mapping out etrian odyssey

my ears seem to perk up whenever i hear about a game that seems to polarize players, because that usually indicates that a game has taken some sort of risk. one that i played a fair amount recently was etrian odyssey by atlus for DS. this review at gamezone.com has a fairly detailed rundown of the game’s setup, but basically the game uses the tried-and-true, typical classic turn-based RPG battle system paired with a unique gimmick which is that you can make maps of the dungeons yourself using the in-game mapping system. the DS’s touchscreen makes this an intuitive, entertaining, and new experience, but the novelty quickly wears off as you slog through floor after floor of the entirely story-less quest (although apparently a semblance of a story does get incorporated about a third of the way through the game).

the game is often cited as being quite difficult, but my main problem with the game wasn’t the challenge. i don’t mind a challenge in general, although i agree that the game starts off being quite “difficult” in that you’ll have to return to the town to heal often at the beginning and you’ll be short of cash more often than not. but a few floors in, the difficulty evens out a lot and the “challenge” such as it is lessens considerably. the game also seems to get praised by reviewers for its “deliberate” pacing: the game only enables you to obtain better weapons, armor, items, or accessories after you reach a certain floor of the dungeon, and the gains you receive are palpable and really feel like upgrades, as opposed to all the filler equipment you find in other RPGs.

my main problem with the game is that, as with most RPGs, 90% of your time playing the game will be in battles and the battle mechanics themselves are just too dull to maintain your interest. as i’ve said before, there are only so many times a person wants to cast “fire 2″ and “cure all” in one lifetime, and i’ve passed that point quite a while ago. the game did keep my interest for a while with its other key feature which is the character customization, where for every level up you’re given one skill point to allocate as you choose among your character’s class’s available skills. although this gives a definite sense of decision making, i found that it didn’t feel like enough of a unique feature to offset the fact that the majority of the classes and their skills are ones we’ve seen countless other times (fighter, check; white mage, check; black mage, check; geomancer, check). without a unique battle mechanic, story, characters, or even unique enemies or graphics (which are clean but minimal) to make up for it, exploring the dungeon just becomes repetitive once the gimmick of map-making wears off. and to top it all off, you can only warp into the labyrinth every 5 floors, so for 4 out of every 5 floors you play through you have to go through the same route over and over again fighting the same enemies to get to new areas.

although i played it obsessively for the first few floors, by the time i got to the 7th floor i felt like i had seen everything the game had to offer, so although i don’t usually do so i’ve decided to set the game aside indefinitely. it seems the second game is more of the same with a few new classes, but i’ve heard better things about the third iteration which features completely new and more-unique classes and some sailing mechanics to provide some variety. i’ll probably give that one a try at some point, but i don’t think it’ll be anytime soon.

mapping out some etrian odyssey links:
- entry at wikipedia
- PDF of manual at replacementdocs.com
- fansite with interactive maps. also includes the comics and much more easily downloadable access to the wallpapers featuring all the character portraits found on the official site.
- good FAQ at gamefaqs including a rundown of the skills and a ranking of the classes
- positive review at gamespot.com

riviera: the unfulfilled promised land

i’m always on the lookout for games that have a reputation for being a bit offbeat, and somehow i’d heard about the GBA RPG riviera: the promised land which has been remade for the PSP and incidentally is the current together retro game club pick over at racketboy.com.

i don’t remember where i first heard about this game, but i’m guessing it was from reading about one of its successors knights in the nightmare, on DS, which has an equally strange premise. that game mashes up a “bullet-hell” shooter with an RPG, while this one has an oddly streamlined approach to battles, inventory, and exploration. this entry at gamespite goes into the game’s unique mechanics in detail and is a good introduction to what the game is about.

i agree with that writer’s assessment that the game’s battle + inventory system is “taut”, and that practice mode (i.e. unlimited level grinding with no penalties) completely destroys any of the balance the game might have had. the natural question that follows is: how does the game hold up when you completely ignore practice mode? unfortunately, there are a lot of problems with just plowing through the game without level grinding, and my opinion based on my single playthrough is that i don’t think they’d be easily surmounted even on multiple playthroughs. one problem is that when you don’t train outside of battles it’s difficult to score well on them (each one is graded), and as a consequence you’ll earn a smaller number of trigger points (i.e. outside-battle actions) and equipment, making it harder to gain more equipment and score well on the next battle, which means you’ll continue to have a smaller number of trigger points, and so on … it’s a vicious cycle. if you stay afloat then you probably can survive this pretty well, but if you start going under you can easily get trapped in a whirlpool of low-scoring battles with no new equipment in sight.

