Musical Soundalike of the Day, 4/29/2024
Something I’m trying since I’ve been having trouble keeping up in this blog, first a piece of music that sounds like a cross between previously-written pieces.
+
=
Let me know if the videos don’t work.
atlus
Deep Look – Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection
Excellent Origins
During my years in undergraduate college, I discovered a Nintendo DS RPG from Atlus entitled Etrian Odyssey that attempted to recreate the style of old-school first-person dungeon crawlers such as the Wizardry series. While it was not without its faults, I enjoyed it enough to play most of its sequels and remakes up to the apparent concluding entry, Etrian Odyssey Nexus on the 3DS. The following decade came the unexpected announcement that Atlus was remastering the first three mainline entries for Steam and the Nintendo Switch under the moniker of the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection, allowing a new generation of gamers to experience them.
For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the structure of the first three games in the Etrian series consists of a hub town (two in the third installment) where the player creates a guild of playable characters of different classes, with five allies organized into front and back rows, each with the maximum of three adventurers. In town, the player can also purchase equipment for their characters, sleep at the inn to recover the party, and obtain missions from the tavern or whoever runs the town alongside which each entry’s Yggdrasil Labyrinth exists that have rewards such as money, items, and in the third entry, experience for the active characters.
Players can create characters from various classes, some overlapping throughout the games, sometimes with different monikers, such as magicians that can cast elemental magic. Each has a skill tree where the player can invest points into active and passive abilities that unlock advanced skills. Some classes are more effective on the front row, where they deal more yet receive more physical damage; in the back row, they receive but deal less physical damage unless they have a ranged weapon in which certain classes are adept; or, in a few cases, either.
Once ready, the player can head into the town’s adjacent Yggdrasil Labyrinth, which consists of first-person navigation of its various floors, upward or downward. Central to exploration is the dungeon map the player can create while wandering the multi-floored dungeon’s various Strati, with options allowing visited tiles and walls to be automatically mapped, somewhat reducing the legwork of the in-game cartography. Players must still manually place icons indicating elements like doors and secret passageways. While on the DS and 3DS, they could do so with their respective styluses, the developers adopted the mapping control surprisingly well for the Steam versions I played, even when using a controller.
The battle mechanics are also central to the Origins Collection, with fights randomly encountered. However, an indicator changes color from blue to red, which reduces the unpredictability of random battles. Combat utilizes a traditional turn-based style where the player inputs commands for their five characters: these include attacking with an equipped weapon, using a TP-consuming ability, consuming an item from the inventory, executing a limit break (which comes in different forms throughout the trilogy), or attempting escape, with up to five chances to do so if players select the option for each ally.
Victory nets characters who are still alive experience that allows them to level up, which gives allies skill points to put into their respective trees. Enemies also may drop parts that the player can sell at shops to unlock new consumables, weapons, armor, and accessories for sale, akin to Final Fantasy XII. What happens when the enemy obliterates the party depends upon the difficulty setting; on Picnic mode, the game transports them back to town with nothing lost, while on higher settings, death results in a Game Over with a chance to save progress made on the in-game cartography.
In all three games, powerful enemies known as FOEs wander each floor of the Yggdrasil Labyrinths; avoiding them upon first encounter is usually a good idea on difficulties above Picnic. Only in the second game do they not reward players with experience, but they still may drop materials across the whole trilogy. Bosses terminate each Stratum and may respawn after a few in-game days, providing more opportunity for extra experience and maybe a drop the player initially didn’t receive from them. Finding certain enemy drops to fill the compendia may necessitate the use of the internet, but luckily, obtaining all isn’t necessary to complete the main quests.
The game mechanics remain solid throughout the entire collection, with certain classes working well with one another; for instance, abilities that allow a single character to act first in a round can nullify the typical turn-based RPG issue of healing for allies with low health coming too late. Significant mechanical differences in the trilogy come in the third game, with the sea exploration to sail the waters around Armoroad and the eventual ability to allow one class to branch into the skill tree of another. The accommodation in the anthology to players of different skill levels is a big feather in its cap as well.
As mentioned, the developers adapted the cartographic control well to the Steam versions, which comes from my experience with a controller playing them on my television via the Steam Deck’s dock. Furthermore, because of the gameplay structure, there usually is no problem finding out how to advance the central storyline. However, I did come across a few points, most recently in the third game, where I had to consult the internet. The setup of the menus remains the same throughout all three titles and is easy to handle. However, fans of RPGs with highly interactive overworlds and town exploration will be in for disappointment.
The narratives of each Etrian are self-contained, with minimal connection; moreover, while it is up to the imagination of the player regarding the backstory of whatever playable characters they create, there are many stories within the Yggdrasil Labyrinths, sidequests, and especially the sea exploration in the tertiary entry which contain a great deal of thought and lore. The translations are top-notch, as one would expect from Atlus, despite a few rare awkward lines, and don’t mar the plot experience.
Yuzo Koshiro composed the soundtracks for all three games, with many varieties of tracks that have superb digitization and make for excellent aural experiences.
The art direction is also pretty, with the designs for the characters and enemies having polished appearances. However, the latter in combat have many reskins and are inanimate, with battles remaining strictly in the first person, like older installments of the Dragon Quest series. The three-dimensional parts of the visuals have a smoother look compared to the Nintendo DS versions. Still, there is slight blurriness and pixilation in the environmental textures.
Finally, one can blaze through each game in as little as twelve hours; however, side content such as postgames, Steam achievements, and filling the item and enemy compendia can boost playtime well beyond twenty-four hours per game.
In summation, Atlus did a superb job remastering the first three mainline Etrian Odyssey games, given their engrossing combat and mapping mechanics, lore-laden narratives, and solid audiovisual presentation. The accommodating difficulty settings will appeal to players of different skill levels, for the novice taking the edge off their old-school brutality and for the masochist providing a good, risky dungeon-crawling challenge. The Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection was a series of remasters I didn’t see coming. However, the developers did the games justice, and I can’t recommend the anthology highly enough.
