I just finished
Etrian Odyssey II for the first time. I have been with the series from practically the start, and picked up each game as they've come out--including the times when they never released in my region, or did so after great delays. The point is that barring a specific turnoff the games themselves can induce in me, they've always been a priority as something to follow and engage with. The protracted arc in playing the second game through only now was a result of just such an impression, because an attempt was made in earlier years. Then, I gave it up for reasons that haven't really shifted in the discerning, but their effect on my overall estimation and willingness to accept the game for what it is may have; now, I don't endure
EOII--I may even like it. The game is the same it was, thirteen years ago, and happily, I'm not.
The stumbling blocks that can lead to a harsh rejection of the material are not particularly hidden. Whatever identity
Etrian Odyssey had after its debut installment, and even more so in the years since,
II falls awkwardly in the middle of, alienating possibly both perspectives through its odd idiosyncracies. The haphazard class balance of the first game is replicated here, not identically but through overcorrecting elevation and diminishment of the prior class dynamics; they aren't reinvented so much as remixed, and remain as starkly prejudiced as before, for the opposite kind of flavour of offense triumphing over the prior defensive hegemony--whatever the specifics, the act of play in a micro and macro sense is single-minded and repetitive in ways later games often don't have to worry about.
Etrian prides itself on the kind of player expression only games of its character-building freedom can broach, but through inconsistently handled design that ideal can remains strictly theoretical--eventually, players must conform to using the favoured skills, team compositions and tactics unless they're ready to accept more hardship than is anticipated by the projected difficulty curve when playing outside of its expectations.
Criticizing an
Etrian Odyssey for being hard seems counterintuitive to what appeals about the series to its general audience, and is only given meaning by what a shock to the systems
II can be if the series is defined more so by its recent past than by its origins. It's a punitive game in the extreme, with none of the ameliorating niceties the series developed over the years in a gradual shifting of the design priorities, and in an anomalous streak, even compared to the famously rigid first game. Neither game innovated quest, exploratory or passive experience rewards, but
II sees fit to take one of the few existing sources away in eliminating FOE experience as well, and while this can feel like a brutal difference when expressed in a vacuum, in actuality it's one of the rare sources toward an individual identity the game possesses. FOEs no longer present a mostly optionally avoidable threat and design element; they are far stronger on an average with their movement patterns denser and more intricately involved in routine exploration, so avoidance is made into an integral part of treating the labyrinth with caution instead of sheer exploitation of its denizens for resources at every turn. There is little incentive in antagonizing FOEs in this game, and so the act of dancing in their shadows helps craft the idea that for once, living and letting live is the path to undertake and should the going feel unreasonably harsh if unheeded, then the ordeals are of the player's own making.
Monotony, and mistakes made as a result of it, can be the greatest foe contended with in
Etrian Odyssey II, again in a sense that feels applicable to every game in the series but is made a more pressing concern here than in any of the siblings because of the reality of what the game is and how it came to be. It's separated from the original by only a year, when others in the series invariably had a development schedule at least twice that duration, and the distinction shows in the end result. There is an air of superfluity about it that pervades nearly all facets of the production: the strictly additive instead of reinventive class selection; the design tics that profess a for-super-players-only kind of attitude about themselves; the genuinely broken game mechanics that simply had no time to be identified and properly addressed; the storytelling thematics that mirror the first game a little too closely; the even more pronounced abusable skills or little tricks that rise up in place of the ones stomped out since the prior game. The single biggest deterrent in investing of myself in this game was the first stratum itself, the Ancient Forest, which just felt like the Emerald Grove all over again, only a colder shade of green to distinguish itself by.
Etrian Odyssey is a commitment, whether taken as individual games or the massive serial totality that they now comprise, and so the worst feeling they can leave one with is the sensation that the particularities of a given game in question are interchangeable to the others, and nowhere is that felt more keenly than with the second game.
It's also this sense of almost creative boredom that redeems the game, or lends itself the character that it so very much needs. Sometimes, I don't want to puzzle over party composition and fine-tune synergy so much that the act of actually playing the game feels like an afterthought or coda to the main event of fuzzing about with skill sims and character sheets--in
II, the builds are so straightforward and limited that analysis paralysis cannot begin to take root. Similarly, maybe I don't want to be beholden to quest and event experience through all those long hours--as nice as being rewarded for one's efforts is, there can also be a side-effect of gamifying the innate joys of charting branching points and dead-ends, or interacting with the quests themselves that in the first two games are so often derided for being "useless" in function as their rewards aren't significant. When let go of the carrot dangling in front of one's vision, they can be instead approached or ignored for their innate interest and intrigue instead of how they might benefit the player by the end of the process. This is the hardest habit to unlearn--not necessarily in being able to let go of the instinct to do every quest offered, but in internalizing the choice to walk away as equally valid and acceptable by the media interacted with. The absence of hard numerical boons makes it a more identifiable alternative to realize if so desired, and it feels right for the kind of game this is, where the choice to disengage feels thematically sound to where the headspace of the rest of the game happens to be.
There is a sensibility of austerity to
Etrian Odyssey II that is not present in the rest of the series, and it's landed upon through that odd mixture of old concepts and meager new offerings, and perhaps that's why the conservatism on the aesthetic end also ultimately benefits the game. Yuji Himukai as a character designer has excesses that are well known and endured, and it's difficult to find a safe median in his oeuvre--the highs are very high and the lows very low. It makes him an always unpredictable artist, just as ready to disappoint as delight, with each game providing plenty of examples of both extremes.
II is significant as a collection of artwork and character designs in that it's likely the least sexually exploitative game in the series on that front through the concepts portrayed in it. High Lagaard is populated by a host of unremarkably middle-aged or elderly townspeople, and the new classes and characters are attired for the colder weather of the setting in ways that just speak to an uncommon functionality over flair, and as a result become all the more memorable for the contrast. That's the association that forms over time, in how the game's setting and climate reflect on the shaky identity of its patchwork self: it's harsh and often grueling in how much it takes and how little it gives back, but perhaps alluring for those same uncomplicated and unadorned principles that hold it down just as much as they root it to the stark, unforgiving earth below.