I have played RPGs for a long time, Japanese RPGs infact took a large quantity of my childhood with a long list of RPGs (Final Fantasy rolling in late) consisting of Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana, at that age I thought RPGs were the greatest thing since sliced bread, it carried on until the Sony Playstation 1, life was so happy. As the years passed by my naive youth, that thought deteriorated, every RPG to date has been trying to be Final Fantasy VII, but where I turned absolutely sour was when I played Tales of Symphonia, that game really pissed me off at how much story elements were ripped off of all my favorite RPGs of the past, it had so much from my old favorite RPGs that it made me sick.
Mind you I did not quit JRPGs all together, I still play my favorites from time to time and only a few news ones I had welcomed with open arms (namely the recent Shin Megami Tensei releases), one RPG however wasn’t only good, it made me question my RPG childhood. Etrian Odyssey was that RPG, after adventuring through its labyrinth I started questioning myself “why didn’t I play dungeon crawlers before?”, “should I really consider those old RPGs old anymore?”. It wasn’t like I played Etrian Odyssey on day one, it was completely off my radar I played it a good 2 years after its release in the west, they already made a part two which is suppose to be even better than the first one.
A While later, I started realizing people are still complaining about many problems with modern day JRPGs. It occured to me that these issues seem to have found their solutions in Etrian Odyssey, though some bits might not be complete solutions but this is coming from someone who hated what JRPGs turned to and saw the light out of a JRPG that is clearly inspired by much older western dungeon crawler RPGs:
- Let the player carve their path:
I know this is a more western RPG approach, but the player needs to relate to the characters that they created, the entire game is a journey from start to end and the player must understand that this party will be progressing with them through out the game. when I played dark spire for the first time, I focused on one character at the start, thinking who am I gonna play and named him “asatiir”, but then I realized I’m suppose to have a group from the get go. That was pretty disorienting, especially when I had a foundation coming from RPGs that either let you play one character or start with one character then meet more characters as you progressed. I have tried out Dark Spire much more earlier than I did with Etrian Odyssey and got turned off, due to my lack of understanding how the game plays, while still playing Etrian Odyssey, I gave Dark Spire a second chance, sucked me in for 3 hours, that’s all I can say, I will be playing Dark Spire later when I finish Etrian Odyssey.
My party consisted of 7 characters in Etrian Odyssey (with 2 being replaced), I named the Guild Qannoun (قانون) which is “law” in arabic, and gave all my characters cheesy arabic names, I started with a male Landsknecht (Fajr), a female Dark Hunter (Ro’a), a male Protector (Jabal), A female Medic (Zafira) and a Male Alchemist (Fuqdan) in this order:
- Front: Landsknecht, Dark Hunter, Protector
- Back: Medic, Alchemist
Positioning of the characters was extremely vital, as the spell casters had to be in the back since they had marginally weaker defense than the physical-attack based characters that I’ve left in the front. This is of course a very basic RPG strategy that even Final Fantasy players know, in Etrian Odyssey, however it is much more vital as your characters are much more prone of dying. Having a protector and a medic were very important as the protector would shield other party members from being killed with enemy damage. I made my Landsknecht concentrate on Axe-based attacks, making him more of the “Heavy damage on one enemy” rather than “attack all enemies with normal attacks”. Dark hunter specialized in binding enemies, making them unable to do certain attacks, at large portion of the game that was necessary, unless I wanted to be showered with abnormal status effects. Protector eventually at one point learned “smite” which was a pretty powerful shield attack which did a respectable amount of damage. Medic goes without saying a very important part of the party as she kept on healing damaged characters and revived them if they died. Alchemist was the usual spellcaster.
