Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight, Rodea The Sky Soldier, and more at Atlus this E3. They're more than free T Shirts for Dancing.
E3 Started off like it does every year with me picking up my media credentials from the media area in the back of the Los Angeles Convention Center. After that was when things started to get a little different. I usually just glance at the extra large Atlus tag that come included in my media tag but this year I saw the words free T shirt on it and I’ll do pretty much anything for a free shirt. All you had to do is dance at the Persona 4: Dancing All Night portion of the Atlus booth. I know you didn’t think I was going anywhere with that story but I was and it’s this, my appointment with Atlus wasn’t until day 3 and I swung by day one, albeit for a free shirt but whatever! Safe to say,I got the shirt!
Anyway, it was day 3 and Atlus was my final stop on the E3 2015 Mystery Tour! Let me be clear, The Atlus booth was made up of Atlus as as well as other companies, such as NIS America, who presented Rodea, The Sky Solider( More on that Later) Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight was up first. The game is a Nintendo 3DS retelling of original Etrian Odyssey 2 with new features and modifications. There is another part of the game as well, a brand new story mode that follows the tale of the Fafnir Knight, Princess Arianna, Flavio - another hero of the Midgard Library, and the two adventurers, Bertrand and Chloe.
While playing the demo I realized that the story is told through the means of a pen and paper tabletop game quite a bit. What I mean by that is you get a lot of detail and you’re told a lot of the story through actions and you’re asked a lot of “would you like to” questions similar to tabletop gaming.
You play the role of the hero and your group consists of all the typical characters. You have your sheltered princess and your childhood friend as examples. The game has the look and feel of an anime and plays like a RPG with the fighting commands/menu system. Graphically, this game looks great, complete with 3D effects and cut scenes. The problem this game could and problem will have is what so many of these RPG games have, the feeling of repetitiveness. The demo on the show flow wasn’t that long and I could see that feeling eventually being a problem but only time will tell on that one.
Rodea The Sky Soldier, from NIS America, was talked about all the way back in 2011. Then it totally vanished until this year and it was on the show floor at the Atlus booth and I had to check it out. Ion, an adventurous citizen of Garuda, finds Rodea, robot soldier, but his memory is corrupted. Garuda is under siege from Naga, the ancient machine empire, and it’s up the Rodea to stop them. Naga wants the Graviton supply that Garuda has.
Take to the skies and protect the land of Garuda from the Naga empire. While you’re playing, you can locate machine parts to upgrade yourself. You can collect gravitons along the way and the controls play like Sonic Adventure in this regard that if you’re flying and facing the direction of the gravitons, you’ll follow their path. That’s very similar to what Sonic did when there was a path of rings in Sonic Adventure, he would follow it. There is a homing attack crosshair as well that you can aim and lock onto enemies as well. One lock and you’ll travel toward the direction of the enemy but if the enemy is armored you might bounce right off.
In another Sonic-like move Rodea can grind rails with his tail so it looks like Sonic influenced this game quite a bit. Rodea is upside-down thought when he grinds the rail. Flying is a bit challenging, as the controls aren’t the most responsive. There is a ascend button that send Rodea straight up into the air and he’ll just keep going. There’s a learning curve for the controls but you do get to learn them in the first couple of levels of the game.
There is a flight meter and if you run out, you will fall. I’m not sure how I feel about a game that doesn’t have the greatest flight mechanics in the world and that is all about flying having a limit on how long you can fly. You do have the ability to speed burst and to hang to walls at times. It will be interesting to see if the delay from 2011 to 2015 will hurt Rodea the Sky Soldier. It’s Releasing October 13th for Wii/Wii U/ and Nintendo 3DS and I believe they said at E3 that it’s the last Wii game so they have that claim to fame!
