Etrian Odyssey II HD Reviews

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gunner

good game

In a universe where we only ever got Etrian Odyssey 2, it'd probably be ranked as one of the best dungeon crawlers. But in a series of high-highs, EO2s plodding middle-performance stands out. Moreso, this is the regular version of EO2, and not EO2 Untold, which, in addition to adding more story and characters, smoothed out a lot of the issues in this title. First of all, this is probably the hardest EO game. Not because the enemies and dungeons are harder than any other EO title, though they are, but more because there isn't much build variety. A lot of choices you had in the first title have been altered and changed to be only so-so to downright terrible. Do not expect the sort of open party building you can do in other games to work as well in this one. This game also came out at an odd point in the series, where the designers became more experimental in dungeon layout and quest design, but don't have the quality of life changes you see in EO3 to make the new style work better. You will get a lot of quests with interesting requirements, but tedious methods to resolve them. For example, the numerous quests that must be done at certain times of the day, with no easy way to forward time to the exact point you need aside from wandering around the dungeon for a bit to further the clock, or manipulating naps at the inn. Monster design is also in an odd halfway point. Visually they're pretty forgettable and it feels like there are more palette swaps in this title, but their mechanics, abilities, and hunting patterns are newer and more interesting. FOEs are also more of a hassle in EO2 than in the other games. This title also has the least new, useful, and interesting classes. The Gunner is alright, with binding and elemental builds, though you do have to build a whole team around them a bit more than for other classes. The Warmagus is my biggest disappointment, as they're a demi-healer almost paladin or cleric sort of class, but without the survivability that those sorts naturally have. Then there's the Beast, which is the secret or "unlockable" class. It's the only one, unlike in other EO titles where you can get multiple, and it's easily missable. The Beast is a semi-autonomous tank with bad math, meaning it winds up taking damage equal to incoming damage to the target it's guarding, rather than its own defense, which is certainly a... choice? All-in-all, if you have the HD collection and are an EO super-fan like me, play it anyway to play it. If you're just looking for a good dungeon crawler, it'll scratch the itch, but there are better games in this genre, even from within the Etrian Odyssey IP.

Very fun to play the games that started my obsession with dungeon crawlers.

The worst one! EO2 has an enormous amount of problems, and only holds up solely on the core gameplay loop and core formula being amazing. Many choices made by Atlus in this game were either failed experiments or kneejerk reactions to the "meta" of EO1, and most come off as overly hostile to the player. Dedicated gathering parties are too useful? Add a random chance to be ambushed by the most powerful monsters in the stratum. [Class] was strong in EO1? Crush it. [Class] was bad in EO1? Now it's incredibly powerful. Pre-emptive boost and blindside prevention are too strong? Nerf both, give specific enemy groups guaranteed Blindside, and make mobs always use their strongest ability on the blindside turn. FOEs are too lucrative? Now they give a big fat 0 experience! I could go on and on. Monster and quest design is a lot more interesting, but quests still do not grant experience - leaving many to feel extremely unrewarding. Many quests give you little to no information, leaving you groping in the dark for how to complete it. There is a postgame quest that straight up tells you to look "somewhere in the labyrinth" for a certain item. There are 30 floors. On the good side, the music and environments are top notch as always. The 4th stratum is especially beautiful and one of the best in the series in my imo. And aside from severe class balance issues, effort was made to make each class's skill tree be more interesting and it shows. But overall, if you do not have advance knowledge of this game's quirks, mechanics and skill info you are in for a seriously rough time. The cracks are especially glaring if you go for the postgame or for 100% completion. I think the best thing I can say about this game is that EO2 walked so EO3 and onwards could run - every game beyond this one is phenomenal. If you want to experience the plot and setting of Etrian Odyssey 2, I would highly recommend you play Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 for the 3DS instead.

Beautiful art and atmosphere, with a wonderful ost to accompany. However, the combat is EXTREMELY tedious and random encounters are unbelievably frequent, it just made the game a drag to play by the time I got to the third stratum. I sighed and/or rolled my eyes every time I got a random encounter when I was just trying to get back to the floor I left off on, as the game made me teleport back to town even when I wanted to keep going. That really wouldn't have been an issue if it didn't make me back-track through the floors I had already cleared, stopping every 10 steps for another monotonous battle. I guess the Etrian Odyssey series is just not for me, but I can totally see the appeal!

After an okay first entry that serves as a decent base to design your sequels on, the game balacing team did not spare the effort trying to change things. That unfortunately lead to kneejerk and over-the-top balancing that makes the overall classes and combat rather gimmicky. Certain strats and builds are much stronger than the rest, others are so bad you might aswell bench that character forever. In a game that heavily punishes resetting your skill points (you lose 5 whole levels), and gives you practically no information of how strong a skill is, this can quickly lead to a lot of time spent just mindlessly grinding to relevel. All of that ends up with a game that really deserves the warning of [b] "Way better with a guide" [/b] for your first playthrough. Knowing what actually works and what the bosses are weak too heavily decrease the frustration of being stuck in a bad build. OST is phenomenal at least. (Frozen Grounds my beloved)

Etrian Odyssey 2 is kind of a weird sequel, one of those games that improves on its predecessor in a lot of ways but also makes significant controversial changes such as no exp for FOEs, nerfed gathering, and class balancing was turned upside down with (almost) every class that was great in the first game losing its best skill or having the cost of its other skills increased immensely, and the less optimal classes from 1 and most of 2's new classes being the new meta. There are some positive changes too though, you get access to the only unlockable class as early as the end of the 1st stratum which is a massive improvement compared to them getting unlocked in the 3rd and 4th stratums (roughly halfway through the game) in E01. The setting of this game also feels a lot more realized than the setting of the prequel, with a ton of additional flavour quests doing a lot of the heavy lifting and a big chunk of them getting you involved with the townsfolk with a few of them even getting whole questlines that end in your party getting a BIS or second BIS weapon which is pretty cool. Speaking of the townsfolk, EO2s npcs are far more memorable and interesting than EO1s, this is in no small part due to better integration of npcs in quests but most of them just do feel like there's more to them than just the services they provide, with the bartender in particular was probably my favourite. Despite it's flaws I had a lot of fun with this game and honestly it disappoints me how many reviews or discussion posts say to skip this game and the first in favour of starting with EO3. Sequels and their mechanical improvements shouldn't invalidate the unique stories and experiences found in playing prior titles.