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[Bish]

Etrian Odyssey IIGenre: RPG, old-skchool style, yo.Premise 6Gameplay 9.5Visual 7Audio 8Appeal 7Premise: 6/10So there's this giant tree in the middle of town, which is actually full of monsters, so you slug your way to the top for no real reason apart from proving how awesome you are. It's a dungeon crawl up a tree.Not exactly an inspiring tale, rather just a loose background tale to support the gameplay. Functional, but certainly nothing special.Gameplay: 9.5/10Major word of warning: Your Mileage May VaryIt's a throwback to Wizardry days, nearly. To quote Wikipedia, "Wizardry is a series of computer role-playing games, [...] that were popular in the 1980s.". It essentially defined the Dungeon Crawl RPG. When you start out, you have to create a 5-member team, from 11 available classes, such Protector (tank), Alchemist (Mage), Medic, Ronin, to the two new additions (from Etrian Odyssey 1) of Gunner and Beast. Each class has their own purpose, and it's your job to find out what works well for you. Aesthetically, each character class is reasonably generic. You can't visually design each character; only select from a few pre-drawn class artworks. But character customisation comes in not only stats, but a sort of skill tree, with each level giving you Skill Points to spend on skills. Improve an individual skill enough, and this will unlock better variations, or completely different skills. It would be ill-advised to throw those skill points around, so think long and hard about what role your character will play within your team. Will your Alchemist learn all three elements for versatility, or focus on one and be a magic nuker? Where it diverts from Wizardry is that it uses the more common RPG staple of using HP and MP (or, rather, TP in this game). Magic/Techniques cost TP, as opposed to you having a certain number of casts for a certain class of spell.As for the dungeon crawling aspect, it's no understatement to say that it's hard. You will die. Probably within your first few battles too, since you're so pathetically weak. Mini-bosses (FOEs) patrol the dungeon and chase after you and do things to you. Bosses sit at the end of every few levels and are a test of endurance. And when you succeed, you proceed to the next section of the giant tree dungeon and find yourself pathetically weak (comparatively) once again. You'll lose save data, definitely. This is where your mileage may vary. Sure, the difficulty is stupid, the enemies are stupid, the designers are stupid, it's stupidly hard. But. Some masochists thrive on it. They take the challenge and run into it like a brickwall. This really is a super-subjective thing. You may not like it, and I don't blame you. But I love it.The dungeon itself is grid-based. You move around in a first-person view, in a premade floor of the dungeon, but it's all a mystery to you. Unless you have an insanely fantastic memory, you have to draw the floor layout for each floor as you progress through it. At first it feels like an unnecessary tacked-on use of the touchscreen, and I hate those, with stabby rage. However, keeping in mind that as a very niche dungeon crawling game, something like this also encourages exploration. It's no fun going directly from set of stairs to move between floors, you want to explore whatever else is in the dungeon. Sure it might be a dead-end, or a trap, or a FOE and one of the ten million other things that'll kill you, it might also be a treasure or a resource and you gotta find out what it is. Your reward for exploration is the self-satisfaction of completion, that's all. And for some of us, it's enough.Battle is turn-based. Static images fill the screen to indicate who's who. The standard attack menu of Attack, Skill, Item, etc pops up. Normal RPG sort of stuff, just without motion. It works.Outside of dungeons, the town is a menu-based affair. No open world here, if you need to go to the inn, you select it, and that's it. The Town has people to heal, save, revive, cure from ailments, a quest-giver, and a shop. Standard fair, although you can trade in some of your loot from the dungeon for better equipment to be sold at the item store. No item-crafting here, though.Ultimately, it's gameplay that you either love or hate. It does what it does well, that's all there is to it. Visual: 7/10As mentioned in the gameplay, the game is viewed from a first person perspective. And the dungeon is rendered in 3D. Sadface.Yeah, we know the DS isn't the most technologically advanced thing out there. And, by some standards, the world is blocky and ugly. The sprites are nice enough, but nothing special. That 7 is there just for the fact that it's functional. It does it's job. It may be a tad ugly, but corridors and walls are clear, colours are vibrant, and environments are appropriate.Audio: 8/10There's a set of 5 floors that's snow-themed. You walk around and your footsteps are appropriately muffled and crunch as if you were stepping on snow (well, as good as you can with the DS' speaker quality). That's one of the major things that grabbed my attention in terms of audio. The normal background music seems like MIDI-produced stuff, though. That said, there is some catchy stuff in here. Battle music obviously gets repetitive well before the billionth time you've heard it, but each themed set of 5-floors have their own background music, most of them quite calming and lovely as you wander through snow fields or forests with leaves that blaze a bright red. Also? There are 'super arrange' versions. Some of them even have Rebecca Evans singing in them. They're awesome.Appeal: 7/10Again, this factors heavily into what I mentioned in the gameplay. If you know love it, +3. If you don't, -3. The rest of the RPG elements are reasonably 'normal', but it all hinges on the fact of if you like dungeon crawling or not.Overall 7.5/10A solid, niche dungeon crawler, one of a very few on the DS, also with a few modern RPG mechanics thrown in.