Casting off the shroud of early CRPG aesthetics and, to a lesser extent, systems design, The Drowned City reveals the end to which the series has been working, its impoverished masterpiece: an ATLUS dungeon crawler. If it were only that it could perhaps be forgiven as a mediocrity, but what damns it is the way it still cleaves to that original Wizardraic form, in spite of having abandoned its fundamental goals.
The Drowned City seems to view the resource conversation which characterized the series' former entries as a flaw to be optimized out, and offers the player, from the start of the game, both inexpensive ways of recovering from death and TP depletion as well a frequency of shortcuts that makes getting back to any given spot from town almost effortless. This isn't a flaw in and of itself, of course: even Final Fantasy XIII, the best JRPG of all time, takes a similarly resource-agnostic approach. But while that game and its sequels had a variety of encounters which could approached systematically, each like a puzzle, The Drowned City's non-boss encounters are nowhere near diverse or complex enough to be compelling when they have no long-term bearing on one's progress.
Where The Drowned City's genericization is most apparent, however, is in that aspect which is the most superficially original: its characters and narrative framing. Where Heroes of Lagaard's townspeople were generic town-NPC archetypes whose nuances became apparent over the course of the game, The Drowned City's simply reiterate their one quality, the quirk that is expected to sustain them through the next fifty hours. By the end of the former game, the shopgirl was like a friend's daughter who I sometimes watch on weekends; the latter game's characters never really grew on me. This is particularly damaging to the plot, which is both considerably more present in this entry and driven by characters who are ultimately pretty dull.
What decisively renders this the weakest of the DS Etrian games, though, is the design of its strata, of which only the fifth stands out aesthetically. The third stratum, in particular, is the most visually and aurally generic in series thus far, and has the gall to be the longest in the game. More than their individual failings, however, what hurts this labyrinth is its lack of aesthetic unity: it feels as if it's comprised of six unrelated dungeons and dispenses with former entries' sense of progression.
The Drowned City retains a great deal of what's good about the series: its character and monster design, the Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack, and puzzle design which admittedly blossoms in this game. Its class portraits felt somewhat overdesigned and specific for blank-slate characters, but are nevertheless good on their own terms. Olympia was the standout cast member but she deserved to go a little more sicko I think.
The Drowned City seems to view the resource conversation which characterized the series' former entries as a flaw to be optimized out, and offers the player, from the start of the game, both inexpensive ways of recovering from death and TP depletion as well a frequency of shortcuts that makes getting back to any given spot from town almost effortless. This isn't a flaw in and of itself, of course: even Final Fantasy XIII, the best JRPG of all time, takes a similarly resource-agnostic approach. But while that game and its sequels had a variety of encounters which could approached systematically, each like a puzzle, The Drowned City's non-boss encounters are nowhere near diverse or complex enough to be compelling when they have no long-term bearing on one's progress.
Where The Drowned City's genericization is most apparent, however, is in that aspect which is the most superficially original: its characters and narrative framing. Where Heroes of Lagaard's townspeople were generic town-NPC archetypes whose nuances became apparent over the course of the game, The Drowned City's simply reiterate their one quality, the quirk that is expected to sustain them through the next fifty hours. By the end of the former game, the shopgirl was like a friend's daughter who I sometimes watch on weekends; the latter game's characters never really grew on me. This is particularly damaging to the plot, which is both considerably more present in this entry and driven by characters who are ultimately pretty dull.
What decisively renders this the weakest of the DS Etrian games, though, is the design of its strata, of which only the fifth stands out aesthetically. The third stratum, in particular, is the most visually and aurally generic in series thus far, and has the gall to be the longest in the game. More than their individual failings, however, what hurts this labyrinth is its lack of aesthetic unity: it feels as if it's comprised of six unrelated dungeons and dispenses with former entries' sense of progression.
The Drowned City retains a great deal of what's good about the series: its character and monster design, the Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack, and puzzle design which admittedly blossoms in this game. Its class portraits felt somewhat overdesigned and specific for blank-slate characters, but are nevertheless good on their own terms. Olympia was the standout cast member but she deserved to go a little more sicko I think.