The second game in the series is getting the same story and 3D treatment the first game received. Currently subtitled Knight of Fafnir, there has yet to be an American release announced.
Get hooked on this cult fave where it all began.
It seems like the Etrian Odyssey series has steadily won over more and more fans since its first entry in 2007. Along the way, Atlus has added in niceties to take the edge off of a series that demands a lot of its players, and revisiting the original entry with these tweaks turns out to be a great move. Even though it seems a bit odd to remake a game that’s only six years old, Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl is the perfect way to please existing fans and those just joining the dungeon-diving party.
Etrian Odyssey’s evolution may have reached uber-game levels.
Having just recently completed Etrian Odyssey III, I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to dive right back into another massive adventure. I mean, heck, I was a little worn out from all of the grinding I had been doing and wasn’t so sure I wanted to get into that again. Well, somehow I got sucked back into this mess and am I ever grateful. Atlus has taken the fourth Etrian Odyssey game through a monstrous evolutionary process to create the best balanced, most addictive, strategically engaging dungeon crawler around.
A great party never just happens.
If there’s one thing the Etrian Odyssey series requires, it’s time. Even though the games eschew the game clocks we’ve become accustomed to, most people who play through to the end (and beyond) estimate that they spend more than a hundred hours exploring the unforgiving dungeons. If you plow into a game of this scope with only the most basic of parties and expect to stay engaged for that amount of time, you’ll likely give up and walk away. Creating a party with unique tactics and strategies is pivotal to be successful and to have fun with these games since the story is minimal to the point of being a secondary concern.
Yuck.
I’m not really sure what Konami and WayForward were going for when they made Silent Hill: Book of Memories. While it bears the Silent Hill name, it draws nothing but characters and visual design from the series. As someone outside of the fan base, I don’t mind this departure; however, their attempt to marry a dungeon crawler to the Silent Hill formula results in gameplay that even fans of the genre won’t appreciate.
Advances in the study of loots are needed to make Heroes of Ruin be anything special.
The age old question of what makes a loot phat has yet to be answered. There is no magic formula for the presentation of said loots, nor is there an equation for the perfect mixture of merely acceptable loots and those that are in fact phat. Once researchers have uncovered the perfect recipe, applying this know-how to Heroes of Ruin might make it something fantastic instead of what it is now: completely and thoroughly decent.
We don't like to use the "D" word around these parts.
With Diablo III exploding onto the world and making headlines for everything from its high sales numbers to its controversial internet connection requirements, it seems as if Blizzard’s new monster is set to dominate the gaming landscape for some time to come. If you’ve read my review you know that I’m rather fond of that game. Perhaps you’re still not impressed. Perhaps you yearn for a game less streamlined that plays more like the Diablo of yore. That’s the exact sentiment that Runic Games is banking on with Torchlight II--a love letter to Diablo II in a post-Diablo III world. But let’s just not talk about Diablo for now, shall we?
Unless you have four friends to play this locally with, be prepared for a slow and tedious journey.
I wouldn’t say that Dungeon Hunter: Alliance is the worst dungeon crawler I’ve ever played, but it’s not very good either. From the get-go it creates the illusion that it’s going to be a great title within the genre, but it falls apart in execution.
Blizzard made some changes to Diablo III, but do they make a big difference to the gameplay?
I typically don’t like replaying sections of a game that I haven’t finished and yet I’ve played through the first act of Diablo III somewhere to the tune of ten times. That’s a ringing endorsement of how fun and addicting this game is and I’ve been ready to play the real thing for months now. But Blizzard has other plans in mind, having recently made some sweeping changes to the way stats affect character progression, among other things. With that in mind, I decided to roll a new Barbarian and take a look at these alterations to Blizzard’s long-gesticulating RPG.
A brand new first person dungeon crawler – I know, I was surprised too.
Going into Stonekeep, I was fully aware it was a budget priced WiiWare release, but still, I was excited. It’s not very often you see a company willing to revive an extremely old and niche series, much less one that’s a first person RPG dungeon crawler. While a big deal back on the PC two decades ago, these days you just don’t see many of these types of RPGs. But alas, Stonekeep quickly and effectively dashed my excitement after just a few short minutes.