This deep look is based on playthroughs to the standard endings of each entry on a Steam Deck using the television dock.
RECOMMENDED?
YES
Etrian Odyssey II HD
The Second Crusade
When Atlus’s Etrian Odyssey for the Nintendo DS saw its North American release, most gamers found it a throwback to old-school role-playing games, given a fully customizable party, first-person dungeon exploration, and sometimes punishing difficulty. Given its success, it was natural that a sequel would see its release soon afterward, later given a 3DS remake and years later remastered for Windows and the Nintendo Switch as part of the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection as Etrian Odyssey II HD, allowing new generations to discover the original version of the first sequel of the dungeon-crawling franchise.
Upon starting a new game, the player must create a party of five characters of diverse classes, with some new selections in the sequel, which include Gunner and War Magus. Before choosing a party, it’s a good idea to give their skill sets a once-over to ensure that whatever party the player selects can work harmoniously. For example, the Survivalist has certain skills that can grant specific allies the initiative in a round of combat, which can, for example, help healers execute their healing before the enemy kills whomever the player wishes to heal.
Battles in the labyrinth are random, with an indicator gradually turning red to indicate how close the player is to encountering enemies, a feature that, like in the first game, alleviates the typical tension associated with random encounters. Fights follow the traditional turn-based formula of inputting commands for the player’s party and letting them and the enemy beat up one another in a round, with agility determining turn order. The player puts their characters into a formation consisting of a front and back row, each able to hold up to three characters, with characters in the front row dealing and taking more damage and back row characters taking and dealing less damage.
Commands include attacking with an equipped weapon, defending, using items, attempting to escape (with up to five opportunities and an increased chance of success with a skill all characters have), changing the front and back row formation (if all characters in the front row die, the back and front rows will switch), or using a unique Force skill when a character’s Force points are at maximum. Defeating all enemies results in the player acquiring experience for all participating characters who are still alive, not to mention monster parts that the player can sell at the shop in town for money (since monsters don’t drop money themselves).
Violating the Hippocratic Oath
Sold parts gradually unlock more powerful equipment and consumable items. In some cases, gear and consumables are of limited stock, so the player must acquire more monster parts to unlock the equipment and items again for purchase. What happens when the player dies in combat depends upon the difficulty setting: the lowest challenge, Picnic, transports players back into town with no experience lost, while higher settings result in a Game Over but the chance to preserve the dungeon map.
Leveling results in the player acquiring a skill point they can invest in a character class skill tree, with upper-level skills requiring weaker skills to have a certain number of points to unlock them. Bosses end each Stratum, their difficulty depending upon the challenge mode, and as a hint for those playing on standard or advanced settings, using bind skills on their head, arms, and feet can be pivotal. Ultimately, the game mechanics are virtually flawless and accommodating to players of divergent skill levels.
The interface is mostly the same as it was in the first game, with a linear structure and a hub town where the player can perform various tasks such as buying new items and equipment, recovering health, and so forth, with expectant features like the ability to see how gear increases or decreases stats before purchasing it while shopping. The ability to map walls automatically also reduces some of the stress of dungeon cartography, and there are some improvements in dungeon navigation, primarily magnetic poles every couple of floors that provide teleportation shortcuts. Aside from the lack of visibility of stat increases or decreases when pawning equipment, control is very tight.
While one can argue that the first Etrian Odyssey sequel is light on plot, it isn’t forced down the player’s throat like in contemporary high-end video game releases. Plenty of positives include intricate backstory (especially elaborated upon towards the end), tavern quest subplots, and mysterious characters such as the adversarial dungeon-crawling duo Der Freischütz and Artelinde. The translation is equally solid, although it features some of its preceding remaster’s missteps with awkward lines such as “It’s a horde of enemies!” when targeting all monsters in battle.
An Etrian autumn
Yuzo Koshiro’s soundtrack, like in the first game, is one of its high points, with plenty of catchy, memorable tracks for each Stratum and enemy engagements, the primary battle theme changing midway through the game. Sound effects could have used more diversity at times, but otherwise, the sequel is an aural delight.
The sequel uses the same remastered visual style as its predecessor, relying on anime character portraits for the player’s characters, people in town, and occasional people in the labyrinth, with three-dimensional dungeon visuals that look nice and colorful, While the monster designs in battle look nice, they’re still inanimate, and a few reskinned foes abound. Still, the game looks good in high definition.
Finally, one can breeze through the sequel in as little as twelve hours; however, plenty of lasting appeal exists: a postgame Stratum, filling the compendia, tavern quests, and Steam achievements, which can push it well beyond that length.
In summation, Etrian Odyssey II HD is, like its predecessor, a great remaster that sports quick combat with adjustable difficulty, making it more accessible to players who would not usually enjoy such RPGs. Control and the signature cartography are also tight, the audiovisual presentation is solid, and the story has some good twists; however, many may admittedly find the narrative shallow. Regardless, the remaster of the first Etrian sequel accomplishes the goal of the remaster collection of bringing the old-school-style dungeon crawler to new audiences. Given the endless possibilities of character and party customization, it will keep prospective players occupied for a fair time.
