For the last month, I've been watching Gonzo's new anime The Tower of Druaga: the Aegis of Uruk via the internet. We're not talking about a fansub here; Gonzo has been streaming the episodes with English subtitles each week as they air in Japan. It's a historic occasion for anime and game fans. Aegis of Uruk is based on a videogame from 1984 -- a notoriously difficult dungeon-crawler that can not be beaten on the first try, without a guide. Druaga is a game for masochists, and the anime has stirred my desire for a cut-throat RPG experience.
If Gonzo's anime marks the beginning of a trend, I have a feeling that I'll be watching an Etrian Odyssey anime in twenty years.
Etrian Odyssey II is a hardcore, stat-munching, dungeon mapping RPG. The big hook is that you create and annotate your own maps of the dungeons you explore. The top screen features a 3-D first-person perspective, and the bottom screen is a cartography kit. Random battles are fought Dragon Quest style; your top screen fills with stagnant portraits of enemies, and your party's character names blink at the bottom. There are no sweeping camera movements, or shiny summon spells -- instead, the drama comes from the play itself, and the personal gamer panic that a bad fight induces. In return for victory, Etrian Odyssey rewards players with more play, more options, more stats. There are twelve character classes to choose from, including my new personal favorite, Beasts.
What's a beast? Just a loyal animal. Think four roguish adventurers ... and a bear. Hilarious.
The story of EO2 concerns a long-lost floating castle, high above the forests of Lagaard. Trekking up through the canopy, your specific band of warriors venture into the tree-top mazes above the village, seeking treasures and avoiding giant monsters. Each dungeon features giant, nearly unbeatable mini-bosses, called FOEs, which reward you with no experience points (and more often than not just slaughter your party). Players are encouraged to learn Foe-specific skills, to draw Foes into different corridors or trap them in place to pass by.
The game is not fun in a button-mashing way. It's like model-building, or optional homework. If you've played Etrian Odyssey through to completion, you know what I mean (and you lucky gamers can use a password you received at the end of the first title to unlock special features in this one). Truth be told, if you finished Etrian Odyssey, you're going to get this game; tweaks like more specific map icons and auto mapping are going to soothe your complaints from the first title. The hardcore who missed out the first time are strongly encouraged to give the game a run. The satisfaction of finishing even a single map is like the bliss that comes from organizing all your books, or alphabetizing CDs. It's fun for completists. Everyone else will just stare, dumbfounded.
score 7.5 out of ten
verdict A game for people who read the instructions first ... and then look back fondly on their instruction-reading time.
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