Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight (3DS)

A sequel can be a chance to evolve on or expand a video game’s offerings and ideas, but when I started playing the dungeon-crawling RPG Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight, it felt like I was having déjà vu. So much is carried over from the game’s predecessor Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl. The menus are near identical, and you’re once again plunging into a labyrinth where the first few floors are a bright forest that even have the same large antelope monsters patrolling it. When you exit the labyrinth to recuperate back at town, many of the shops you visit are similar between games, and structurally both introduce a secondary dungeon delved into at story appropriate sections. The initial impression is that you’re in for more of the same but with a different cast of characters, but over time you do at least find this labyrinth has unique areas, the town has a new place to drop by, and there are a few clear improvements, but most of what can be said about one game likely applies to the other.

 

Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight does have a unique story to tell though. A remake of Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard, this game adds in a plot with clearly defined characters while the original version remains playable through Classic Mode where you make your own characters for the dungeon-delving action. One small improvement over the previous Etrian Odyssey Untold title is you can have multiple save files so you can easily sample either and they are better balanced so neither side feels inferior to play, the choice mostly about if you want a more robust plot to structure the adventuring a bit. Either way, in this fantasy role-playing game you’ll find yourself in the city of High Lagaard that sits at the base of the great tree Yggdrasil. A labyrinth climbs up through the branches of Yggdrasil, adventurers commonly entering it to seek fortune, cull the monsters within to protect the town, or seek the secrets that might exist on the higher floors. With a party of up to five heroes, you’ll plunger deeper into this labyrinth than any living person, but the motivation behind this will be more specific if you choose to play as the Fafnir Knight in story mode.

 

The main character of Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight is the Fafnir Knight who you get to name. While he doesn’t know what he is to start with, the knight and his lifelong friend Flavio are tasked with escorting the princess of Caledonia, Arianna, to the Ginnungagap, a dungeon below the Yggdrasil labyrinth and one left in disrepair. Your powers awaken as you aid Arianna in trying to reach the point where she can perform a powerful albeit barely understood ritual to protect the land, but you also encounter two others in the Ginnungagap, Bertrand and Chloe, who elect to join your quest. The Ginnungagap cannot be so easily traversed, the group having to often head into the labyrinth instead to acquire vital tools or knowledge they can then use on their quest, the two areas deeply connected while both hiding their own secrets. Over time, despite your character being mostly silent, you will get to know your party members rather well, there being story battles and situations in the dungeons as well as quieter moments spent back in town that help to make them an endearing if not overly complex bunch.

Arianna’s sheltered life as a princess has lead to her leaping into new experiences with enthusiasm, Flavio a solid contrast as he’s often the voice of reason when you encounter some strange creature or concoct an unusual meal when cooking at the town cafe. Bertrand is rough around the edges and always seems a little weary, like he’s been adventuring far too long and he can only muster up the energy for moments where it really counts. Chloe is a fun if silly addition though, the young magus speaking only as much as she has to to get her way, and this often manifests as her easily accepting any compliment she receives as fact, bluntly answering questions, and letting her stomach guide her a bit too often. Occasional voice acting can help with making Arianna seem more earnest and effervescent, it sands off Bertrand’s edges just enough, and makes Chloe more comical with her often monotone delivery, but while you can easily build a bit of camaraderie with these likeable heroes, they don’t take center stage often enough. While you can identify an effective moment or two for Bertrand and Chloe, Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight can feel rather light on personal moments. Your character being the Fafnir Knight is incredibly important to the broader plot and the many mystical ties that exist between you and the two dungeons, but some attempts to milk drama from the unique role a Fafnir Knight plays in the ritual would have worked better if your party got more time to show off the layers behind their more obvious personality traits.