This review is based on a playthrough to the standard ending with no postgame content attempted.
| Score Breakdown | |
|---|---|
| The Good | The Bad |
| Lots of classes and formations to mess with. Tight control. Solid audiovisual presentation. Endless lasting appeal. | Plot is thinly developed. Many areas where the graphics could have been better. |
| The Bottom Line | |
| Another great Etrian remaster. | |
| Platform | Steam |
| Game Mechanics | 10/10 |
| Control | 9.5/10 |
| Story | 9.0/10 |
| Localization | 9.5/10 |
| Aurals | 9.5/10 |
| Visuals | 9.0/10 |
| Lasting Appeal | 10/10 |
| Difficulty | Adjustable |
| Playtime | 12-24+ Hours |
| Overall: 9.5/10 | |
Etrian Odyssey HD
Gives Homer a Run for His Money
While I was in undergraduate college back in 2007, I had time for gaming in between studies. Then, I discovered the inaugural installment of Atlus’s Etrian Odyssey series, called Labyrinth of the World Tree in Japan and given its English name, originally Yggdrasil Labyrinth, for several reasons, chiefly to avoid confusion with other Atlus-published titles like Yggdra Union and Deep Labyrinth. The experience stuck with me to the point where I happily purchased and played its translated sequels, after which would come the Untold subseries that remade the first two entries. Atlus would ultimately port the first three games under the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection banner, the first being Etrian Odyssey HD.
The first entry begins in the town of Etria, situated alongside the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, with the player registering an adventurer guild and receiving guidance from the ronin Ren and the hexer Tlachtga, both checking in as players descend the multistoried maze. While players must formulate their backstory on their guild and its luminaries, the labyrinth backstory is intricate, with occasional twists and side stories that abound in the myriad sidequests. The translation doesn’t hinder the narrative experience at all despite some minor stylistic issues, the plotline adopting the “keep it simple, stupid” mantra of RPG stories, but it still works.
Happily, solid gameplay backs the story experience. The player, as mentioned, registers a guild and can create a multitude of playable characters from various classes, including the Landsknecht, which specializes in offense primarily using swords and axes; the Protector, which specializes in defending allies with innate strength, the Alchemist, which uses elemental magic; and the Medic, which of course has a knack for recovering others. Only five can venture through the Yggdrasil Labyrinth at a time, characters organizable into a front and back row, each having a maximum of three adventurers, the former having a higher attack power but lower defense and the latter vice versa.
Players outfit their characters with one weapon, a piece of body armor, and two other equipment types that can be any combination of shields, helmets, gauntlets, boots, or accessories. In the Yggdrasil Labyrinth proper, a colored indicator at the bottom-right (unless the player has the map expanded) turns from blue to red to indicate the closeness of enemy encounters, which may be preemptive on the part of players, the enemies, or neither. In combat, players face one or more enemies and have many options by which to assault them, including attacking normally with their equipped weapon, defending to reduce damage, using a TP-consuming skill, using an item, changing row formation, or attempting to escape, with five chances at maximum for each character.
“I need a scissors icon! 61!”
Characters also have a Boost gauge that fills as they and the enemy exchange blows and gives one a temporary boost in power. Those familiar with classic turn-based RPGs will likely know the structure of their party and the enemies exchanging commands based on agility, with turn order luckily remaining consistent depending upon foes. Survivors earn experience points needed to level alongside parts of the decimated enemies post-battle. How the game handles defeat depends upon which difficulty setting the player has chosen: while Picnic mode is more merciful to players when they die, advanced settings result in a Game Over, though in that case, the player can save their map data.
Each character has a skill tree into which the player can invest points gained from leveling, with higher-level skills unlocked by investing into those lower-tiered and including active abilities that consume TP and passive traits. One can increase specific skills to ten levels, with supplementary effects like increasing speed of execution, which can relieve the typical JRPG issue of enemies beating characters to healing in the case of recovery abilities. Wandering the labyrinth as floating orange balls are Formido Oppugnatura Exsequens, or FOEs, which are superpowered minibosses players should avoid upon encountering them, though fortunately, there is plenty of room for error in doing so.
The game mechanics function well, with the choice of difficulty accommodating players of different skill levels and allowing freshers to the franchise to experience it stress-free while appeasing those who detest easy experiences. Combat speed is adjustable, with virtually every battle transpiring quickly, and the autobattle mode makes fights with weaker foes cinches. The standard encounter rate some may find a little high, although spells are available to reduce their occurrence for a fixed number of steps. Some tavern missions may be difficult without researching the internet but completing them is scarcely necessary to beat the game, accounting for an excellent gameplay experience.
As in the Nintendo DS and 3DS iterations, the first Etrian remaster sports intricate mapping: the player must drag icons from a legend onto an in-game map to indicate doors and secrets among others, draw walls, and color visited tiles. However, a menu setting lets players automatically map tiles and edges that they have encountered, reducing some of the cartographic work. A suspend-save accessible during standard labyrinth navigation accommodates players with busy schedules, with menus within and without Etria being nonproblematic, stat increases or decreases for prospective equipment visible before purchase, and spell and item descriptions present as they should be in modern RPGs. The map creation controls take some getting used to, but Etrian Odyssey HD is the epitome of user-friendliness.
You’ll definitely want to go deeper into the Yggdrasil Labyrinth.
The soundtrack remains unchanged from the original game, with composer Yuzo Koshiro demonstrating his musical brilliance with beautiful frequency modulation (FM) synthesis pieces such as the peaceful town tunes, stratum navigation themes, energetic battle music, and occasional cutscene tracks. There are a few musicless places, but the remaster is an aural wonder.
The same goes for the remastered visuals, containing significant polish over the originals on the Nintendo DS, with labyrinth environments having excellent detail, along with great anime-style character portraits and monster designs in combat, even if many of the latter consist of reskins. Most of the same issues from the DS incarnation’s graphics recur, such as inanimate enemies in battle, the popup of distant environs while traversing the labyrinth, and the strict first-person perspective of everything throughout the game, but the remaster is otherwise beautiful.
Finally, one can breeze through the HD remaster in as little as twelve hours, especially on the Picnic difficulty, but tavern quests, Steam achievements, a post-game stratum, and a New Game+ can boost playtime well beyond that limit.