also, one thing that annoyed me about this game and annoys me about others like it (such as the gamecube RPG baten kaitos), is when you have a certain number of possible characters to use but you can only take some fraction of them into battle. in this game you have four supporting characters (all female) but you can only use two at one time, so as usual i ended up completely ignoring some people, in this case, cierra and to a lesser extent serene. this annoyance is complicated by the fact that the majority of equipment is at worst only usable by certain people in your party, so if you’re going the no-practice-rounds route then, due to the random nature of equipment found in treasure chests you’ll often wind up with equipment that’s only usable or much more optimally used by people you’ve been ignoring. there just aren’t enough battles to make it possible to train up all four of the supporting characters, so this gets to be a significant problem in the later chapters of the game. also, due to the random nature of what equipment you acquire and when, in the no-train mode just as you’ve finished mastering a weapon (unlocking its best moves) it’ll break with no replacement available for the rest of the game. frustrating, to say the least.

i’m not a fan of what little i’ve experienced of dating sims in general: they always seem faintly misogynistic to me, although it’s probably because only the male-centric and none of the female-centered dating sims make it to the US. but in any case, fortunately in this game those parts are fairly minimal (although there are two gratuitous “bathing” scenes). it’s also annoying that all the extras, like an in-game soundtrack archive and a record of high scores, are only accessible if you come across certain in-game items.

battles themselves are a mixed bag. i really liked that all the battles are self-contained and you don’t have to heal your party after you finish each one, and i like how the game takes a final fantasy tactics-esque approach to levelling up in that skills (and stats) are gained after using certain weapons. the super skills are fun and flashy, although the game’s apparent emphasis on keeping the enemies’ super skill meter level down (theoretically forcing you to better balance offensive and defensive moves) is oftentimes fairly pointless since a few rounds of strong offense and healing after the enemies’ counterattack pummelling will usually win you the battle anyway. it’s also annoying that you don’t actually get to see what the enemy movesets are until they execute them, and that instead the game just offers a couple of sentences for suggested “tactics” before each battle. and while i appreciate the ability to replay lost battles with a built-in handicap, it would’ve been great if you could manually select to use the handicap or not as using it lowers the highest possible score you can get for that battle. it’s also annoying that you can’t combine items of the same type, especially when one of them has only a few uses left. and also, why isn’t anyone else complaining about how incredibly small the font of this game is? i know i can’t be the only one who found myself constantly straining to read the text.

even with that long list of complaints, this was a fun game overall and unique compared to the mountains of cookie-cutter RPGs out there. it definitely drags near the end, and there are two sections in particular that are extremely annoying (the forest and the maze of ankhs, as i’m sure people who’ve played the game already know), so even though it’s not really a classic for the ages it’ll be interesting to see how it holds up on a second playthrough. it would’ve been great if there had been a sequel, but i’ve already ordered its only-tangentially-related followup, yggdra union, also for GBA. all in all this was a decent closer for games i’ve finished in 2010. and now that i’ve finished my last review for last year, the full 2010 recap is coming next. stay tuned …

promising riviera links:
- a slew of faqs at gamefaqs.com inc. this one that lists all the possible weapon effects
- some good screenshots, wallpapers, etc. at the official site of the GBA game, the official site of the PSP game, and the official japanese site of the GBA game
- review and screenshots and character art at rpgfan.com
- entry at wikipedia

medical drama at the trauma center

finally, a non-sequel. finally sat down and finished up the first trauma center game (sub-titled “under the knife“), for DS. there was a lot i enjoyed about the game. i’m not particularly fond of the sight of blood, even in a video game, but the touch-screen controls are intuitive, fun, and work very well.

the game’s problems are fairly well known. first off, by its nature the surgical procedures can get repetitive (e.g. removing tumors), but it’s definitely true that the more you do them the more you’ll master them, and the game’s ranking system does motivate you somewhat to polish your skeelz. a similar kind of game, cooking mama, was way more repetitive, and i wasn’t too bothered by it in this game. another common complaint is that the game is a bit short, and the entire last section (as well as the bonus missions) are all retreads of the same 7 procedures but in harder versions. i wasn’t so keen on that, but i was in the mood for a short game so that didn’t bother me too much either.

the main complaint, though, and one that i agree with to some extent is the variable difficulty. for the most part i was making good progress, until i hit a brick wall with one of the final surgeries that i literally spent hours on. there’s a fair amount of trial and error involved in the game in general, but even aside from that some of the stages’ difficulty levels are just ridiculous. i did finally finish the game, but i had absolutely no motivation to tackle the expert missions. i don’t have much interest in getting S-ranks either (yet another case of a game having a pointless “perfection” mode), but i’m sure there are OCD fans who have revelled in those challenges. the story, characters, and graphics are fine overall, and although they were better than i thought they would be and fit the gameplay they weren’t particularly outstanding, and the music is good in general, although more variety would have been nice.

all in all, definitely an enjoyable DS game, but one that i can easily see as having been bettered by its sequels. i’d already played a bit of the wii-make/expansion before playing the DS version, so i suppose i should go back and finish that before continuing on, despite the vast majority of it being the same. not expecting too much from that version, but if they made the difficulty more reasonable i should be pretty content, given the solid gameplay.

some not-too-dramatic, not-too-traumatic trauma center links:
- walkthrough at strategywiki.org, including difficulty ratings of all the operations
- official site, includes wallpapers
- random page with a couple more wallpapers
- S-rank FAQ at gamefaqs detailing the number of points and amount of time remaining needed