Etrian Odyssey director Kazuya Niinou has been posting fascinating, and disarmingly honest, blog entries on the game's official website. The fourth page was just posted, and contains a rather bold statement: "So I've decided! Etrian Odyssey will be the last great turn-based RPG." This was a reaction to the rumors of Dragon Quest IX going action-RPG-- rumors that turned out not to be true.
While we admire Niinou for his confidence that his game is good enough to exemplify a genre (confidence that increases our frothing demand for the game significantly), we're afraid Etrian Odyssey is going to continue to face stiff competition from Dragon Quest. And we doubt that any number of awesome blog posts will put down that particular cultural phenomenon.
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Personally, we can't get enough RPG action on our DS. Final Fantasy III and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time will have to be pried from our cold, dead hands! That's why Atlus', which is one of our favorite developers, title Etrian Odyssey gets us so pumped. It causes our under-collar to become hot and soaks our brow in sweet, sweet sweat. We wants it and the loose release date of Q1 2007 isn't cutting it!