Ultimately, Etrian Odyssey HD is inarguably one of the best RPG remasters, given its increased accessibility to modern gaming audiences, the choices regarding dungeon cartography, the enjoyable backstory during the descent of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, superb audiovisual presentation, and significant lasting appeal. There are some niggling issues, especially regarding the graphics, but the positives of the port greatly outweigh the negatives in every aspect. The HD version of the original entry of Atlus’s dungeon-crawling franchise is a must-play for anyone with a passing interest in Japanese RPGs and a great start to the Origins Collection, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
This review is based on a playthrough of a digital copy downloaded to the player’s Steam Deck, played through its dock, on a television, played to the standard ending.
| Score Breakdown | |
|---|---|
| The Good | The Bad |
| -Excellent battle and dungeon crawling mechanics. -Map controls adapted well to one screen. -Intricate backstory. -Solid audiovisual presentation. -Endless lasting appeal. | -Some sidequests difficult without a guide. -Map controls take some getting used to. -Don’t expect extensive character development. -A few minor translation issues. -Some imperfections in the graphics. |
| The Bottom Line | |
| One of the best-ever RPG remasters. | |
| Platform | Steam Deck |
| Game Mechanics | 10/10 |
| Control | 9.5/10 |
| Story | 9.5/10 |
| Localization | 9.5/10 |
| Aurals | 9.5/10 |
| Visuals | 9.0/10 |
| Lasting Appeal | 10/10 |
| Difficulty | Adjustable |
| Playtime | 12-24+ Hours |
| Overall: 10/10 | |
Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
A Box-Office Disappointment
When I first played through Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, I expected top quality, being a crossover between Atlus’s Persona and Etrian Odyssey series, both of which I liked, but for some reason, the results were very mixed and disappointing to the point where I sold my sealed special edition of the game’s first and only sequel, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth. I would ultimately download the second entry prior to the closure of Nintendo’s eShops to see if my instincts had been correct. At first, it does seem to show promise as a vastly improved follow-up, but does it remain that way towards the end?
Unlike the first Persona Q, the second, when one starts a new game, doesn’t allow players to focus on casts from any of the Persona games from the third one onward, but rather starts exclusively focused on that of the fifth game, which eventually meets the prior games’ characters in a unique movie theater setting. Here, they must advance through labyrinths paying homage to movies such as the Superman series, Jurassic Park franchise, and so on, to collect keys to leave the mysterious locked theater. The story has its moments and occasional humor, though most of the dialogue winds down to small talk about whatever environments the characters traverse, there are many tried tropes such as amnesia, the M rating doesn’t feel justified, the pacing is incredibly glacial, and quantity is put far more above quality.
As it was a late Nintendo 3DS release, the translators left the voice dub in Japanese, which is probably for the better given the first game’s atrocious voiced dialogue, and the game text itself is certainly legible, but regardless, many issues abound. One is that akin to the first game, the localization team left the Japanese honorifics in the dialogue, making it both feel horribly unnatural especially when used with full names and nonsensical to mainstream gamers not versed in the language. Another is the occasional Engrish, such as the option of “Succeed/Don’t Succeed” when sacrificing Personas in the Velvet Room. There are also no subtitles for most of the battle voices, with some Japanese floating about occasionally in the text as well. Generally, the localization was at a low at the time for Atlus.
Expect to spend a lot of time in the lobby.
Akin to the first game, the sequel features a methodical gameplay structure, with most business in between labyrinth exploration conducted in the movie theater lobby, where players can utilize the Velvet Room to fuse Personas, shop for equipment and items, get tickets to “Special Screenings” (which are, to say, sidequests), change the party formation, record progress, or go to one of the theaters to enter a movie’s respective labyrinth. Unlike many open-world RPGs, getting stuck and wondering where to go next is no issue whatsoever, even in the sidequests that take place in limited areas of each maze. The cartography system, for better or worse, imitates that of the Etrian Odyssey games, with each labyrinth having special icons to indicate unique obstacles.
Like in the Etrian games as well, the player can form a party of up to five characters divided between front and back rows, each with three spaces, with every Persona user having better effect on the frontline, backline, or either. One irritation is that though there exists the space, there is absolutely no way to fill in the sixth open slot as there is in many of the Etrian Odyssey titles, which would have been nice given the massive playable cast. Players can also outfit characters with one weapon, one piece of armor, and one accessory, alongside a Persona for each active character and one for whomever they decide to be battle and navigation, which can be one or two support Persona users among the three from the mainline games from three to five.
Combat follows the same overall structure, with an indicator showing how close the player is to encountering Shadows, in theme with the movie theater setting counting down from three to one before a fight triggers. The player has several combat options for each character from which to choose, such as attacking with an equipped weapon, using an HP-consuming physical or SP-consuming magical ability, defending to reduce damage, or using a consumable item. Alternatively, the player can attempt to escape from the enemy, and while this doesn’t always work, each character will attempt to do so, so there are five times for it to effect or not.
Abandon playtime, all ye who enter.
Another option that players have prior to inputting abilities each round is one or both Navis’ support skills, which require a certain amount of star levels from a special gauge and can accomplish things such as extending the length of status enhancements cast on the party, granting partial HP recover at the end of each round, and so on. Back to general battle structure, most who have experienced turn-based Japanese RPGs of yore will likely be familiar with the formula where characters and the enemy take their turns depending upon speed, and things like wasting healing on characters that die before it takes effect can occur. As a bonus, many FOEs and bosses sometimes execute multiple commands in a round, and not always consistently or right after one another, with no telling when they’ll do so.
The various quirks of the first Persona Q return, including the exploitation of an enemy’s weakness or landing a critical attack putting a character into “Boost” mode, where the next round, all their abilities will be free of cost the next round unless they receive any kind of damage. Knocking down all Shadows through weakness exploitation or critical attacks lets the player execute an All-Out Attack that deals all foes massive damage and is usually key to quicker combat victory. Outside of this, however, the pace of battle can be glacial, even on the highest adjustable speed setting in the game menus, in some cases with as many as several seconds between a skill affecting one Shadow and then another.
