You guys should know the drill XD.

quote AllRPG

In an article a couple of weeks back, AllRPG reported on a new Nintendo DS RPG from Atlus, called Yggdrasil Labyrinth.

Atlus has decided to bring this title stateside and publish it, while renaming it Etrian Odyssey.

The people that are behind this title have worked on other games that some might recognize. The game is directed by Kazuya Niinou (Trauma Center: Under the Knife), with Shigeo Komori (Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner) doing the story design, and Yuzo Koshiro (Actraiser, Streets of Rage) heading up sound design.

Nich Maragos, the project lead of Etrian Odyssey for Atlus USA, states, “This game revitalizes the classic spirit of exploration and adventure for a new platform and a new audience. The hand-drawn map feature along with the lush graphics will make gamers want to get lost in the striking forest world of Etria.”

The story of the game focuses on a small town of Etria, which was not well known until a huge discovery was made. People had discovered a labyrinth at the edge of the town, which attracted visitors from all over.

Of course, many adventurers have come to Etria to see just what treasures the labyrinth holds. While the labyrinth can surely be their last place to see, the promise of fame and fortune motivates people to try and find their way through the labyrinth.

Just like any other day in the town, a new youth walks through the gates, and the player will take control of that character.

There are many features on this game that the player can take advantage of, so let's take a look at them:

-This RPG makes use of a first-person view while exploring, so the player will go throughout the town or the labyrinth exploring with that kind of view. Characters will of course come on the screen to make conversation, and monsters will appear to attack the player.

-A labyrinth can be hard to navigate at times, so that's why with the touch screen on the DS, the player can make their own maps. It will make things much easier as far as keeping track of stairs, treasure, doors, and other things.

-The player has much freedom over what kind of character they can be, with having the choice of 9 different character classes. There are dark hunters, medics, and others that will be explained in more detail later in the article. They can even populate a guild with up to 20 different characters to choose from.

-This game makes use of both screens of the DS heavily, with having the top screen display the enviornment of the area from a first-person perspective, and the touch screen being able to create maps, as mentioned above.

-The game sports many different environments to journey throughout, and here are a few of them. There's the Emerald Forest, full of flower gardens that hide treasure; the Ancient Grove, where those who explore it float across waterways on magical lilies in the area; and the Primitive Jungle, where danger lurks and poisonous thorns surround the trails.

-Now let's look at the different character classes along with their artwork:

- ALLRPG.com

quote 1UP

You know what the problem is with RPGs these days? They're just too damn nice. They hold your hand for the first few hours of play, guiding you gently through a throng of toothless "threats," giving you lots of plot to pad out the threatening combat portions, and generally sheltering you from that mean ol' Game Over screen whenever possible.

But Atlus dares to be different. Its Shin Megami Tensei games, including Persona and Nocturne, don't muck around with training wheels -- they're demanding and difficult from the word go. But they're still pretty heavy with story. And that's where Etrian Odyssey comes in.


SCREENS: Choose your own skills and portrait to create a custom emo warrior. [Click the image above to check out all Etrian Odyssey screens.]

Hearkening back -- quite deliberately -- to the good (and brutal) days of PC RPGs like Wizardry and Dungeon Explorer, Etrian is a first-person dungeon crawl. And that's "crawl" in a very literal sense; unlike most games where you breeze through without a pause, the 30-level dungeon is a challenge from the first step. Mapping and completing even a single floor is a task that requires hours of effort and some serious advance planning.

The planning begins before you even venture into the dungeon, in fact. The daunting Yggdrasil labyrinth is bordered by a small city which is navigated through menus, where you perform the requisite preparations for the journey: Buy gear, accept tasks, and register your guild. The guild you create is effectively your party -- while only five guild members can participate in an active party, it's possible to keep many more in reserve and bring them into action by heading back to town.

Characters are created more or less from scratch, with about a dozen possible character classes to choose from, and four different character designs per class (two for each gender). Each party member is given three skill points at the beginning of the game, and earns one additional skill point at each level-up to allow for character customization. By assigning a skill point to a given category or ability, you teach that warrior the associated ability (or enhance an existing skill).


SCREENS: Atlus transforms DS into virtual graph paper. [Click the image above to check out all Etrian Odyssey screens.]

Customization has an evolutionary element to it, and certain abilities can't be learned until lower-level talents have been suitably developed. For instance, a healer can't learn the Cure spell until he or she has chosen to study curative magic, meaning that the most basic healing magic costs two skill points. But continue building Cure and eventually the more powerful Cure II will become available. Likewise, the Landsnecht class has to acquire basic swordcraft knowledge before learning sword-based combat skills.

Classes range from the common -- knights, alchemists, healers -- to less conventional choices, including a whip-using warrior whose talents have a hint of the ol' S&M. Finding a proper balance of skills is essential to success, even more so than in most RPGs. You could create a party of healers, but the ones on the front line will go down in a hurry. And while you might think a team of paladins would do pretty well, they wouldn't make much headway against enemies weak only against magic.

In the field, combat is presented in a typical group-turn-based style. Much more compelling is the map system, which is the most old-school thing about the game. The automap (which can be deactivated) only records the most rudimentary information about where you've been, leaving the task of recording the specifics in the player's hands. More than just a touch-screen gimmick, the need to draw boundaries, notes and icons on the in-game map hearkens back to the old days of graph paper (without the possibility of losing your notes), and the grid-based character movement lends itself to the mapping system.

Those who like their RPGs merciless and cruel will be happy to know that Etrian Odyssey is slated for release in the coming months.

North American Release: May 16, 2007.

Official Website (Source)