it. It looks like Amazon has rescinded its "more on the way" message, but I found a ton of these at J & R (jandr.com) and Gamestop, so try there if you can't get it here. <
> Now for the in-depth version: if you like the level design of Wizardry VI or VII combined with the battle engine of Dragon Quest II, all done up with the graphics of Phoenix Wright, you will love Etrian Odyssey. This may sound like a slam or a backhanded compliment, but really it's not. EO takes an old-school approach to RPGs and adds some clever updates to the formula. While the game won't wow you with cutting-edge graphics, dramatic voiceovers, or epic, involving story lines (EO has none of these), it has all the addictiveness of a Vegas slot machine, because it offers so many opportunities for rewards, starting off with some quick character enhancements and easily accomplished quests, and ramping up to missions that may take hours or even days to complete. This isn't a game where the player gets lost in the realm of the senses, this is a hardcore gaming experience that takes RPGs back to the basics of character classes and unique enemy types, skill development, and hard choices about what style of gameplay you want to emphasize (all-out attack, defensive with lots of healing, or a balance of the two), yet still manages to throw in some new twists that really keep things fresh. <
> One of the major innovations in EO - in fact, the one which makes it unique among RPGs today - is the mapping feature. Now, obviously, any of you who have played games like M&M I through V know, an in-game map is nothing new. What sets the mapping in EO apart from all other RPGs is that you have to draw it yourself - and the game provides the interface to do so! Say goodbye to those loose sheets of graph paper and smudged, illegible pencil scratches, because EO allows you to create and save maps of the levels on the touch screen! In fact, in order to be able to progress beyond the first level, the player is required to map out a portion of the labyrinth in a nifty little tutorial that seamlessly blends into the gameplay. At first, this takes a little getting used to, but once you figure out what all the symbols should be used to represent, it really works, and the DS' touch screen and stylus could not be better suited to the task. The game includes an optional auto-mapping feature that paints a flat, pale-blue square for every square of the labyrinth you've stepped on, but you have to draw in the walls, stairs (up or down), Events, treasure boxes, traps, and items yourself. You can even append these icons with short memos that will appear in the world view screen when you step on the square in the labyrinth represented by the icon, or tap on the Memo icon with the stylus on the touch screen. On top of all that, you can even erase mistakes - without all those messy pink eraser scraps to clean up! <
> Another of the innovations I really appreciated was the setup of shops and advancement of items available. Instead of finding money (or Gold, or Gil, or what have you) on the corpses of slain enemies, you sometimes find items, like Butterfly Wings, or Soft Hide, or Metal Horn. You then take these items to the shopkeeper and sell them to her; occasionally, the items you've sold will allow her to create new, more useful items. Sometimes it's just a matter of selling enough of a common item, but more often it's selling her the rare items that allows her to create the really good weapons, armor, etc. The rate at which this occurs is very nicely ramped, since the further you explore, the more difficult the enemies you encounter, the better items they leave, and the better equipment and accessories the shopkeeper can make from them. As an added element of depth, some of the items are required to complete quests, but you don't want to sell them until after you've received the quest - it makes for a nice conundrum: do I wait for the quest that will require these items and slog my way through with what I've got, or do I sell them, get the better equipment, and hope I can find these items later? <
> Another innovation is the way in which you customize your characters. At the very start of the game, the only difference between, say, a warrior (Landsknecht) and a wizard (Alchemist) is their stats and what they can equip - they both start with a knife and a tunic and no skills to speak of. To be able to have the wizard cast spells, you have to spend an Experience Point on the class of spell you want him to cast (Fire, Ice, Volt, Poison), and then you have to spend an Experience Point on the spell you want him to learn. Then, if you want the spell to do more damage, you have to keep spending EPs on that spell. In addition to the usual, expected abilities like healing spells, damage spells, increased attack damage, and the like, there are a host of other skills that particular classes can learn, including those that decrease the rate of chance encounters, weapon-specific attacks that also inflict ailments or damage spells on the enemy, sharp-shooting, multiple-hit attacks, etc. Abilities exist in a hierarchy, with some skills requiring the acquisition (and sometimes leveling up) of other, related skills before they can be learned. Each class has 21 abilities to learn - most of them unique to that class - with a cap Level of 10 each, but you are limited to 102 EPs per character (you start at Level 1 with three, and can only level up to 100, for an additional 99 EPs), so you must choose to mold your character as either a jack-of-all-trades type or a supreme master of only a few skills. Combined with the availability of nine classes and the freedom to put any number of each class in your party of (up to) five, this makes for a great deal of flexibility and individuality in gameplay. <
> To sum it up, EO is simply a great game to take along when you're stuck on the bus for a half hour, or the power goes out and you can't play the latest hi-res blockbuster Final Fantasy on the PS9 via your HD TV. Short of a more mindless handheld game like Lumines or Tetris, it's the most fun you can have in short bursts (or long sessions) that doesn't require a huge investment of time, skill, or attention...which is exactly what a portable game should be. <
>(I've put in some tips for the first set of levels in the Comments section; note that much of what is there could be considered spoilers, though not in the sense of story, since there really is none.) <
>