Another issue, moreover, is that HP-consuming skills, elemental or not, have an astronomically high miss rate, even when characters are at high levels, and in many cases it’s not worth the risk to use said skills as opposed to SP-consuming magical abilities. Regardless of however the player manages to triumph over an encounter with Shadows, all characters still alive gain experience for occasional level-ups, in which case at certain levels they may learn new skills for their base or equipped Persona, although either has a limit of six skills, with incredibly tough choices the player has to make at times given that there are a fair number of useful skills that in some cases work well in conjunction.
Gold Shadows can be rewarding yet annoying.
Death of all active characters, however, results in a Game Over and trip through the opening logos and eventually the title screen, unless one is playing on Safety difficulty, in which case they receive the opportunity to revive all characters with full HP and SP, whichever battle defeated them continuing normally, which can be an absolute godsend as many encounters can be downright brutal and cheap at times. When defeating special golden Shadows, players may also gain free Personas, the number they can have at one time increasable through side missions.
Much akin to its precursor, Q2 features powerful visible nemeses known as FOEs wandering throughout each labyrinth, with the in-game advice to avoid them initially very much advisable, and luckily, the sequel gives significantly more room for error when it comes to averting them. Their color on the in-game maps further shows how powerful they are compared to the player’s party and taking them on when the party is more powerful is always a good option, yielding free Personas as well in addition to materials they can sell at the concession stand (standard Shadows dropping them too).
While any successful enemy encounter yields money, the player gains ever more by selling them at said concession stand, which makes more powerful weapons, armor, and equipment available for purchase. However, the developers didn’t consider the game’s massive playable cast when settling upon the prices of everything, with players pretty much needing to equip a special accessory that increases monetary gains from combat. A system from the Etrian games further bequeathed is gathering points within each labyrinth, where players can either gather cautiously for low-level materials or risk enemy ambushes for high-level components.
Given the excess characters, being able to fill that sixth space would have been *really* nice.
Further compounding the financial difficulties players will face throughout Q2 is the Velvet Room where players can initially fuse two Personas to make new ones, and eventually three, with the rare risk of fusion accidents, though these tend to favor the player often, these features mercifully being free. Players can also access Persona sacrifices where they can grant another Persona or a character experience, with the forfeit of a specific one initially free before monetary charges occur. Blank Cards and Wild Cards respectively allow another Persona or a character to learn a skill from a sacrifice, which can be handy for diversifying one’s skillset, buts begs difficult decisions of which to keep or delete.
Moreover, the player can register Personas in the Velvet Room Compendium to resummon later for a price, and to do so frequently whenever leveling one is advisable so that certain skills become accessible for Blank or Wild Card usage. Equippable Personas also increase a character’s base HP and SP by a certain amount that increases with leveling, another feature being that at certain points throughout the game, specific allies become “motivated”, in which case they gain a bonus for equipping one. A new feature to Q2 is Unison Attacks acquirable from Ticket quests that randomly execute after a round of combat among certain characters to dish out supplemental damage.
All in all, while the second game’s mechanics have a lot of nifty features, they don’t always function effectively, given the lopsided nature of combat and inconsistent difficulty, with a forgiving curve in the beginning, a descent into gameplay hell in the middle, and a bit of a breeze towards the end, especially if the player does the Ticket quests and doesn’t rush through. That the avoidance of FOEs is easier is a definite plus, along with the various means by which to empower character Personas, although the in-game financial burden is very heavy, given the excessive number of characters, with Q2 all in all bequeathing the negative portions of the Etrian and Persona mechanics more so than the positives.
Doing something educational would be time better spent than playing Q2.
Given the deluge of playable characters, maintenance in the theater lobby will easily consume a sizeable fraction of the sequel’s lengthy playtime, given the flashy but clunky menus, alongside minor things such as the herculean task of seeing if a particular character is more effective in the front row, back, or either, alongside the forced startup screens of every company involved in the game’s production when the player gets back into the game or gets a Game Over, a fairly irksome JRPG habit. While there is a suspend save within the labyrinths, furthermore, the potential for lost playtime due to enemy cheapness is great on difficulties above Safety, although given the game’s linear structure, finding out where to go next is nonproblematic. Still, Q2 could have been better in the interaction department.
Mercifully, the aural department is more bearable than in the first game given the wise decision to leave the voicework in Japanese, although the seiyuu struggling as always with English words is an offense to the Anglophone world, but the voices are luckily mutable. There are a fair number of catchy vocal pieces in the soundtrack, such as the lobby theme, with catchy lyrics like “Say, darling, hey, maybe!”, musical numbers abounding in the labyrinth based on The Wizard of Oz also. The non-vocal tracks are pleasant as well, so the sequel overall is easy on the ears.
Q2 fares somewhat decently visually as well, akin to its predecessor using chibi versions of the various characters from the third, fourth, and fifth mainline Persona titles, and a cutscene style where the background fuzzes out so that the character models can communicate, showing wide ranges of emotions and gestures. Occasional anime cutscenes come as well, with the colors being bright and beautiful, the environments especially appearing pretty despite some pixilated and blurry textures. As in the Etrian titles, labyrinth exploration and combat occur in the first person, though occasional breaks do occur in either. The battle graphics look nice as well despite telekinetic attacking on part of the Shadows and the asinine dodge animation native to Megami Tensei titles where foes move to one side and back in place without lifting an appendage. Regardless, the graphics are more than passable.
Shining Force II released in 1993 yet had *way* better enemy dodge animations.
Finally, the first and only Persona Q sequel can be very long, at least sixty hours to finish if the player attempts a straightforward playthrough, although with sidequests and time spent in a New Game+, it can be far longer, and given that the game overstays its welcome, odds are most won’t want to invest any more of their precious gaming time into it.
