Another silent release from Atlus, this time for the DS. Etrian Odyssey is a strange mix of RPG and Cartography. The point of the game (I just got it today) seems to be to explore the tremendous depths of a mysterious underground labyrinth that one day opened up outside the town of Etria.

You begin the game by forming a guild, which is kinda like a clan in FFTactics Advance. While doing this you actually create the characters of your choice by giving them names and a job from a selection of 9. You also choose their character portrait. There are 4 portraits for each job (2 male, 2 female) and all have the fine Atlus anime style.

Each job has access to different skills which you gain and strengthen in the same manner as WoW talent points. Fights are hard but not as common as in normal RPG, and you can set up back and front lines for your 1-6 man party.

In town you don't actually travel, it's like Monster Rancher where you pick where you want to "go" from a menu and the background picture changes while you "go" there. In this same way you travel to the labyrinth. Once inside the Labyrinth you shift into a first-person view and begin exploration on the top screen. On the touchscreen you actually map the area as you go along, marking walls, floors, harvesting/logging/mining spots, spots where special bosses appear, and other points of interest. In-game time passes while you travel, and a monster detector shows how close you are to being taken into "random" combat. Combat is traditionally turn-based fighting with an imperfect Agility stat, in other words, your characters have agility stats but their action order isn't quite set in stone. Characters on the frontline are more likely to be attacked than backliners, luckily the Paladin type job has a Provoke-like ability (actually called "Provoke") which raises his defense and gains enemy ire, he also has abilities to cover the different battlelines.

Once you finish the first mission you can begin accepting other quests and missions in town, all involving the labyrinth.

The concept of an RPG completely based around one dungeon seems kinda disastrous but so far this is killer fun and I really enjoy it, it seems like it's gonna be long as hell too and a nice challenge. It just came out yesterday or the day before and stores are probably in low supply (friggin Atlus) so if you're interested I'd say go get it.

Here's IGN's review:
http://ds.ign.com/articles/788/788909p1.html

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

looks like pokemon

edit: actually this game looks pretty cool.

its gotten solid ratings, might check it out thanks

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DS delivers yet again. Nice writeup Dead...i'll have to add that game to my 9827398279837 game queue.

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Yea, I picked this game up. I dig 90% of the stuff Atlus releases. lol My next game is Odin Sphere for PS2 (comes out the 22nd) and then Persona 3.

What party setup do you use? I've stuck with a pretty traditional setup from the start. My vanguard is Protector and Landsknecht and my rear is Survivalist, Alchemist, and Medic. I'm on basement 9 now and my characters are all level 27, I've been camping around the healing spring in basement 8.

My Protector doesn't have many abilities levelled up (like the front/rear covers, smite, etc) but he has both cures and massive defense, I'm building his shield skill up to get En Garde.

My Landsknecht is a fucking monster, I leveled up both his weapons, atk bonus, and double attack to 5 but besides those his skills are pretty low. HP+1, Def+2 Crush lv2, cleaver lv1, and warcry.

I gave the survivalist a ton of bow skillups since she doesn't get Atk bonus traits. I boosted her agility enough to unlock Ambush, which is now level 5 and awesome. True shot3 and multi shot 2 are her only other skilled up abilities.

For the alchemist I've kept her elementals pretty even, but Volt always comes first (FFXI disease makes me think thunder is best). Once I found the first geo stratum I boosted her TP to unlock warp.

For the medic I focused more on her spell strength than max tp. I have Revive unlocked and just need to level up to obtain it. In terms of relative job strength she's probably my best character besides the Landsknecht, who is a fucking monster.

I have Dark Hunter and Troubador characters but I haven't used them at all yet. One thing that bothers me about the game is that I don't know the max character level and I don't know how deep the dungeon is, do you? I also haven't unlocked Ronin and Hexer yet but I can buy Ronin weapons at the shop.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

I have a protector which is just a meat shield, a Landsknecht which is kinda bleh, Dark Hunter which is fucking uber, Alchemist (Poison is way better than any of the elements) and a medic. For my medic I focused more on the after battle healing. I used to have a survivalist, but they suck for anything other than gathering.

The game is on hold for me now since Odin Sphere came out today.

I had a feeling Poisons would end up kicking ass since enemy poison is so strong but I never put the energy into them haha. My party is up to level 33 and I'm on floor 11/12. At this point my protector's offense has fallen so far behind the fighters that I'm focusing on leveling his provoke and I got revive and healing touch on my medic. I maxed out the survivalist's bow skill but she's still not very strong, but I have high level Ambush which is pretty nice. Apollon is cool in boss fights.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

Seems like you've kept the same party since you started. I've made so many different types of characters that it's not even funny. lol It's part of why I love games like EO.

Yeah I've made other job characters but haven't used them. I unlocked Ronin yesterday and I'm assuming the Hexer chick will give me the Hexer job somewhere on floor 11/12.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die