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.