 

Most of your time in Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight will be spent entering the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, a place you are encouraged to map yourself using the 3DS’s bottom screen. There is an auto-map feature if you want to automate adding each tile you step on in the game’s grid-based dungeons, but even then it won’t do some of the notation for you, the player needing to personally mark down treasures, doors, and curious areas where special events can occur both good and bad. The labyrinth does contain more than simple interior spaces, the fact it’s part of a large tree played into as you can find an autumnal section and even one with cherry blossoms, and as you get deeper in, you can even find more complicated means of travel like slippery ice or moving platforms that can be better solved if you have a filled out map to reference. For the most part, the danger in dungeons will come from enemies that are randomly encountered, your first-person exploration interrupted but not without warning thanks to a threat radar in the corner that helps you keep track of when you are in danger. There are also FOEs though, these Field On Enemies already patrolling a dungeon and you can not only see them moving around the dungeon, but they’ll appear on your map so you can properly track their movements. Doing so is vital to survival as the first time you visit a floor, the FOEs on it are considerably stronger than you and can even outclass that floor’s mandatory boss when it comes to hitting hard and taking little damage. Avoidance is key, but Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight also gets creative with ways you can do so such as luring them into other FOEs or utilizing the environment like pitfalls and thorns to dissuade them.

 

Figuring out the safe paths through a dungeon floor can be tense but rewarding, especially since getting into battle can lead to a nearby FOE joining if you were in its path so it’s not always guaranteed safe movement will protect you. When in battle though, the game becomes a turn-based affair where you input your skills for your party members and the turn plays out based on which heroes and enemies are fastest. While the story mode of Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight locks your characters into predefined roles, Classic Mode allows for you to choose which characters and classes you want to utilize. The War Magus is a rather interesting twist on the healer, able to cast their curative magic on the party both at the start and end of a turn which means it can bail you out of a bad situation or even be used preemptively if you anticipate a rough turn so you’ll be patched up at the end of it. The Sovereign can boost multiple allies at once and the Protector is good for mitigating damage to the team, but you do have classes like Beast where an animal can prove to be a bit too loyal and get itself hurt trying to be a weaker alternative to Protector. Characters utilize a resource called TP for their skills that can sometimes be hard to replenish and limits your labyrinth excursions until you level up, acquire better gear, and unlock new helpful abilities, Alchemists and Hexers able to utilize more unique magical attacks to shore up your attacking options. However, there are also many powers with specific conditions that can make it rougher to try and utilize classes to their full potential because of the set up or situational use cases, but there are also Force Boosts that build up over time and can briefly make your class’s abilities more potent in ways that lead to huge payoffs when things do come together.

Returning from the previous Etrian Odyssey Untold game are Grimoires, the player sometimes getting a chance to unlock special stones that are later equipped to party members to help them use skills they otherwise could not. This can lead to more flexible characters as you spread out buffing abilities, heals, or support skills like Double Attack or Parry. You can also earn stones with enemy attacks in them though, truly giving you unique powers to pull from should luck favor you. However, compared to its predecessor, Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight can sometimes feel too generous with Grimoire Chances, and while your normal inventory can get clogged up to the point you have to drop things to continue, thankfully these stones are stored separately even if their abundance makes them hard to sort through. Well-intentioned in concept if overeager in implementation, it is a nice way to break free of class limitations a bit or find fun synergies to make characters even more potent.

 

There is a good range of monster types and bosses with interesting strategies such as heavily relying on binding skills to limit your options or greatly reducing all of the heroes’ strength when they die to support the remaining monsters in the fight, and while the story mode party feels like it could do with a wider range of useful options, the Fafnir Knight himself is designed as a powerhouse and one the others can often support well in battle. To really remain competitive though will require smart use of available resources, and thanks to the fact you can teleport to different floors of the dungeon so long as they’re mapped well, you can thankfully leave the labyrinth as necessary to go stock up in town. Most of your equipment will actually come from the local shop and most of your money comes from selling them the resources you gain defeating monsters, so fighting often is necessary to acquire a good income. You can also take requests at the local tavern, these often requiring a bit more work in the dungeon to fulfill. Already certain areas in the labyrinth can feature a short event with a choice, like whether to investigate a curious creature or reach for a strange object you spot, but the requests from the tavern can introduce new goals like trying to find the right altar for an offering or taking down some of those fearsome FOEs. The rewards will often include a boost of experience points either way so it is wise to make the deviations needed to fulfill them to speed up your growth in power, although their narrative premises are often a bit slight. They can contribute to a bit of world-building at times like establishing the danger of the dungeon or you might get to know the daughter of the local inn owner by taking her through a bit of the labyrinth, but their purpose seems to be more practical while also giving some unique tasks to flesh out floors you might not otherwise revisit.