As I progressed 2 more characters came to play Za’atar the Ronin and Rahma the Hexer, being limited to 5 characters in one formation my group had lost both Fajr (Landsknect) and Ro’a (Dark Hunter) and ended up as:
- Front: Ronin, Protector
- Back: Medic, Hexer, Alchemist
I had concentrated on making the Ronin perform one task in battle (in which that was the only thing the Ronin was useful for) since he replaced the Landsknecht, and that is to make a crap ton of damage in one singular turn, I had maxed his out attack up, his overhead stance (which increases the ronin’s attack and defense), Midareba (an attack that depends on the Overhead stance and hits the enemy multiple times in one turn), he was able to cause a total of +1000 hp per turn. I had revised the Protector to be solely defense based, I removed smite and maxed out his rear and front guard moves and made sure Aegis (giving him a chance to revive himself with 1 hp if killed) and in the same time. Medic and Alchemist pretty much remained the same, except that the Medic started becoming a potential melee attacker with the chance of knocking the enemy down and cancel their attack and the medic was able to warp the party out of the labyrinth to safety. Hexer replaced the dark hunter for her binding spells and the ability to cast corrupt (abnormal status that makes enemies receive damage for attacking the party members), and a powerful revenge spell that casts the amount of damage the hexer sustains on all the enemies.
- Let the player carve their path (literally)
Whatever happened with having a notepad around while playing a game? remember when having passwords written on your notepad? or for emergencies write it on a wall or on a table so you’d write it later on a piece of paper (and end up being too lazy to do so)? Not much games nowadays let you rely on physical writing tools. Hotel Dusk and Etrian Odyssey reminded me of how important this thing is in terms of game experience, now that touch screens exist as a form of input for video games, there should be no excuse to implement this to games. In Etrian Odyssey you draw the map of the labyrinth that you explore, to some that might be an inconvenience, but this also plays a big role of the immersive experience of a dungeon crawler, if you think that is bad, what do you think of those who keep gridded paper pads as reference to these maze like dungeon crawlers? Many have found entertainment in keeping reference of the maps they explore, it adds this “how much more of the map can I unveil?” kind of tension in the gameplay.
- Keep battles quick and snappy:
A usual complaint that I always hear about menu based JRPGs that their battle systems are hindered by grinding, I know I’m among the many that complain about this. But when I played Etrian Odyssey, it occurred to me that what made grinding so unentertaining and mundane to many players, it wasn’t the grinding aspect of fighting the same enemies over and over to level up your characters, it was the amount of detail of the presentation.
No, I don’t mean that the graphics should be crapped down in RPGs, just lower the amount of animations that show that a fireball (that could EASILY be dodged) that has dragon wings is being formed muscle stretching from the hero through a camera that spins around them a million times. Just make the fireball form and hit in 2-3 seconds flat, insanely long battle animations make the battles conclude themselves slower. When you minimize the presentations.
- Make survival count, as a matter of fact, make it a reward:
Admittedly, among my favorite RPGs of all time is one of the easiest, I love Chrono Trigger, but it’s just too easy. When I played Etrian Odyssey I was thinking to myself, “where was Etrian Odyssey back when I thought Chrono Trigger was awesome?”, but then I might have probably not have enjoyed Etrian Odyssey back then. but that’s how much I love Etrian Odyssey’s sadistic difficulty, it made every HP point count.
Money isn’t an easily obtainable luxury either, you don’t earn money by killing monsters like you do in several other role playing games, you take whatever items those monsters you killed have dropped and sell them for cash. in the process the shop makes several equipment and items available from the loot you sell, making it even more difficult for you to save money, as you will need that equipment.
Inventory takes the best out of you too, unlike other RPGs where you can carry 99 potions, 99 antidotes, 99 elixirs, 99 herbs, etc. (making you carry what might possibly be Santa Claus’s present bag full of RPG items), you carry 60 items, and in that 60 if you have 2 potions, that’s 2 items in that inventory. that way you’re limited to balance out the space in your inventory for items that you need and space to carry the loot that you collect from your battles. Some might find it daunting, but that definitely increases the thought in managing your team and inventory.
Even with my powerful group, I still faced problems confronting the perils that awaited me in the labyrinth, at one point you reach a group of enemies that lull you to sleep and kill you in a few turns, many battles you will face have better chances of surviving by killing the enemies rather than running away, I learnt that the hard way.
