For anyone that bounced off of the first Etrian Odyssey, I have some bad news: the second is unabashedly more of the same. Etrian Odyssey II carries over the same classes, same mapping system, custom levelling, item grinding, dungeon dimensions, story beats... hell, even the UI is basically copied over! Sequels typically offer the developer a chance to make their franchise more accommodating and mainstream, but Etrian Odyssey II laughs at the suggestion, doubling down on its exotic blend of labyrinthine madness. If punishing mechanics or obtuse progression has deterred you from delving deeper into labyrinth of Etria, then take heed: the sequel is just as harsh and baffling, if not more so.
But for anyone charmed by Etrian Odyssey's brave debut, then prepare for an even bigger, smarter, and better adventure.
The best way to think about Etrian Odyssey II in relation to its predecessor is to picture the change from Mega Man 1 to Mega Man 2. To an outsider, it'll appear as if you've paid full price for a sizable expansion at best and a shallow reskin at worst. But veterans of the first expedition will find a massive new adventure in a familiar-but-fresh universe—with some absolutely essential quality of life tweaks! The foremost among these is found in the shop: your party's equipment is displayed on the bottom screen, letting you swap out and sell gear much more quickly. Not only that, but you can finally see how many materials a new piece of equipment requires, giving you a firm grasp on which enemies to keep an eye out for. Those may not sound like huge upgrades, but in a 50+ hour RPG where story accounts for 5% of your play time (if that), speeding up the inventory management is a delectable godsend.
Etrian Odyssey II also gives the shoulder buttons a much-needed reassignment, allowing you to strafe while walking around the labyrinth floor. But where they really shine is in battle: tapping the L button initiates a sped-up auto-battle, reducing much of the game's tedious grinding to a one-button affair. A slight kink however, is that it overwrites any of the previous commands you've entered as soon as you begin automating combat. For instance: want your samurai to a unleash devastating AoE guaranteed to kill the enemy forces, while not caring about what the rest of the party does? Well a single push of the L button will send everyone into a melee frenzy, erasing all previous commands so that the party focuses on the enemy with the lowest health (which is often the least troublesome foe). Even with that hitch, auto-battling is great addition to the series—but it's clear there's still room for improvement here.
The changes made to map making however, are a splendid surprise through and through. The number of available icons has more than doubled: there's now closed doors, a FOE tile, a new event tile, two more gather location tiles, and multiple arrow tiles to keep track of the game's numerous secret passageways. Floor tiles also come in two more colors now, letting you differentiate between floor hazards and FOE walkways at a glance. Like the shop upgrades, these ostensibly minor additions have a huge impact in the grand scheme of things, making the game categorically better just for having them. Another small touch I like is how none of the icons come with pre-written tags (like "use this for treasure" or "use this for passageways"), encouraging the player come up with their cartography system. It's a simple touch that makes the bottom screen feel that much more like a digitized parchment scroll you must carefully maintain.
Not everything in Etrian Odyssey II is sunshine and rainbows, but there's barely any complaints here that can't also be leveraged at the first game. Strategy is sadly frontloaded; the bulk of your gameplay decisions apply to character building, as battles out in the labyrinth are simple, straight-forward affairs. While I applauded the first game for its risk management challenges, I found that aspect a bit routine this second time around—you'll almost always return to town when you're out of mana, use a warp wire when cornered by a new FOE, and check every wall in the game for invaluable shortcuts. By far the biggest improvement the series should make going forward is to display more conditional information on characters and enemies, like defense up, provoke, attack down, etc. It's also hard to tell if a boss is immune to a status effect or simply resistant to it, a frustration my hexer shared as she gambled every turn trying to figure out which ailment was the "correct" one. More information provided to the player is very rarely a bad thing.
An unexpected misstep Etrian Odyssey II makes that the first entry (arguably) avoided, is that your journey begins needlessly overbearing. The start of these games is always the most precarious: you have terrible gear, barely any abilities, and the abilities you do have are junk for the first few levels. But Etrian Odyssey 2 adds a ruthless economy atop this, providing a pittance for the items gathered in the labyrinth while bankrupting you whenever you're in need of a resurrection—let alone a night's stay at the inn! It took hours of grinding just to make it past the first boss, a task made stupendously more difficult due to FOEs providing no experience whatsoever. Should FOEs have awarded less experience in the first game? Sure—but this is an overcorrection you'll be reeling from the entire journey, given the sheer abundance of patrolling FOEs that bar your path.
Despite all of these gripes, I still found Etrian Odyssey II to be a good game—or at the very least, an inarguable improvement over the first. Geomagnetic poles wisely replace healing pools, cutting down on the backtracking required while simultaneously allowing bosses to hit harder (as you're always a stone's throw away from their front door). Dungeon events are also far more common, going from a rarity in the first game to an infrequent-but-exciting occurrence that can bestow anything from healing, to items, to lore, to robbery-by-rodent. Lastly, Etrian Odyssey II feels more balanced than its predecessor... though I confess I'm unsure how much of that is due to my new party composition. Going from LPD/AM to LPR/HM, I found this game much harder than the first; hell, I didn't even try the last stratum due to how brutal my battles with the Colossus and final boss were, especially with my rare item stock all but depleted.
(Plus I looked at a youtube video of how much damage the true last boss dealt and proceeded to laugh as I hurriedly ejected the cart from my 3DS).
Etrian Odyssey II is an admirable follow-up to the first, although it does little to address the most off-putting characteristics of the series. But hey, that's fine! Etrian Odyssey II is a half-step in the right direction, offering a better, smoother experience through a gorgeously lethal fantasy labyrinth. It's paradoxically more punishing and less cruel than its predecessor, being easier to get through while demanding more time, thought, and focus from the player. Admittedly, I still have a smidge more fondness for the original entry, only because it made a stronger impression as my first JRPG dungeon crawler (I shall never forget the hell that was B18-20). Nevertheless, Etrian Odyssey II is the superior onboarding point for newcomers...
... but I have the sneaking suspicion it won't stay that way for long.
---------------------
Images obtained from: steamgriddb.com, dungeoncrawlers.org
Images obtained from: steamgriddb.com, dungeoncrawlers.org
No comments:
Post a Comment