Overall, while Persona Q2 does have several gameplay improvements compared to its predecessor, the crossover of the Etrian Odyssey and Persona series continued to not work out as well as one would expect, since countless other elements make it a middling experience, such as the high amount of time spent in the theater lobby maintaining characters, the overindulgent small talk within the dungeons that doesn’t contribute much to the central storyline, the rushed translation, and so one. The audiovisual presentation, especially the soundtrack, do shine in many areas, although those can’t mask a largely lackluster experience, and mainstream video gamers would best spend their precious gaming time elsewhere, preferably either the Etrian or mainline Persona games.
This review is based on a single playthrough to the standard ending with all known sidequests completed on a digital copy of the game downloaded to the reviewer’s Nintendo 3DS.
| Score Breakdown | |
|---|---|
| The Good | The Bad |
| Gameplay an improvement over first game’s. Good soundtrack. Visuals are nice at times. | Glacial pacing in and out of battle. Sloppy localization. Way too long. |
| The Bottom Line | |
| Like the first game a case of two rights making a wrong. | |
| Platform | Nintendo 3DS |
| Game Mechanics | 5.0/10 |
| Control | 4.5/10 |
| Story | 4.5/10 |
| Localization | 2.0/10 |
| Aurals | 8.5/10 |
| Visuals | 6.5/10 |
| Lasting Appeal | 0.5/10 |
| Difficulty | Adjustable |
| Playtime | 60+ Hours |
| Overall: 4.5/10 | |
Persona 5 Royal
The Blackboard Metaverse
Atlus’s Persona videogame franchise began as a spinoff of their Megami Tensei series, the first few games of the subseries bearing the Shin Megami Tensei name and being mechanically different from mainline entries of the franchise. The first three games, the inaugural installment and both halves of the second entry, one of which wouldn’t see an official English release until Sony released their PlayStation Portable system, first appeared on the PlayStation before transitioning to the PlayStation 2 with the third and fourth games, which bore much mechanical dissonance from its precursors, although in my opinion, said deviation was for the better. The fifth game, its latest incarnation titled Persona 5 Royal, builds upon its predecessors but brings a few old ideas back into the fray.
The latest Persona begins in the middle of its narrative, with the protagonist, leader of the Phantom Thieves and with the alias Joker, caught by Japanese authorities and interrogated, the action moving back to when he intervened in a situation earning him an assault charge and probation as he started life anew at a high school with other students assisting in his rehabilitation. Throughout the game are wrongdoers with metaversal Palaces where they play out their fantasies, the Phantom Thieves seeking to steal their symbolic Treasures along with the Hearts of the wrongdoers, in which case they confess their misdeeds.
Fans of the Kingdom Hearts series might roll their eyes at the similar concept of stealing hearts in the narrative, along with fans of the animanga Death Note who might or might not notice the supernatural methods of supernaturally reforming society by targeting certain deviants. However, Persona 5 delves into contemporary issues and themes that are somewhat relatable, such as abuse by teachers in school and the politics of Japan, with confidants Joker encounters and with whom he builds relationships having stories of their own, such as a washed-up ex-member of the Japanese Diet. However, the pacing is glacial and drawn-out, with the Royal version a bigger offender in that regard since its events go well beyond those of the initial release.
As with contemporary Persona localizations, the translation team opted to translate the dialogue with aspects unfriendly towards non-Japanophiles, with Japanese honorifics retained and accompanied by character names, which often breaks the naturality of the English localization, yet is still mercifully legible so long as players Google the internet to find out what they mean. However, like most English versions of Japanese RPGs, the writing is worst in combat, with the retained decision to have someone narrate everything that occurs in battle, and characters often shout “Persona!” when reaching their turns. Though generally a polished effort, the translation comes across as a middle-tier effort.
Like in the third and fourth Personas, alongside their various rereleases, Persona 5 features a methodical gameplay structure focused around the attendance of school by Joker and fellow students that eventually become his allies in combat. He has five social stats that increase with various activities like answering questions in school correctly, participating in diversions such as a batting cage and a bathhouse, and so forth, some of which need to be at certain levels for him to establish relationships with certain confidants that chiefly dictate how much bonus experience the player receives from fusing Personas of certain Arcanas, but there can be other effects such as the ability to score instant victories against enemy parties without needing to battle them.
Key to advancing the central storyline is the mentioned Palaces whose respective Treasures the player needs to steal to change the Hearts of the wretched individuals the Phantom Thieves target, enemies traversing these dungeons, players able to get preemptive strikes against them, but foes can do the same in return. Advancing one Arcana enough allows players to win instantly against enemy parties, with experience and money earned for living party members and a new Persona so long as Joker has the capacity for at least one more. Joker himself is the only character who can wield multiple Personas, his allies each having one with abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
The general structure of combat is similar to the third and fourth mainline Personas, the player’s party of four characters, headed by Joker, taking turns dependent upon agility, commands executed instantly upon input. During a turn, the player can get an indication of which unit will go next, but unlike Final Fantasy X, subsequent character/enemy order is indeterminate, yet mercifully doesn’t break the game. Commands include attacking with an equipped melee weapon or firearm, using an SP-consuming ability from a Persona, guarding until their next turn, using an item, or attempting to escape, which may or may not work all the time.
As in the mentioned Personas and Megami Tensei series from which it branched, the ability of players and enemies to exploit one another’s strengths and weaknesses adds strategy, the exploitation of one’s weak point earning the exploiter another action. One difference from the third and fourth games, and a feature prevalent in the initial entry and both parts of the second, is the need to negotiate with downed enemies; luckily, the system isn’t as open-ended as in the earlier Personas or up to random chance like in the mainline Megami Tensei games, demon personalities key to which answers to questions are correct.
