Popular Post Rikzilla Posted February 5, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted February 5, 2019 I put 7 hours into this yesterday and I'm absolutely loving it. It's the first Etrian Odyssey game I've ever played so I didn't really know what to expect going in apart from tough as nails dungeon crawling, and to be fair that's exactly what I got. The story sees you exploring a new, previously unexplored land that holds many secrets. You land in the newly established town of Maginia which acts as your main hub and contains an Inn to rest and save your game, a shop to sell items and by equipment, a bar to undertake quests for the residents of Maginia, the Explorers Guild where you register party members and organise your party, and Expedition HQ where you receive main story missions. So far I've been tasked with doing a couple small practise quests for the towns folk, and the big boss of the expedition has tasked me with mapping unexplored labyrinths. I'm keeping the story vague because of spoilers. Your guild can hold 60 members, with 5 members making up your party, and there are 19 classes to choose from. Each class specialises in frontline or backline offense/defense/support/healing/etc so there's a lot of freedom to create a party that fits your play style, with enough room to change things around if your current party doesn't quite cut it. My current party is made up of a Hero (frontline oddense/defense), Medic (backline healer), Ronin (frontline offense+), Zodiac (backline elemental offense), and Harbinger (flex ailment specialist) so it's a pretty well rounded party and I'm not finding myself struggling yet which is really nice. I've only ever played two first person dungeon crawlers like this before (Demon Gaze II and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux) so I'm still pretty new to the genre, but it turns out I quite like it. I love drawing my map on the bottom screen as I explore, it reminds me of old console RPG's like Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun on the Mega Drive. I have vivid memories of playing it with my my Dad as we were surrounded by sheets of graph paper covered in hand drawn maps. There is an option to switch on automatic mapping if you want to, but that kinda defeats the point in my opinion. Combat is tough, but fair, and levelling up is slow. Every time a character levels up they receive a skill point which can be used to unlock and upgrade a variety of skills. There are three different tiers of skills - novice, veteran, and master - and certain skills will only be unlocked when other skills have been levelled up a few times. Again, this adds a level of customisation to the characters as you can focus on making your most used or most useful skills stronger and more deadly. Fights are your standard turn based RPG affair - attack with a weapon or a skill, skills cost points to use which have to be replenished with items, sleep, or recovery points found in the labyrinths, hit enemies with everything you have until you find weaknesses and then hit them with status ailments and everything they're weak against until they're dead. The first time you fight a new enemy is tense as you need to figure out what puts them down quickly before they kill you, and they hit you real hard in this - at the start of the game my Ronin kept being killed in one hit. Levelling up and new equipment makes a lot of difference in this, so I've found myself exploring a labyrinth until I'm out of TP (this games name for magic points), returning to town, selling any items and materials I found, sleeping, then returning to the labyrinth to do it again until I have enough money to buy the best available gear and fight the boss. It's very grindy, but in a slow and methodical way that's actually really addictive. I've found that the difficulty of the enemies, the slow, methodical exploration, and having never played an Etrian Odyssey game before so having no idea what to expect really accentuates the feeling of the unknown that the story focussing on, which is making for a genuinely brilliant experience so far. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DANGERMAN Posted February 5, 2019 Share Posted February 5, 2019 there was a OG forummer here called Centy who I think was the first person I knew to get on the Etrian Odyssey games, they always sounded a bit too hardcore for me at the time (may well have been). I ended up getting Etrian Odyssey Untold to review, a remake of the 1st DS game with an added story and set characters (you could play it more old school and build your own team if you wanted). My experience was the same as yours, I was initially a bit brutalised, then it clicks and it's brilliant. Not overly complicated, simple enough weakness/strength mechanic, and learning how to build a flow throughout your team, which happens more as you get deeper in to the skill tree They're great games. I'm most of the way through 2 of them and have started Persona Q so I'll probably skip this, but I'll probably pick up the next one on whatever new platform it ends up on (presumably Switch and PS4). I will say that the gameplay loop of inching your way through a floor does start to wear a little thin, but that's rpgs I guess. Last time I went back to it I was still really enjoying it, and was able to take out most of the FOEs in the game 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rikzilla Posted February 6, 2019 Author Share Posted February 6, 2019 I’m close to 14 hours in now and this is genuinely one of the best games I’ve played in years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now