Best portable "dungeon hack" ever
This game also introduces some new twists. The most talked about twist is the map you have to draw yourself using the stylus. The developers of the game are to be commended for taking advantage of the DS's unique capabilities. This reminds us that, unlike most games coming out for portables--both for the DS and the Sony PSP--which are ports of non-portable games, this game was built from the ground up to be a DS game. I'm sure we will be seeing more such games, because the DS is the biggest selling dedicated gaming platform on the planet right now. (That's not to say that the PSP doesn't have a lot going for it, but Etrian Odyssey is the type of game that works well on the DS's more limited processing power and makes good use of the two screens.) It's also nice to see an original game and not one with a long Roman Numeral in the title. I sense that the developer put a lot of tender loving care into this. It's not a marketing department driven game, it's one developers attempt to create a game the he himself would like to play.
The do-it-yourself map isn't the only twist. This is actually quite a deep dungeon hack. If you don't put your party together correctly, you're simply going to get pwned by the badder monsters in the deeper levels. Every time you level, your characters' overall power increases, but you also get one skill point per level to assign to your characters, and these skill points are crucial. There are far too many skills available to level all of them, so you really have to strategize here. One or two highly leveled skills seem to be more useful than a large number of level 1 skills. Of course the first go through the dungeon, you will wind up assigning points to the wrong abilities and you will have to create new characters in order to fix that. That's part of the fun :)
In addition to combat oriented skills, there are various economic skills you can develop, which you will need to gather resources to sell at the shop. You need money, so these economic skills are important. But the problem is, if you level all of a character's non combat skills, he will be a sub-par performer in combat, especially against the "FOEs" which are the super hard monsters found on each level of the dungeon. An interesting dilemma, huh? You're allowed to have up to 20 active characters, and there are only 5 characters allowed in the party, so apparently you are supposed to have extra character to swap in for special purposes.
I think this game has been unfairly criticized by a lot of professional early reviews, because reviewers simply don't like the genre. Or maybe they think it's too challenging? This game is actually pretty easy to learn, the challenge is in the very long journey through all of the levels, and in that you WILL die from time to time going up against the FOEs. You can also die if you wander too deep into the dungeon, use up all of your "TP" (needed for casting spells), and you forgot to bring a "Warp Wire" which you need to warp out. If you're not looking for a dungeon hack, then stay away despite my high rating. But if you like the dungeon hack genre, then ignore any reviews that pan this game.
There is no graphical tour de force here, but the 3D dungeon view looks quite pretty given the DS's limited hardware capabilities. And after you get past the first five levels, you are treated to a completely new and even prettier looking dungeon! Presumabely every few levels you get to see a new dungeon look. There really are no DS games that can come close to what can be done on the Sony PSP. I rate the graphics based on the capabilities of the hardware. I'm not sure why this aspect of the game was panned by a lot of professional reviewers, because I don't think there's enough memory on the DS cards to have a completely different look for each one of 30 levels. And the game was also dinged for not having animations. However the static pictures of the monsters are quite well done and pretty to look at. I've used the word "pretty" alot because it describes the look of the game very well.
My main complaint with this game is that it's TOO addictive. You may find yourself not able to put the game down until after just one more run into the dungeon, which of course turns into a second run, and before you know it hours of your life have been wasted. You have been warned.