Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

If the idea of fighting an endless stream of random but challenging battles amidst drawing your own map with each step you take sounds like an agony, then that's all you need to know about this game. Move along!

If such a trek sounds like a fun way to while away the hours, then Etrian Odyssey 3 certainly offers that.

I enjoyed it. I think the part of the game that worked out the best is the difficulty level, which was high enough to keep battles challenging throughout and forced me to keep my party levels up, but was not so high as to often require level grinding. With the challenge at this level, winning battles proves rewarding, as well as do the items you get from each that allow you to buy new, much-needed equipment. A reasonable encounter rate also helps to keep things moving.

Now, I don't think this game does anything too extraordinary. You can choose between ten or so job classes and each can learn a decent number of skills but those character classes aren't incredibly unique. I like that you can give each character a sub-class to compliment his skills, but you cannot do that until halfway through the game and you are very limited in your ability to change your class/sub-class. Basically, you can only do that if you're willing to do a ton of level grinding, and that's when things really start to drag. The visuals are dull with minimal animation, and the story, when there seems to be one at all, is a mess. An optional sailing adventure quest adds little to the dungeon crawling. The soundtrack is actually quite good, but you'll spend so much time in the same areas and in the same kind of battles that it can still get grating.

So, I can't give this game too high of a score, and those who aren't interested in this kind of thing won't find anything here to make them change their mind. But if this is your genre of choice, I doubt you'll be disappointed. Just don't forget your escape rope when you head down below...