Players can earn money, an item, or the alliance of one of the downed demons from a successful negotiation. The Velvet Room returns, where the player can fuse Personas to create more powerful (in some cases, weaker) ones, the facility indicating if they have had a demon before, and in my experience, I found it advantageous to fuse for new ones, since in whatever battles the player encounters said enemies in, they can outright skip negotiation when downing an enemy party. Consequentially, I only had to endure it less than a handful of times in the game’s generous length. Players can also sacrifice Personas to obtain an item, including powerful equipment.
Victory nets players experience for occasional level-ups and money, a system paralleling the core mechanics being the Mementos dungeon, deeper levels opening depending on how popular the Phantom Thieves are with the Japanese public, and is similar to the Temple of the Ocean King from The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, minus the need to redo puzzles (luckily absent in the metaversal region) and floors completely, with targets for occasional requests without the metaverse often found in certain levels. Aside from the minor issue with determining player and enemy turn order, the gameplay systems work well, and different difficulty levels accommodate players of varying skill levels.
Control is decent, the linear structure ensuring the player never becomes lost as to the current gameplay objective. However, while the Palaces have maps, the game doesn’t indicate which exits from floors lead where, which can lead to confusion. Most cutscenes are skippable along with the ability to cut spoken dialogue short if players wish to read instead of waiting for the performers to finish speaking, and the player can pause the action by bringing up a review of the latest text, similar to Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. Fast travel also exists among points of interest in the real-life Japanese setting, saving significant time in a game that’s already long. There are some issues regarding the spacing of save opportunities, not to mention maybe a few annoying late-game puzzles, but otherwise, Persona 5 generally interfaces well with players.
Shoji Meguro provides the game music, which is generally enjoyable and features plenty of tracks that rarely get old, although there are occasional silent scenes. The sound effects are what one would expect from a contemporary RPG, and the voice acting is decent; there are, however, plenty of overlapping voice clips in battle and unnecessary narration of trivial things that occur then.
The art direction is generally superb, with a style one could describe as trippy, given the effective use of reddish colors, transitional sequences when one fast-travels between points of interest, enemy designs with no reskins, fluid animation, flashy combat effects, and nice cel-shading. However, the visuals contain some jaggies, along with textures that appear blurry and pixilated when seen close-up, and the view distance of NPCs can be poor.
Finally, Persona 5 Royal is incredibly long for a rigidly-linear game, a little over a hundred hours, around a dozen or so longer than the original release, and while there is some lasting appeal in the form of things such as Trophies, the length and limited potential for variation somewhat drag it down, most players likely wishing to move on to other games after completion.
Overall, Persona 5 Royal is a great rerelease of a game that was already good, given its superb gameplay mechanics and control, endearing narrative and characters, and solid audiovisual presentation. Granted, it often puts quantity above quality, and I found myself fast-forwarding through late-game dialogue given the game’s unwillingness to end; there are also other issues like the translation’s unfriendliness towards non-Japanophiles and mainstream gaming audiences in general. Regardless, those who haven’t experienced the initial release will get a bang for their gaming buck with Royal, still superior to earlier games in the Persona series and the Megami Tensei franchise from which the subseries spun off.
The reviewer played a borrowed physical copy of the game to the ending credits.| Score Breakdown | |
|---|---|
| The Good | The Bad |
|
|
| The Bottom Line | |
| A great rerelease. | |
| Platform | PlayStation 4 |
| Game Mechanics | 9.5/10 |
| Control | 9.0/10 |
| Story | 8.5/10 |
| Localization | 8.0/10 |
| Aurals | 8.5/10 |
| Visuals | 8.5/10 |
| Lasting Appeal | 7.5/10 |
| Difficulty | Adjustable |
| Playtime | 72-96 Hours |
| Overall: 8.5/10 | |
Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City
Underwaterworld
I first discovered Atlus’s Etrian Odyssey series, known as Labyrinth of the World Tree in Japan (given the mentioned English name both because the inaugural entry occurred in the land of Etria and the publisher’s American branch didn’t want to use the English name “Yggdrasil Labyrinth” and have players possibly confuse it with fellow Atlus title Yggdra Union) in my penultimate year of college, and had a high opinion of the first game to the point I played its sequels, in spite of the English moniker of the franchise being equivalent to retaining the name Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Indiana Jones sequels. Video game nomenclature aside, Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City, provides a first-person dungeon-crawling experience on par with its precursors.
The third mainline SQ (an abbreviation of the Japanese series name “Sekaiju no MeiQ”, “MeiQ” a stylized form of “Meikyuu”) opens in the sea city Armoroad, which prospered in ancient times through advanced civilization, although an earthquake sank the central portion of the settlement along with its high-level technology, an event known as the Great Disaster. A century later, a party that the player customizes explores the Yggdrasil Labyrinth descending to the bottom of the sea to uncover the game’s various mysteries, many of which are actually good, with the narrative generally told well, in spite of the blank-slate nature of the playable cast.
The localization definitely doesn’t impede the plot, although as with its other games, Atlus makes some unusual stylistic choices such as “You’re too exhausted to move” when you can’t gather anything more from gathering spots and “It’s a horde of enemies!” when the player targets multiple enemies with commands in combat. There aren’t many spelling or grammar errors, and the game dialogue is definitely legible, although the publisher’s translations in the third SQ game’s case remained middle-tier then.
As mentioned, players create a custom party, akin to the tertiary Etrian’s predecessors one of up to five characters of different classes. Among them are a prince/princess, which specializes in support abilities; the monk, the sole vocation able to cast straightforward healing spells; the zodiac, with elemental offensive magic; the gladiator, a pure attack class; the farmer, which excels at collecting items from gathering points, and can increase experience earned for the whole party as well as item drops; the arbalist, which can use various crossbow skills, some elemental; the buccaneer, which can use guns or rapiers; the hoplite, apt at defending allies; the wilder, which can fill the vacant sixth-row slot with an AI-controlled animal; and the ninja, which too can fill the mentioned space with a shadow or homunculus.