- Keep the player on their toes, keep them scared
Etrian Odyssey, even for a game on a portable system with text rather than cinematics did a real good job of immersing me into the game. Two small screens didn’t stop me from being hooked into the game. The game might have a color palette more colorful than skittles compared to other games that have a fear factor, but doesn’t stop it from keeping you on your toes. Call me crazy, but I really think it defines what survival horror really is, that dog jumping through window in the first Resident Evil was only scary…. once…. back in 1996…. and you know there’s something wrong with the “Survival Horror” genre when that is still listed to this day as scary.
But then, how do you make it scary? even with a game like Etrian Odyssey that is so colorful, it makes Skittles don’t look out of place in a desaturated game such as Gears of War. Clearly the color palette and the graphical presentation has nothing to do with the fear factor, you can have the monsters puke candy and still make it scary if done right. The key in the fear factor in Etrian Odyssey is that it didn’t do what Resident evil did which was a sudden, strong jolt to make you jump, Etrian Odyssey kept a constant unnerving stream of tension, while it didn’t make you jump, it kept you dreading the fact that any silly mistake that you do will result with death and loss of a large quantity of progress.
If you follow my twitter feed, you would notice that I have mentioned time and time again “In Etrian Odyssey, nothing’s scarier than a clean new map”, which is true. Keeping the player in charge of Map drawing doesn’t only make the player have a sense of scale of the floors, but also give that discomfort of not knowing what’s waiting for you by the other side of the map. As you progress through the game, the maps become more and more complex, making it more intimidating.
The game teaches you to organize your methods, find the most efficient way through the floors, rather than mess about and treat every battle as something that lacks any significance.
- Make the monsters intimidating:
FOE is the first thing to mention in the “intimidating monsters” department, in a map full of randomly encountered enemies, leave the more powerful monsters visible on the map, patrolling certain areas of the map or make them chase you and ambush you as you reach certain areas of the floor. These monsters are among the most potential threats in the Etrian Odyssey universe, they are a menace, they roam floors being 5-7 levels above all the monsters that dwell on that floor, not only are they powerful, but they also can gang up on you, so an individual monster can become a horde of annoyingly powerful monsters.
I might be sounding cynical, but the FOEs have proved to be a challenge, a worthy adversary. FOEs had really defined what Etrian Odyssey, and sparked a new love for JRPGs in me. Killing FOEs is motivated by the loot they drop, selling that loot would bring much more powerful weapons and armor in the shop for me to buy, even when FOEs in Etrian Odyssey 2 give out 0 experience points.
- Make the bosses shit-your-pants intimidating
In many an RPG, you are greeted with a small cinematic sequence before fighting the boss, usually it roaring or flexing its muscles before the battle. In Etrian Odyssey, that sequence is thrown out the window and throughout the adventure small sequences of text describe your fear with eerie music, sounds minimal, but surprisingly doubles the effect of the intimidation of fighting these huge monsters.
We seem to forget that at one point, text was all that we had to describe things to us in games, at one point we stopped using it and full motion video came to play, that too became old. I remember when playing Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7, the summon animations were completely in FMV, and while watching I was thinking to myself “do they honestly think this stuff still impresses us?”.
Presentation is key in making things immersive, but people don’t realize that high-presentation doesn’t always mean cutting edge graphics. Etrian Odyssey stands a perfect example to that, those texts in which they describe how menacing and how vile a beast that boss is played a very effective part of the game, as an introduction it worked very well. but that wasn’t only what the game did in order to make the bosses intimidating. At one boss, as you fight, FOE subordinates approach you to defend the boss. At another fight, you’re chased by FOEs that are later killed by the boss in order to fight you, all for the sake of making you chicken shit scared.
The scary part is that these aren’t things scripted as an event in a game, but are actual game mechanics for a boss fight, those FOEs are aggroed into fighting you if that boss is touched, that boass is commanded to kill you and who ever is fighting you the second you step into a battle, that sense of panic is what makes these fights immersive in the universe of Etrian Odyssey.
We definitely enjoyed Etrian Odyssey, it made us cry, it drove us mad, it made us lose friends, but it truly immersed us and definitely made us people glad that we experienced such a game with this much amount of depth and thought given to making this game a modern dungeon crawler with many classical fundamentals, we demand more of it, and more of it will be played for many sleepless nights to come
Mirror: Lochal Archade