System: DS
Dev: Atlus
Pub: Atlus
Release: May 15, 2007
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: Teen
Review by Nathan Meunier

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Review Rating Legend
1.0 - 1.9 = Avoid
2.0 - 2.4 = Poor
2.5 - 2.9 = Average
3.0 - 3.4 = Fair
3.5 - 3.9 = Good
4.0 - 4.4 = Great
4.5 - 4.9 = Must Buy
5.0 = The Best

Traditional role-playing elements and combat play a significant part in Etrian Odyssey, but what truly makes the game feel innovative and fresh is how developers placed a heavy emphasis on cartography. Your mission is not just to explore the labyrinth; you have to map it out…by hand. Movement is handled with the d-pad while you draw out the features of the map with the stylus.

The top screen shows the colorful forest environments in full 3-D while a grid on the lower screen tracks your movement. Players who used graph paper to make maps while gaming in the old days will likely be hit with an instant wave of nostalgia spurred by the mapping interface. A helpful auto-map feature will fill in squares you have already walked over, but the walls of each room, doors, stairs, and other features have to be input manually with the stylus. Other icons can be used to represent warp locations, treasure, pitfalls, monsters, or special events. The system works incredibly well and is crucial for navigating the complex, twisting, and turning subterranean corridors.

Though the first strata of the forest green is inviting as one would expect a forest to be, each subsequent stratum becomes more exotic than the one before it as you progress deep into the labyrinth. The 3-D visuals are beautiful at first, but as you spend more time mapping out the complicated mazes, the thick trees and underbrush will lose some of their luster. Elsewhere, the graphics do little to dazzle, and players expecting grandiose cutscenes, heavy animations, and special effects will be sorely disappointed. The turn-based combat is riddled with menus, and the non-animated enemy sprites do the trick with least amount of pizzazz. Sound effects during combat are limited to a range of basic thwacking and spell-casting sounds. While most of the music in the game fits the atmosphere of the dungeon well enough, the same repetitive music loops in almost every battle making it frequently necessary to turn the volume down completely at times.

Those who can look beyond the basic presentation and steep difficulty curve will find Etrian Odyssey to be one of the lengthiest and most immersive role playing experiences on the DS to date. Plenty of opportunities for customization give players freedom to tailor the play experience to their own personal preferences. Essentially, you can take what you want from the game and leave the rest. Few of the missions are actually required, and you can easily focus more time on cartography, leveling up, and proceeding through the dungeons. Or instead you may find your time better spent treasure hunting and taking on the dozens of various side-quests to pump up your party to the max. Either way, there's plenty to do. Simply mapping and exploring the labyrinth in itself is incredibly fun and it makes trudging the game's seemingly limitless corridors much more interesting. Otherwise the game is a heavily updated variation on classic RPG games of long-past. Casual gamers may scratch their heads, or pass up Etrian Odyssey altogether, but seasoned RPG veterans will eat this stuff up like candy.

By Nathan Meunier
CCC Freelance Writer

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