Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight - Nintendo 3DS

When I first got a taste of EO2U, it was the demo in the eshop. It forced me to get sucked in by the awesome new music and story mode. I didn't even have to play more than the demo to realize that this game was totally amazing and possibly one of the best EO games I've played thus far. I've played both EOIV and EOU The Millennium Girl. EO2U is my 3rd Etrian Odyssey experience. Upon getting the game yesterday I chose to play classic mode first, with the original music. I feel like this way, I may be going through the same maps in story mode, but it'll make a story mode new game plus way more enjoyable and I'll be gaining tons of new content. I'll get a whole story that won't be in my classic mode path, the new story mode characters, and I'll finally get to enjoy all the updated music. This game is so enjoyable, I just wanna make it last a good while.Everything about this game makes it seem better than its predecessor. The music is more enjoyable in the first stratum, more awesome in battles and boss battles, it's just really good game music. I also think the pre-made story characters are more likeable and have better personalities. Personally, I preferred Raquna to the protector in EO2U, Bertrand, but everyone else is definitely better. Arianna is sweet and cute, Chloe is just plain cool, and Flavio unfortunately seems like a personality rip off of Arthur. He's not super unique, but I definitely love his appearance design much more. Another thing new in EO2U is the change to the grimoire system. I personally preferred how grimoires worked in Millennium Girl. But once you get the hang of the new system in this game, it's actually much improved. It's definitely different, otherwise though, it's much more fun this time around to actually collect the grimoire stones and I feel like you get them more often too.Now as I said earlier, there isn't just story mode to enjoy in EO2U, being a remake of the original Etrian Odyssey 2, there's also classic mode. Now I've never played the original before, but you can see how things have improved. For one, since the dlc to get the character portraits from the original EO2 is free, it's easily comparable to how much they improved the art. A lot more shading and detail was added to the new portraits. But also having those extra older game options is nice. Some character designs even get a couple alternate portrait pose choices than the others. Additionally, I feel like they made it much less of a pain in the neck to apply binds or status ailments to enemies. This seems to change with difficulty, I've switched between expert and normal difficulties. Either way, for sure improved from past EO games and won't take you as crazy long to try and throw on a status ailment. And me personally, having never played the original, I very much enjoy some of the skills I've never seen, specifically on classes like Sovereign and War Magus. Having attack & def buffs that heal, plus heal and revives that work at the beginning and end of a turn are wonderfully helpful. I did notice though, they changed how the Ronin's stance skills work. In EOU Millennium girl, you would take one turn to choose a stance and the next turn you could use that stances skills. In EO2U, they make you put an extra point into the first attack of a stance to activate it and use the skills. In addition to that, I'm pretty sure the stances lasted 3 turns at the start of raising a Ronin in the previous game. In this EO, they only last for 2 turns which is kind of annoying. I don't wanna have to waste a turn activating stuff more often than I should have to.Oh and the final new additions in EO2U, I almost forgot to mention, the cafe and new mapping features. This game your guild house is within this cafe. The cafe isn't just a place to get food buffs, but at gathering points and from enemies now, you get extra food ingredient drops. You have to find various recipes within the yggdrasil labyrinth and take them back to the cafe NPC. She'll then have more options for unknown recipes that give you hints for the ingredients needed to make them. The ingredients as I said, you can get from various gathering,mining, and chopping points as well as from monsters. Now the map, has extra little features and options on it that I didn't see in EO1U. I haven't played Persona Q yet(hoping to soon) so I'm not sure which of these they added in that game, this is just a comparison to the last Untold game. First of all, there are extra colors, you no longer have just light green, yellow, orange and blue. This entry has, light green, dark green, grey, blue, yellow, orange, red, and pink, I hope I'm not forgetting to list a color. Another thing I love that they added mapping feature wise, is the symbols that change. If you put one of those double sided arrows between a crevice shortcut, they'll turn from that white color to a lit up yellow after you've used the crevice. And treasure chest icons will change to opened after you've opened that chest. It's really helpful that I don't have to change to alternate icons for things I've already messed with or used. And the additional colors for mapping are awesome.Overall, while there are a few flaws in this newest Etrian Odyssey, EO2U, I still think it's an amazing game and one of the best EO games that've come out yet. The music is great, the new story mode characters are an improvement over the previous game, and it's even more fun to go exploring and map out the many stratums in the yggdrasil tree. I highly recommend this game to any Etrian Odyssey fan. If you're new to the series there's a picnic mode for beginners and you can change the difficulty whenever you want during the game. If you're interested in dungeon crawlers or even RPGs in general, you should check this game out, there's even a demo in the eshop to try out before you buy the game. If you're already a fan of Etrian Odyssey, love the games, but have never played the original, I suggest enjoying an old fashioned classic mode path first with the original music, so when you get to a story mode new game plus, it almost seems like a new game. Although, no matter what way you you decide to play, it's an amazing game and I'd highly recommend this entry in the Etrian Odyssey series. You don't have to have played past games in the series to enjoy or understand this one.Pros:-Awesome music-Lots of classes and portraits to choose from in classic mode-Much improved characters this time around in story mode-More fun to collect grimoire stones in this entry-What looks to be an enjoyable story(I'm not far enough to fully judge that yet)Cons:-A bit overdone on the DLC, would've preferred QR code extras released periodically online, like they did with EOIV-Flavio has a much better design than Arthur from EO1U did, but I feel like they copy and pasted Arthur's personality just a little bit.

