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One strength of role-playing games has always been their ability to create living, breathing worlds. Worlds so engaging that it's easy to lose yourself for hours at a time. Part of what's so engrossing is that so much of the experience is in your hands. Atlus Software's newest DS release Etrian Odyssey goes the extra mile in that department, right down to having you draw your own map. The power is in your hands, and it's both as rewarding and as frustrating as it sounds.
Etrian's story straightforward in principle. It's your job as an adventurer to seek out mystery and danger inside a giant Labyrinth outside the town of Etria. But just as the Labyrinth is a dark and dangerous place, so is the learning curve. There is no easing into this RPG. This Odyssey is a hardcore dungeon crawler. Any joy gleaned from this title is in the reward of having the strength and wherewithal to journey one floor deeper. It's a long, hard road filled with random enemy encounters.
At least the trail you blaze and the party that accompanies you are largely up to you. The title makes some serious effort at providing some real customization throughout all facets of the game. You create your own party of five from nine character classes. The main focus though is the utilization of the touch screen to create your maps of Labyrinth floors. While exciting in theory, it quickly becomes tedious while playing. Thankfully, you don't have to draw every square inch of the map to make any real progress. As you walk through a level, the map will at least provide you with the basic layout of the areas you've discovered. The rest, however, is up to you. It's a blessing and a curse, as no sooner do you give up on marking up your map with all the possible icons than you forget the location of something important.
There's an overall emphasis on exploration beyond mapmaking, but it isn't terribly useful. You can keep track of various enemies encounter and the items you discover by visiting an NPC in town. But there really isn't much of a point, beyond the occasional mission that requires a certain number of items or monsters discovered. It really isn't something that makes you want to hoof it back to town.
Like it or not, you will be making a lot of treks back to town. Make no mistake, this game is a grind. Old school dungeon crawler fans will appreciate the difficulty and the sense of progress as you inch farther and farther into the Labyrinth, but it's not for the casual. Don't get me wrong, it can certainly be addictive, but more often than not it's frustrating, as well. You'll start to get into a groove only to get stomped a few seconds later by a much stronger enemy. As a result, you'll end up having to make a lot of return trips to town to heal up, resurrect dead party members and to save your game, because if your party goes down all your progress goes with it. It has a tendency to suck to fun right out of the experience.
All that warping and rezzing can suck your funds dry. Keeping your party in good gear and good health is financially taxing, especially early on. Your enemies don't drop cash, but they do drop items you can hawk for some loot. You can also collect resources that can be sold for higher prices. Still, I found myself scouring the Internet for moneymaking FAQs, since there really isn't much in-game guidance. Thankfully, there is a fairly simple moneymaking scheme out there to get you rolling. Being in debt in real life is bad enough, I don't need to stress over in game money too.
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