one of the final bosses of the story mode (not the final final one) had me so bad i abandoned the game for 4 months and then very quickly realized that fuck this and cheated so i could max out every skill and make all the party members level 70, not much else cause i still wanted to engage with the game lmao (it still wasn't a complete walk in the park, but not "i'm killing everything in two hits" type of cheating) but outside of that it was overall very good and entertaining and the characters were good 👍

really want to like this more than eo1u but the bosses really fuck me up man. i love the labyrinth again and the story characters are solid and the party dynamic is great and the general game mechanics are still great but nearly every single boss in this game is a godforsaken trial and error disaster that made me dread every new boss fight instead of looking forward to what was to come. trial and error! in a game series where failure is designed to be a punishment! and for most bosses, the amount of trial and error you'd have to suffer through without consulting a guide is completely unforgivable. I used the wiki extensively because there is frankly no way I would have kept my sanity otherwise, and nobody should have to play this game without it. that all said, i still enjoyed the game a lot as a whole because thankfully there aren't that many bosses and many of them are technically optional. fuck ur-child 7.8/10

Altus totally learned from their mistakes in EOU. The story party in that game is both boring to play and boring to watch, and the main story is so predictable you can basically figure out the entire plot if you have played any other EO game. In EO2U, however, the story party uses the most fun classes from the game, and the MC specific class is actually fun to use. Force boost is a great mechanic that is underutilized throughout the series as well, and its nice to see that they recognized this with the MC's class (in contrast to boost, which a boring ass nonmechanic. wow I can sometimes increase the power of a move by like 20% omg!). The story was also surprisingly good, with some really cool plot twists later on that make the story engaging even if it doesn't happen all that often. The new dungeon is also much better than EOU's.

The rest of the game is basically just a reskin of EO2 with the new story inserted in; EO2 is not the best EO game in terms of raw gameplay, but the reskin is nice, and the arranged music is all great.

Es ist ein neues Jahr und ich habe in einer schlaflosen Nacht "Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight" ausgepackt.
Ich liebe die Etrian Odyssey - Teile und freue mich auch über den Hype der Steam und Switch - Version. Trotzdem besitze ich "Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight" habe es aber sehr lange nicht angerührt. Warum? Weil es auf englisch ist. Mein Englisch ist zwar relativ gut, jedoch nicht soooo gut, um die eigentliche Story richtig wahrzunehmen und zu genießen. Dennoch gebe ich mein Bestes, die Story zu verstehen und empfehle trotzdem JEDEM dieses Game auf dem DS! Packt euer DS aus, holt euch das Spiel auf Amazon und gib ihm!

(Played on Classic/Expert)

I don't know that I've had my opinion of a game turn around quite like EO2U, at least in recent memory.

So, to begin, I'm going to be clear about something; this game took several attempts to click for me.
The first couple of teams I put together didn't really have a ton of synergy, lacked some key tools, and just eventually couldn't really handle the stuff the game throws at you from the midgame onwards. So, I went back to the drawing board, for a third attempt.

The thing is, because so many of the classes in this are the same as in the first Untold, I sort of expected them to play pretty similarly. So I tried to diversify my team as much as possible and avoid as many classes from the first Untold as I could.

This... was a mistake. A big mistake. Many of the classes in Untold 2 play very, very differently from the first game. Survivalist has gone from an okay support and itembot into a strong backline DPS with some great disabling tools. Ronin's Stances are no longer buffs they have to keep applying and competing for buff slots, but "states" they automatically enter when using the corresponding attack. Landsknecht lost Strike Chaser, but gained two extremely strong DPS skills for both the Sword and Axe trees so they aren't reliant on Chasers to contribute damage. Alchemists gained a whole new class of melee spells that have some really interesting properties combined with other classes. Highlander... uh, is incredibly mediocre now! Etc, etc.

The point being; just because a class was in the first Untold, doesn't mean you'll be getting the same thing out of it here; it may fill the same role, but the exact way it fills that role can be very different. And that's without even talking about the defining system of this game: Force.