 

One interesting added element over the previous Etrian Odyssey Untold game is the town cafe you help develop. Tasked with helping the chef Regina restore the ancient recipes of a savant named Apicius, the meals you make from monster meat can give you passive buffs after eating them like mild TP regeneration or boosted chances for rare materials from monsters. Some are so specific you might not ever use them after deciphering the simple little riddles that are the recipes, but they also can serve a secondary purpose in earning you passive income. Some of your cash can go towards developing High Lagaard, and a more prosperous city means they’ll want to order more from Regina. Put out an ad campaign based on what you hear people in a part of town like, and when you come back from the dungeon later, you will get the cash she earned selling to that area. It’s a more involved contribution to the gameplay loop than heading to the merchant and buying what you can, but a lot of the small touches add up into an interesting cycle of play where it’s easy to get caught up on constantly making plans on what you want to do next.

THE VERDICT: The climb up through the Yggdrasil Labyrinth in Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight is a multifaceted one, your map-making contributing to finding areas of interest, outmaneuvering the dangerous FOEs, and uncovering shortcuts so you can take your vital trips to town to restock, refuel, and head back to where you left off. An entertaining gameplay loop that values preparation and exploration forms as there’s a good deal to think about beyond just which attacks you use in battle, and while the story could have hit harder if it had a sharper focus on its cast, it’s still easy to grow a bit attached to the cast through frequent smaller interactions. Even if you use characters of your own creation though, the dungeon design is still creative enough that it can serve as the adventure’s true star.

 

And so, I give Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight for Nintendo 3DS…

A GOOD rating. Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight feels like a bit of a marginal step up from Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl but also hard to differentiate at times. Repeated monster designs, many returning classes, the town being handled so similarly, even returning FOEs mean you’ll feel on familiar ground if you play one and then the other, but it’s also hard to come out and say one excels in a way the other doesn’t. There are things that are marginally better in one over the other, The Millennium Girl having a slightly more interesting direction for its characters and world-building and better albeit rather similar music for example while The Fafnir Knight is more creative with its FOEs and the recipe system adds a unique extra motivator to your dungeon-crawling adventures. Most important of all though, when viewed independently, Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight works very well with ideas new and old. The emphasis on drawing a map yourself isn’t just a novelty, it helps you keep track of where useful spots to gain ingredients are, it helps you fulfill requests or overcome navigation puzzles, and it can even aid you in getting one over on FOEs with traps or trickery. The turn-based battle system does try to encourage a good deal of party synergy with so many abilities that work better under certain conditions yet can sometimes not be worth the effort outside of bosses who might resist the effects, but there is still room for your heroes to utilize effective and interesting powers once TP is more easily managed after the early hours of the game. Battles could have gotten more robust if skills weren’t often burdened with details that can be hard to trigger or keep track of, but there are still tense fights to be had and a satisfying level of customization as you pick how your group grows and your Grimoire Stones can further diversify their options.

 

Some games might hide that their sequel is more of the same by shaking up the visual design or incidental elements to hide the repeated concepts, but Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight can be a little comforting to get into if you come off the heels of its predecessor. You know how things work and can dive back in to appreciate the new ideas added to the design, and if this is a fresh introduction to the series for you, it kept what worked before and made tiny improvements as it felt necessary. A more inspired set of adjustments could have given the player something deeper to invest their time in, but the labyrinth exploration is still engaging, challenging, and appealing because there is still enough imagination between the obvious bits of recycling to keep your interest strong.