Etrian Odyssey 1 & 2: the little RPGs that are too hardcore to go on!

I was telling my husband about Etrian Odyssey: "You get to make your own map!" This is a thing all the reviews point out with glee. HE thought this meant you laboriously create and design your own dungeon.* Not so much – you just do some junior cartography on the bottom screen, illustrating your charted territory in the mazelike dungeons. Thought I'd clear that up first.

Bottom screen: creating your own map. You draw the places you've been, and you can place icons for doors, stairs, locations of extra-difficult monsters, + many more! Top screen: Note how many of the characters have died a cruel, cruel death already. Also: what kind of a name is "Gerald" for an RPG character?

These two games, which are pretty similar, are wicked old school RPGs that are both awesome and frustrating. Classic stuff – encounter baddies, destroy baddies, get killed way too many times by baddies, eventually level up and maybe not get killed as much but maybe even more, etc. I pretty much don't swear at anything but 'Iron Chef America' and video games, and this one has a lot of cussable moments. A lot. But it's really exciting, too, even after long, long grind sessions. Is it Stockholm syndrome? Casino effect? Am I one of Skinner's pigeons, fighting villains for the intermittent, random pellet? Or is it just really well made? Some of each, but mostly the latter.

I started out playing the first Etrian Odyssey, because, you know, it's the first one. It got mediocre marks from game-review type places, but I figured I should begin with that one.

Both games feature a really slow, cruel initial upward climb toward leveling up and earning enough $$$ to get decent weapons and armor ("en" is what they call money – at least it's not the way too commonplace "gold"). One of my five little characters would inevitably die every half hour or so, which is to be expected in a game like this. But the prices for reviving and resting at the inn to restore HP/magic points increased like crazy after every single time you did it! A revive started out at 15 en, not too bad. But the third or fourth was like 250 en! (I want to say it increased exponentially, but I don't want to do the math to make sure that I can accurately use the term "exponentially." Let's just say prices zoomed up without reason.)

So reviving and resting were practically unaffordable, especially given how one earns money in the game. You don't get gold for killing monsters, like in many other games. After you fight monsters, maybe one in three will drop items, and the starting-out type items they DO drop sell for 5-8 en. Minor HP-increasing items run about 50 en. So doing anything to keep my characters alive quickly became prohibitively expensive.

I am always ridic conservative in RPGs – I make sure I've levelled up beyond belief & bought all the gear available before I try the next tiny increase of challenges. Naturally, I used this policy here, but I still kept dying to death. Seriously, you have to get to around level ten before you can even battle weak first-level mosters without having to hang on for dear life. It was terrifying, especially since I knew there was no way I could afford saving them. Just had to cross my fingers. For hours. And hours.

I started the game over, knowing this go-round to try and never die or stay at the inn if I wanted to be able to not hit a point of no return. It worked out quite a bit better – I had a more balanced line-up and was a lot more careful with enemies. I love a punishing RPG but after reaching the fifth level or so (out of 30), I just got worn out. I had lost all will to go on.

"Why not check out the second one, then?" I thought. It did have better reviews, after all. But none of them mentioned what I thought was the best improvement of the second game: it didn't cost 8 zillion en to revive your character after their third or fourth death. I was terrified from the first one that I would quickly be drained of all my scant resources if a charcter died. But if one of your best characters dies, it's not like you can just walk around with this great, but dead, person in your party. At the second revive, I was ready to shill out 100+ en, cringing and worrying at the prospect. But it cost the same amount! Same with the inn stays! In fact, the cost of each is just 5x the level of your highest character. (Level 15 = 75 en inn stay. You have no idea how excited and relieved this STILL makes me, even after 20+ hours of playing. I have Etrian Odyssey 1 PTSD or something.)

There's some other nice changes. You have almost all available classes at the start of II, whereas you had to do a lot of tasks in the first one to get new classes. (By 'classes' I mean types of character: ie strongo warrior, healer, bow-shooting chap, and my favorite – sad panda.)

"Beast" class. You get four character designs to choose from for each character you choose. They all work the same, no matter which design you choose. The beast I like is the SAD PANDA, who looks just like this guy, but sad. And a panda.

Honestly, I didn't care about the extra classes being available at the start. Balancing character classes in Etrian Odyssey is way more difficult than in your typical RPG, but I don't really need 30 choices to start out with. It made some people happy, but it's sixes for me.

The map options are way tricked out in the second one. This I appreciated. The best part is now the option of three different colors for the floor. Not too impressive, right? Wrong. You can have a color for "oh crap those poison floors that remove extra harsh amounts of HP" or a color for "okay here's the exact way I can walk through here without dying for the 800th time."

The colors, children, the colors! Though why they added six different traffic arrows is beyond me. Maybe this is explained in the instruction manual, which I don't have.

SUMMARY for those with TLDR syndrome:

• These RPGs are wicked harsh compared to a lot of modern ones, but the ramped-up challenge makes them a lot more rewarding, IMO.
• The first one is so mean that it's practically unplayable. So I'd start with the second one and if you find it laughably easy (I don't know how you'd do that), then pick up the first one.

Interesting note: This game is made by ATLUS, makers of Trauma Center. The character design is really similar, meaning they're all bafflingly androgynous. Half the time I could not tell if I was picking a boy or girl. No bigs either way, it's just...odd. If you can relate to being a scrawny person in a giant trenchcoat, with pink hair and indeterminate gender, you'll feel right at home. Or if you look like a sad, sad panda.


*Did anyone ever play RPG Maker for the PS1? If so, you will know what I mean when I say: thank my lucky stars you don't have to create your own dungeon.