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Tag: Etrian Odyssey

Legend of Legacy: Laborious

Legend of Legacy: Laborious

Atlus has been one of the major players in getting unique and interesting RPGS onto the various Nintendo handhelds over the years: From the recent side stories of Shin Megami Tensei, to my personal favorite, the Etrian Odyssey series. However, not all of them can hook me, and today’s game Legend of Legacy is a case where thinking outside the box proved to be its undoing.

Legendof LegacyLegend of Legacy starts out as most JRPGs (Japanese role playing games) do: Mysterious setting, hidden treasures and a group of heroes on a quest, but the game quickly changes things up.

You can choose one person to be the main character at the start of the game, quickly meeting and teaming up with two other characters with the option to swap party members at anytime from the starting town.

The story is just a loose reason to go exploring, and the game allows you to skip cutscenes if you so choose. Similar to Etrian Odyssey, the main point of Legend of Legacy is to explore and build an effective party.

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Shin Megami Tensei and a Different Take on JRPGs, Part 2: The Side Stories

Shin Megami Tensei and a Different Take on JRPGs, Part 2: The Side Stories

Previously I talked about what made the main branch of the Shin Megami Tensei series so amazing when it comes to Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) design. While the series has been going strong for over two decades at this point, it doesn’t have anywhere near the same number of titles as Final Fantasy. The reason has to do with how the developers have expanded things with side stories.

Shin Megami Tensei

Side Stories

The concept of a side story is something we see a lot from Japan: Where a story takes place within the same universe or features the same themes as the main narrative, but has something unique to distinguish it. Some other video game examples are the various titles in the Kingdom Hearts series, or direct sequels such as Final Fantasy X-2.

Due to some side stories remaining exclusive to Japan (at least at this time,) we’re going to focus on the ones that have been ported to the US. With that said, we have several side stories to talk about and I want to save the most popular for last.

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The Retold Story of Etrian Odyssey Untold

The Retold Story of Etrian Odyssey Untold

Etrian Odyssey Untold-smallIn my previous post on Etrian Odyssey, I spent the majority of my time examining what the series did to revive the dungeon crawler genre, and attract a new generation of fans through the use of mixing modern and classic game design. By the time this post is up, the second game in the Etrian Odyssey Untold series will be out, and I wanted to take a look at how Atlus is giving old and new fans a revised take on the series.

Second Chances

Previously, I talked about how the Etrian Odyssey series was reviewed very harshly by most critics for the first couple of installments; the reason was that a lot of people didn’t want to play a dungeon crawler, and were hung up on the series’ hardcore difficulty. And to be fair, their complaints had some merit, due to the quirks of the series.

While Etrian Odyssey did make a lot of allowances compared to older dungeon crawlers, this was still a series that forced you to find the enjoyment in it. Enemy stats were scaled very high, and all it took was one bad battle to wipe out your party and lose all progress from your last save. While party composition wasn’t as complicated as previous series, a novice could still mess up early by not understanding good party compositions, and the game’s use of harvesting field points for items/money.

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