gamespot score:7.5(good)
my score:7.5
(+)pros:-Improved presentation,- same addictive dugeon crawling system,-boss fights are still fun and challenging,-lagaard has more personality etria in terms of characters,-plenty of jobs to choose from adds variety
(-)cons:-abnormal difficulty may not be suited for majority of players,-job nerfs provide much discomfort for series veterans,-like with ronins and hexers from EO 1, beasts provide retraining annoyances for EO 2
gameplay time:50 hours+(long)
Etrain odyssey 2, 2nd game in the 3 game franchise as of today. The series should be no stranger to dungeon crawling lovers with a DS. Etrain odyssey is a game oftenly avoided because of the punshing difficulty. But I say to suck it up, cause if players manage to plow through the difficulty, they are in for a hell of a satisfying experience, that is the case for all etrian odysseies, including this one, etrian odyssey 2.
Just like etrian odyssey 1, the 2nd game doenst provide much for excessive story, but has same background refrences. Instead of etria, this time the game features lagaard, a bustling city with once again, the yggdrasil labrinth towering above. Adventurers all around come to explore it for fame and fortune, and ocne again, you are one of the hopeful adventurers. You head into lagaard, make a guild, and hire adventuers to make an attempt to smoke out the labrinth. Fam and fortune awaits!( As well as a fairly deep story as you go deeper into the accursed dungeon that has taken tons of lives)
Being one of those really hardcore dungeon crawler games, etrian odyssey features a character creation system with a ton of customization. 1st off you pick a class( with a new few ones introduced in this game), choose a character portrait, and you are ready to go after you name it. Then, you are given 3 skill points to put into a babylon of skills available for each class. There are too many skills to max with just 1 playthrough with the character, so you can only add what you need. Thats alot of possibilities to go. You can bring up to 5 characters in 1 team of explorers, so think carefully what to bring along.
In the dungeon, this is where shit gets real. The game's difficulty comes in here. Monsters kill you in a matter of hits, and almost everything later on inflicts diffirent kinds of status effects. You can find yourself in a difficult situation by just examining a tree, and getting ambushed by a bunch of worms that one shot you. Also, with the high random encounter rate, you will find even wandering around dangerous. There are also FOEs, which are big red orbs that are seenable on the actual screen. They are "mini bosses" that wander around as you do, and if you run into one, you will by no means get slaughtered terribly. As you take a step, they do too. While some FOEs move around in a set pattern, allowing you to bypass them, some FOEs chase you down mercilessly until they lose interest. Yeap, its that terrifying. Bosses are even worse, while the very 1st boss has FOEs backing him up( sounds unfair but its not that bad), the rest come alone and they sure pack a huge punch. But then again, strategizing to beat them is really consturctive and when you finally beat them after dieing who-knows-how-many times, you get a huge feeling of satisfaction.
Now EO2 is just as hard as its preduseccor, I might even go as far as to say its harder. Now this might eventually turn many players off, and they will leave this to rot away at a shelf and let it collect dust. Thats not good. Also, like the previous game's ronin and hexer(which are now available from the start), the beast job requires unlocking and thus, needs to be trained from scratch, where your team is already at a much higher level. Finally, the most annoying factor for me, is the nerf of certain classes. My favourite class in EO1, the alchemist has been terribly nerfed damage wise. Even with megido, they are still lacking. Also, protectors and medics got nerfed, in a bad way. Some of thier skills went to the gunner and the war magus, new jobs. This will cause discomfort, for the veterans mostly..
Etrain odyssey 2 is ready to give them hardcore players a ride for satisfaction, since the game provides loads of satisfaction if you manage to get past countless dieing, trial and errors and more dieing. Ultimately, the game is fun and should not be overlooked despitre its extreme difficulty.
Happy gaming.
