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Review: Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan

More than anything, Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan is old-school. This dungeon crawling JRPG brings some classic first-person exploration back into the current age with more than a little difficulty.

This game is hard.

Early on, you will find yourself either running from a lot of battles… or dying. Each dungeon brings with it new, tougher enemies, so finding a good spot to grind whenever you get the chance is a must. If you like a challenge, Etrian Odyssey IV will not disappoint.

You begin your grand adventure by creating and naming a guild and filling its ranks with characters. There are only a limited amount of class types to begin with, but you will eventually have access to an impressive array. Each character is a blank slate, other than its class and base stats, which leaves you free to give him or her a name and imagine a backstory. You can draw many parallels between Etrian Odyssey IV and a game of D&D. Not only are many of the story details left to the imagination, but the prospective of the narrative is also the same when you’re exploring dungeons. “You find a shortcut through the bushes, what will you do?”

Your first mission is a simple fetch quest to provide a little introduction to how the game plays. You find out there is a huge tree named Yggdrasil that you can see in the distance; it is the location of countless adventures that have taken place through the ages. Explorers in the past have set off in an attempt to unravel its mysteries, and you plan to do the same. The story takes a while to become apparent, but once it does it’s a nice change of pace and helps to break up the monotony that dungeon crawlers tend to suffer from.

The dungeons themselves feature the staple random battles the genre is known for… but don’t provide you with a map at first. While exploring each dungeon you are tasked with creating the map yourself, making sure to note each wall, door, save point and everything else. This may not sound like a lot of fun, but surprisingly it is and quickly becomes very important in your exploration. You a certain sense of satisfaction on completing a dungeon knowing you’ve mapped it in its entirety, uncovering all its secrets. Using the stylus to make your maps, you have all the control you will ever need, including the ability to add note to points of interest and it feels natural scrawling away as you progress.

The skill system, although simple, allows for quite a lot of customisation. The game really focuses on allowing you to do what you want. Once you have unlocked some of the extra character classes, the party possibilities seem almost endless. Focusing on a front and back line allows parties to be set up strategically, with healers and mages in the back and berserkers and tanks in the front. It’s definitely worth spending some time thinking about how to best set up your guild for battle, as the difficulty curve is severe. If you’re not happy with what you have, you can easily change your party around and hire new members from town, making yourself primed for battle.

Although the overall quality of the music is fantastic, it’s a bit dull and doesn’t convey the action in-game. My guess is a group who made it big in the niche elevator music scene tried their hand at video game music. It’s not all bad, but in parts it’s a little repetitive and boring.

Straying from the standard recipe of random-encounter enemies, you’ll also find foes wandering the map. They will move one square on the map when you do, allowing you to avoid them if your mapping skills have proven worthy. These can both be found in dungeons and on the world map. While traversing the wide-open world, you will be given access to an airship, allowing you to a slowly increasing map. Some areas will be inaccessible to your airship at first but will taunt you, always in view.

Graphically, Etrian Odyssey IV is very disappointing. Everything in the dungeons feels flat and two-dimensional. Getting close to any of the walls in a dungeon will reveal some nice textures that just don’t add any sense of space to the area up-close. Good from far but far from good, at least the enemies are fully animated.  As for the game’s 3D effect, it’s not the worst I have seen on a 3DS title but it certainly doesn’t add anything to the game. Etrian Odyssey IV fails to push the 3DS to its limits or even look much better than an old PS2 title.

All in all I was surprised by this game, but not necessarily in a good way. I was really looking forward to getting my hands on it, and knowing Atlus, I assumed I was in for a treat. Once again I have learnt that just because a game looks tailor-made for me on paper doesn’t mean I’m going to love it. I’m a fan of old school RPGs, and I like a challenge, but Etrian Odyssey IV is missing something. It failed to keep me interested for long periods, possibly due to the lack of character development I have grown so used to in RPGs today. With the freedom to do and play as you like comes a decided lack of structure. Certainly there are a lot of people out there that will really enjoy this game, but for me it’s just another interesting idea that didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

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About the author

Shane Wall

I'm just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe. A game geek turned audio engineer/musician. Shane's life is a delicate balance of video games, music and science fiction.