RPGamer writes: "Atlus released a DS title in 2007 that was a throwback to the first person, turn-based dungeon crawlers of the distant PC past. While the Wizardry series is dead in America, its spin-offs in Japan still do fairly well, and this latest take on the genre was quickly brought stateside. Atlus stayed old-school with Etrian Odyssey, keeping the gameplay simple and clean, the character classes individualized, the story minimal, and the difficulty brutal.
Artistically, the 2D art and music were appealing while the 3D graphics in the maze were rather bland. The game's trick was the ability to map by hand the enormous labyrinth, a feat somehow more fun with a stylus on a DS screen than with a pencil on a sheet of graph paper. A year later, Atlus brings the Americas its sequel, Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard, promising a new maze, new classes, and several interface tweaks along with gameplay that is nearly identical to the original. The result is a solid game almost too reminiscent of the first in the series; what was fresh last year feels recycled today. Everything great about the original is still intact and enjoyable in the sequel, but its small changes craft it into something longer and harder while failing to make it noticeably better or worse."
