Review: Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (ATLUS, 2010)

It took long, but two days ago I finally beat The Drowned City's three endings, so at last I can say that this is, accompanied by Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, at the top of my DS charts by a decent margin.

Etrian III is built like a good post-rock/post-metal/prog album or song, as any decent game should be. A common thematic undercurrent and instrumentation (story, mechanics, general rules) encapsulates the whole, slowly progressing so it never repeats itself, revisiting previous moments with a new twist, and always insinuating the breaking points when everything will come together gloriously. Also, there must be something unexpected inbetween, plus new things to discover when we decide to play the album again.
EO3 follows this rules almost to the letter, with its level design getting more complex as time goes by. All of the 5+1 strati our guild must conquer start conservatively, introducing minor changes to the basics and new monsters to get used to. Once the player got used to the new environment, new game elements are introduced in the following levels (new FOE patterns, currents, mission types or traps) to expand the world as we go down, one level after the other, always yearning for the next surprise.

EO3 also feels like the great comeback from that band that so deeply dissapointed you with their second album*. After identifying everything that failed in Heroes of Laggard, ATLUS removed almost everything new, refined the formula and added some amazing new tricks.
Once sea exploration, weapon forging and the new classes are introduced at the beginning, all goes back to old style Etrian, until the real additions are revealed half way through: a second city, subclassing and story branching come quickly one after another, setting EO3 as a whole sequel, instead of the expansion feeling that surrounded all of EO2. And, eventhough story branching seems irrelevant at first, it is later put to good use at the end of the 4th stratum, when the consequences of each choice are finally introduced. And with this the pieces are set for the final feature introduction: meaningful replaying in a proper New Game+ mode for the first time.
All this together manages to make this third entry in the series superior to the original, including its amazing revelation of the 5th stratum.

Princess, Ninja, Pirate. Add water. Mix.

Subclasses alone have such an impact on the way the game is played and exploited that it is the core of The Drowned City. If the series was known for the freedom it offered when creating a party, subclasses add completely new levels of customization, making it quite hard to share more than one or two combos with everyone you know who playes the game (unless, of course, you all follow the same guides and dislike independent thought). The most common combos would include a cross between Ninja or Buccaneer and a Zodiac or Arbalist, plus a Monk/Ninja or Ninja/Monk, but that's already a few possibilities. Add in the other options and you can satisfy most RPG players' dreams. And, to top it all, there are few and unlikely choices that would produce a party unfit to beat the game.

Another addition, although less notable, is the existence of invisible areas,  where auto-mapping is disabled and in which FOEs don't show in the map. It is, however, quite a minor feature, requiring just a bit more caution and attention from the adventurers.