I received the game on it's release date but just got around to playing it yesterday. Etrian Odyessey is a dungeon crawler game but one the best aspects about it is you get to draw your own map. You paint the layouts of the floors and walls as you go along. You have special symbols to place on the map like a treasure chest symbol that changes it's appearance (when you mark a treasure chest then open it the symbol shows an open box). You can place annotations on the map marking special locations or just to make your own personal comment so you have a lot of free will in this game. You have two modes in this game a story and classic mode, the story mode is preset with already made characters and plot to go through while classic allows you to be the creator and make your own team and adventure. If you have played Persona Q then you will recognize the map system from the start. The game has several difficulty levels you can choose from, allowing you to either easily play through and enjoy the story or spend many hours grinding to get your level up so you can proceed.. so whether you enjoy playing through easily and enjoying the story or proving your skill at grinding and putting the beatdown on your enemies you won't be disappointed. If you are new to the series it won't leave you in the dark either, you can enjoy this game without having played any of the other games. The graphics and sound are impressive and the controls are simple enough so I won't go into detail on those. I basically like to leave my reviews at what I like about a game and my personal opinion on them. I'd recommend this game to anyone who's new to RPGs or who wants to give a dungeon crawler a shot. Happy Gaming to all my fellow Gamers.

I wasn't expecting this to be the special edition but it was, it came with a little blurb booklet as well as a music cd with the game's soundtrack on it. The game itself is very well put together. Gameplay is solid and works well with the narritive. It's nothing new for the series, but for those that have never played an Etrian Odessy game, it is a dungeon crawler mixed with jrpg elements. Essentially, you move on a grid based map and after a set number of moves you will have a random encounter pertenent to the floor that you are currently exploring, and I say exploring because the twist is that the game does not autofill the map. You get to fill in the map, which might sound like a chore, but the way that this is implemented works makes it fun. So the top screen is where you see things from the perspective of the main character, it's also where you have all of your menu's for navigating the game. The bottom screen is exclusively dedicated to cartography at all times. While walking around, while in the hub town, in combat, heck probably even while in the bathroom. Essentially, you can make changes to any map of any floor that you have ever visited at anytime with a handful of exceptions. And the game will reward you for doing so accurately so it's not unusual to update the map every few steps.It really makes each step explored in this game feel like you are accomplishing something important. And it is, because random encounters are not the most dangerous thing that you'll face in the labyrinth. The strongest enemies walk around with you on the map, and should be avoided when you first enter a floor if you like to avoid game over screens. Each floor has different kinds of enemies and each can be avoided in some some way by understanding how the enemy moves and how to move around which means that you better hope that your map is accurate or that you somehow have memorized the layout of each floor. Combatwise, it's your basic turn based rpg, although it pays to understand how each skill affects different types of enemies. So it's simple but there is some depth that the game lets you figure out on your own.In order to get you to explore, the game gives you a couple of major storyline objectives. Essentially, you get an objective, you explore the dungeon until you figure out how to complete said objective and along the way you get a couple of snippets of required and optional narrative along the way. And speaking of narrative, it's nice to see that the developers didn't just make some sort of hastily constructed storyline and then slap it onto one of their old games. Don't expect anything deep, new or meaningful, but do expect it to be fun, and engaging and feel like you are really part of the story because you get to decide what kind of character you are. The story is linear, but, you generally get three or more reactions to respond to dialogue with, each giving you a unique counter-reaction from the party ranging from serious to funny to just plain odd.So if you are interested in something with a unique twist on the rpg formula with a fun little story by all means pick this game up. You won't find anything quite like it.