See, in Untold 1, there was a mechanic known as Boost. You had a meter that filled up over time during battles, and when used, the next action you took had its effectiveness boosted; for skills, this was equivalent to +5 skill levels, and some skills at Lv. 10 with a Boost (effectively Lv. 15) were quite potent. But it didn't benefit every skill equally and certainly didn't benefit every class equally. Plus, since the meter started empty every trip to the Labyrinth, this encouraged grinding it up to full on the early floors before hitting a save point and warping down to the boss or FOE you wanted to take down. Of course, this wasn't a particularly fun system to set up for that purpose.

Enter; Force. Replacing Boost entirely, Force has different effects for every class, and is divided into two skills; Force Boost and Force Break. A Force Boost is essentially a state placed on the user for three turns that enhances the class in some way; allowing Landsknechts to get guaranteed critical hits with their sword and axe skills. Boosting the damage an Alchemist does when targeting a weakness. Applying a double damage multiplier to Dark Hunter when the enemy has an ailment or bind. Dramatically increasing the chance of landing ailments and binds for Hexer.

Force Break, meanwhile, completely "breaks" the Force gauge (meaning it won't refill until you return to town) for either a big nuke or some sort of massively powerful support effect; most DPS classes get the "big nuke" variety, War Magus, Medic, and Sovereign get full-party healing, Hexer extends the length of ailments and binds, Troubadour grants a x1.5 multiplier to damage and defense for one turn, etc. Force has some sort of major benefit that every class loves to take advantage of that helps them fill their role better. And unlike Untold 1, you begin each labyrinth dive with a full Force gauge on everyone, so you can immediately pull out the big guns on a tough encounter or FOE/boss fight. And the game is very much aware of this; if you've heard complaints about this game's bosses having "way too much HP", a part of that is because they're expecting you to manage your Force wisely and use it to its fullest extent.

Boost isn't the only mechanic that received a major overhaul though; Grimoires and food systems are back, and better than ever, and I'm not being sarcastic. Both systems received substantial upgrades; Grimoires no longer take up inventory space, and are now one ability per Grimoire, period. You now instead gain more slots to equip Grimoires as you level up, one slot to begin with, and one slot every 10 levels up to 50 for a total of 6 slots. Grimoire Chances in general happen MUCH more frequently, and there are a greater variety of food effects to increase the odds of getting a particular type of Grimoire Chance (useful for getting certain passive or enemy skills), you know what the Grimoire you got was immediately upon generation, you know the level of it as soon as the fight ends, and, above all else; trading and recycling. Oh my god.

As part of this little side mode where you advertise and build up a Café, you also have Grimoire Trading and Recycling, where you can take unwanted grimoires, and exchange them for new ones from NPCs that visit the Café. You can also trade with any Guild Cards you have registered, and people have gone to quite some lengths to create collections of QR Codes for Guild Cards with maxed out abilities of all sorts for trading purposes. The Grimoire system as a whole is just far, far less grindy, way more satisfying to use, and feels way more flexible due to all the changes made. Grimoires also now stack with a class' inherent skills; if you have, say, Fire Formula at Lv. 5 on your Alchemist, and equip a Fire Formula Lv. 3 Grimoire, you now have an effective Lv. 8 Fire Formula on your Alchemist. This stacks even with two Lv. 10s, so with a maxed ability plus Lv. 10 Grimoire, you get a Lv. 20 version of the skill. The effects of Lv. 11 through 19 are generally pretty minor and not a huge dealbreaker - a nice bonus if you can, but no big deal if you can't - but Lv. 20, particularly for offensive skills, tends to be a pretty big break point with a nice power increase; something to keep in mind for postgame when trading for a large amount of Lv. 10 Grimoires becomes much more viable.

With all of this in mind, let's rewind a bit. It took me several attempts to really "click" with this game; after I'd gone back to the drawing board, for the third time, I ended up with a team of: Gunner, Alchemist, Highlander (later a Landsknecht), Beast, and Troubadour. The core concept of the team was simple; the Beast tanks all the major damage for the team, and everyone else focuses on buffing up, be it with actual buffs, resistance/attack modifiers from the Troubadour, charge skills, etc, and use the Troubadour's Force Break to aid in killing the enemy quickly. I wanted a team that emphasized elemental damage without falling back on the Chasers since that was my main offense in the first Untold.