There are a few secret vocations that require special conditions and plot decisions to unlock, one of which actually helped me win the final bosses of the main storyline, and midway through the game, the player receives the option to pick subclasses for each character where they gain another job’s skillset, largely eliminating the need to experiment with individual classes then. Battles themselves occur exclusively in the first-person dungeons, with an indicator mercifully showing how close the player is to encountering enemies, the rate of doing so increasable or decreasable through the use of special items or skills. Battles can begin either standardly, with a preemptive strike by the player, or a surprise attack by the enemy where they act exclusively first in one round.
As in prior Etrians, the player selects commands for their five active characters, arrangeable in front and back rows, each with three slots, for a formation of either three fronters and two backers, or two fronters and three backers, front row allies dealing and receiving more damage, and back row allies dealing and receiving less damage. Orders include attacking with equipped weapons, defending to reduce damage, using a consumable item (and given the game’s sometimes-above-average difficulty, most players will have to keep a good stock of recovery items), using a TP-consuming ability, or attempting to escape, with up to five chances to do so since every member of the player’s party has this available option.
Characters and the enemy exchange commands depending upon agility, although akin to its predecessors, the third SQ title lacks a turn order gauge akin to other turn-based RPGs such as Final Fantasy X and the Tactics subseries, making it necessary within the same battles for players to track on their own whoever takes their turn when. In addition to the escapable nature of combat, they can either end with the player’s party victorious, in which case all characters still alive receive experience for occasional levels-up as well as some items they can sell at shops to unlock more powerful equipment and items, or with a Game Over, in which case players lose character development progress but can still save the dungeon maps they made at the point of demise.
Outside battle, the player can set limit breaks to their party, new ones acquirable through special scrolls obtained from the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, and which require one to five characters to use once special gauges have filled in combat; thankfully, if the player executes these abilities, their characters still get to use one command each as normal. Players can also invest skill points gained from leveling into three different skill trees: one for their current class, one for their subclass, and one tree innate to all vocations that can increase stats and the number of chances to collect materials from gathering points.
Etrian Odyssey III features a system similar to Final Fantasy XII where players mainly acquire money not through winning battles (although treasure chests and sidequests can provide monetary rewards), but by selling gathering point and monster materials at shops to unlock new consumables, weapons, and armor for purchase. Characters can equip one weapon and a combination of three pieces of equipment and/or accessories. One handy feature is the in-game compendium for defeated monsters that show whatever materials they drop from defeat, although many of them require special conditions to acquire, only patrons of the bar clueing players in as to their means of acquisition. A consumable item, Formaldehyde, can have foes drop all their materials during their round of defeat (though one can possibly waste it), but these are difficult to come by.
The game mechanics work well, but casual gamers won’t appreciate the difficulty and grindy nature. Furthermore, while one would expect some foresight in the skill point system, given the variety of class and subclass combinations, not to mention the maximum level of seventy, players can reset any character back five levels to redistribute their points, and there can be endless killer vocational combos of primary and secondary classes, such as using the arbalist’s elemental crossbow abilities in conjunction with the zodiac’s elemental damage-increasing passive skills and magical charge. The battle system is not perfect by any means, although one can most certainly “git gud” at it.
Control is okay, with a clear direction on how to advance, given the relative linear structure, and there are positives that should be in any RPG such as item and skill descriptions, the ability to see whether equipment increases or decreases stats before purchasing it, and a suspend save within the Yggdrasil Labyrinth. However, there is the potential to lose character development progress due to Game Overs, and the bottom-screen map can be somewhat labor-intensive, given the need to draw details such as walls, and there not being enough variety in icons. The sea-sailing minigame accessible in Armoroad may also require a guide to make the most out of, and in the end, interaction is middling at best.
As with prior Etrians, however, sound continues to be a high point, with Yuzo Koshiro returning for another excellent digitized soundtrack that includes solid themes such as those for each stratum of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, and several energetic battle tunes. There are a few silent moments, but otherwise, the soundtrack definitely excels.
The visuals, not so much. The art direction is superb, given excellent character designs, though they don’t show many emotions or animation, and there are many reskins of the static enemy artwork in battle, with combat in first-person and no movement of enemies, just the attack effects of the player’s party. The environments can be pretty and colorful, though, but there is plenty of pixilation with the texturing, and scenery pop-up as the player traverses each floor of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth. Graphically, the game isn’t an eyesore, but things could have definitely used more polish.
Finally, no in-game measure of playtime exists for the third series installment, although there is plentiful lasting appeal in the form of postgame content, completing the monster and item compendia, and endless experiments with classes, although the difficulty level may deter many players.
Overall, Etrian Odyssey III is for the most part a competent dungeon-crawling RPG and worthy addition to its respective franchise, given especially the endless variety in its gameplay mechanics, lasting appeal, and especially Yuzo Koshiro’s soundtrack. However, it does fumble regarding its tedious cartography system, the need to use a guide to get the most out of the sailing minigame, the middling visuals, and the slightly-unfriendly difficulty curve. It would be the only installment of the series not to get a 3DS release, with Atlus then being really terrible about letting their games go out of print, and physical copies consequentially costing in the vicinity of $300 US. While the game is decent, it very much isn’t worth paying that exorbitant price to experience, with any kind of rerelease sadly not being in the books.
| Score Breakdown | |
|---|---|
| The Good | The Bad |
|
|
| The Bottom Line | |
| Decent, but certainly not worth paying $300 for. | |
| Platform | Nintendo DS |
| Game Mechanics | 7.0/10 |
| Control | 6.0/10 |
| Story | 7.5/10 |
| Localization | 5.5/10 |
| Aurals | 9.5/10 |
| Visuals | 5.5/10 |
| Lasting Appeal | 8.0/10 |
| Difficulty | Hard |
| Overall: 7.0/10 | |
St. Gallen's Scribblings 