What I didn't realize was that I accidentally created an absurdly powerful burst team that killed every boss except the final postgame superboss in 5 turns or less. Sometimes 3 turns flat once I switched to Landsknecht.

No, really. Every boss just sort of... melted. Here's the rundown; the Gunner, pre 5th Stratum, would do some damage with an elemental shot, charge with Point Blank on the next turn, then turn on Force and use Burst Shot, their most powerful elemental attack. After 5th Stratum, when I got access to the enemy skill Power Gel (an attack buff that also dramatically increases Agility, which Gunners use for their skills), they would use that instead of chip damage. Alchemist would set up Compression, charge with Point Blank, and then use the appropriate elemental formula (later switching to using Link Order II via Grimoire). The Highlander... uh, set up Bloody Offense for the DPS and otherwise did absolutely nothing. There's a reason they changed to Landsknecht later. But when they did, they would boost the front row (Gunner/Alchemist/Landsknecht) with War Cry, and then use a Palm skill to convert the upcoming Hurricane to the appropriate element. Troubadour would lead the fight setting up a Fantasia to further increase the boss' elemental weakness, set up a Prelude on someone, and then use their Force Break, Crusade, on the same turn everyone unloaded all their buffed-and-charged-up damage. The Beast kept the team safe; the absolute nature of their tanking, redirecting all hits to them, and their Force emphasizing this even further, made this possible, rather than relying on the Protector's damage mitigation (got a lot of squishies up front that wouldn't appreciate even reduced damage).

There was only a single boss that required deviating from my usual strategy; the final postgame superboss of the 6th Stratum.

...it actually wasn't that difficult either. I mean it! The final superboss in this game doesn't have nearly as many dick moves as in Untold 1, there are a much greater number of viable ways to deal with the fight as a whole, and the fight has an interesting gimmick centered around making the absolute most out of your Force, because the boss both drains and restores the entire team's Force at key turns, making managing and getting the most out of each round of Force key to success. I cleared this fight in 11 turns, and felt good doing it! The final superboss is a major, major step up from Untold 1 in every way.

I can't really say the same thing for the rest of the postgame though. A part of me sort of got some masochistic enjoyment out of the 6th Stratum in the first Untold; it was awful, trollish in the worst of ways, and an absolute nightmare to navigate. But it had incredible atmosphere and music, and felt like one final dare from the developers; "can you make it through this?" In contrast, Untold 2's 6th Stratum is... kind of boring? Aesthetically and musically it doesn't come anywhere close to it, and the gameplay isn't much to write home about barring a handful of puzzles that I'm honestly not even sure I solved the correct way.

Honestly, the environments in this game overall are kind of a step down from the first for me. They're a lot less fantastical and a lot more... normal, for lack of a better term? The 5th Stratum is, like, the only exception to this. The music is a step down overall too I'd say. There's some good tracks, but even the best in this game doesn't hold a candle to the soundtrack of the first game. And I'd say the same for High Lagaard, the hub city, too; while Etria was very much a "generic fantasy RPG town", there was something about it that felt very... cozy. Like, after awhile, spending time there between labyrinth trips, Etria felt like coming home. High Lagaard doesn't capture that feeling, and the NPCs are mostly steps down; the Explorer's Guildmaster is way more interesting here, and... that's kind of it. Not all of them are bad, just not as good as the characters in Etria.

That kind of sums up my feelings on EO2U as a whole though; in terms of atmosphere and sound, the first game beats it, no contest. But the gameplay, the replay value, the refined mechanics from Untold 1... EO2U is a game I'll absolutely be coming back to in the future. It is a major step up in every way in terms of the raw gameplay, and that's what really matters.

Also it doesn't lock content (besides Fafnir himself, though you can get the skills via Grimoire Trading) behind Story Mode this time! They really did learn from everything wrong with Untold 1, huh?