This blog isn't only about romhack reviews, even if I only used it for that previously. As the name yogui's fourre-tout, it's a place where I can say whatever I want about any subjects I want.
Today I want to talk to you about one of my favorite video game series: Etrian Odyssey. EO are RPG dungeon crawler for DS and 3DS. What I love about this series is:
- The great gameplay. It's turn-based combat, but done well. Normal enemies requires a bit of strategy and not only auto-attack, and boss a lot more so. Ailments are both useful against random encounters and bosses, the binds ailments are great.
- The dungeons designs are good, and the innovation of having to draw the map yourself make you more invested in exploring.
- Nice art style and amazing musics composed by Yuzo Koshiro.
- You have lot of choices at your disposition, you chose your class, portrait and name. You decide yourself what skills to learn with your skill points.
- It's minimalist. The playable character are just a single portrait, they don't have any dialogue. That last point is something I like, as it makes you imagine yourself how the characters will interacts in events and battle with each other. Yes I'm making my own head-canon with my characters, and this is how these games are meant to be played:
Ultimately, the series isn't something 100% unique never done before, a lot of the points above were done in other RPGs of course. It's just that all of them are done really well together in the EO games.
When I play them, I usually make a team at the start and never change it, as I get too attached to my characters. Even if it's just portrait chosen from a limited pool, because I named them and adventured with them for the whole game, for me they are unique characters. Your protector isn't the same as my protector even if they have the same portrait.
I'll now present you the guilds I used in the games (I sometimes used other characters for gathering items or some sidequest but I will not list them), in order of the games I played.
I first discovered Etrian Odyssey IV on the 3DS eshop. I downloaded and tried the demo, and after playing it for two hours, I literally, immediately ordered a copy of the full game. The game hooked me from the start. For my characters (in all EO games actually) I mostly chose the characters portraits I like the best. It usually result in party of 1B/4G or 2B/3G. I do not like party of only girls (or only boys). I also make sure to have unique characters in each games. I think of the names of the characters when I create them, not in advance (but I think for a while).
Anyway the girls in IV are pretty cute, I though the adult, more serious looking medic would make a good contrast with the rest. He's the most rational and cautious member of the guild for sure. In my head I have developed the personalities of the characters, and imagined their stories before they formed a guild together and what they became after they finished exploring the labyrinth of Yggdrasil. But I'll keep it for myself for now.
I did not want to play Story mode, even if it meant missing some contents. For this team I maybe didn't chose the best classes, it was a bit of a mess. I means, I had troubadour in the front (because dancer in IV worked good in front but this is not the same) and also front survivalist as a dodge tank? Truth is, I played the game in normal difficulty (not knowing back then that normal was actually easy and the true Etrian difficulty was Expert) so I managed it. If you ask what does the "P" means in the medic names... well I don't really know myself.
I really like this team. War Magus is such a fun class, one of my favorite. I really like the Hexer and Gunner too. And this time in Untold 2 you don't miss on the story mode content beside the Fafnir class. Well some boss were made with the Fafnir in mind so they felt a bit annoying without it (I hate the dragon cores) but it was still fun. After I had chosen most of the party members, I noticed they all have similar colors palette. You could also call this guild Orange team. Oh yeah, names are limited to 8 characters max. The guild names doesn't have particular meanings, it's just names I though at the time. I called the restaurant FioreRosa.
EOV added a lot more customization with possibility to change color of the skin/hairs/eyes. You can also set voices, but I disabled them because it didn't felt right to have voices in EO, and the english ones aren't very good. You can also get a class specialization (legendary title) and rename it, so I added the title under the name. You may have noticed an anomaly. That's right, Xodia was a shaman but I decided to reclass her to a Warlock to have immediate elemental damage (that can be chained with Valiance). So it's a brouni warlock instead of a celestrian, which work too, they stats aren't too different, the elemental damage may be slightly lower but they are bulkier and faster. I didn't use Therian because well didn't liked their class (Rover could have been cool but I wanted to reserve all my summon slots for my necromancer) and I absolutely wanted two brounis. Since there's 4 races, most people would at least want to have one character from each race. But I didn't, and it's okay. I have the freedom to chose the races and classes I want, no matter how optimal it may be, and still win this it*; that's the true RPG pleasure. *except the true final boss that may need specific classes. So I admit I did everything but beat the last boss in EOV. And for EO1U and EO2U I beat the last boss with the difficulty lowered because it was too much for my party.
With Nexus killing all chances for a EO3Untold, I decided to play EOIII. It aged well, I had no problems going back after V. I think EO3 didn't need an Untold because it's great enough, unlike EO1&2. This party is another party where I just chose my favorite portraits no matter what. That means 2 buccaneer! 2 of the same class on the same party! Yes! But since they can have different weapons and work on different rows (sword in front for Morgana, gun in back for Marjorie), and with having different sub-classes, they were not identical. I loved having two pirates on the teams. Wildling is also a really fun class even if people say they aren't very good (or more like people prefer to give the sixth slot for Ninjas).
After doing the two routes, I decided to use a different party for the true route. The problem in new game+ is everything stay unlocked. All the maps are already drawn, all side-quests done (can't get exp with quests), all the weapons unlocked (so it's hard to buy the right weapon, one not too powerful for the current stratum), so it wasn't very fun. For the postgame, I wondered what team to use, maybe I could make a mix and use the best class of each teams. I opted to just use the old main team above. That newgame+ team was Shogun/Yggdroid/Hoplite/Arbalist/Ninja and wasn't too bad. Ninja sure is OP. And Yggdroid are... something. I also used a farmer team for gathering and a Gladiator+Princess combo to cheese the last boss so technically I used all classes.
Instead of finally playing Nexus I decided to play the original EO1, because I wanted to see how the series progressed, and how antiquated the game was. EO1 is the only EO that was published in Europe by Nintendo and have french language, so I wanted to play to see how the french translation was (it's ok, the only weirdness are FOE being DJIN). For this team I wanted to use the two classes I didn't used yet in EO1U and EO2U, the Landsknecht and Dark Hunter (sorry Beast, I don't think I'll play EO2), and I didn't want to use a Medic because I know Immunize is broken so I wanted to challenge the game without it (I only used one for the ultra final boss). So a Protector because without medic I needed damage mitigation, Survivalist because although I used one in EO1U I won't use it as a badly evasion tank but a proper back row attacker (it's great in this game, crazy damage output). And troubadour because I liked this portrait over the Alchemist one (not using Samourai or Hexer as they are unlocked too late and aren't good). Edit: I finished the game, it wasn't too bad. Compared to EO3 though it does feels dated, in the balance, the mechanics and especially the map drawing. But this sort of retro, clunky old game is nice too~
After I finish EO1 I will finally play Nexus. But I also want to replay IV. Or maybe EO2 DS orz. I want to try the beasts, even if I know they suck in EO2.
edit: With Etrian Collection announced, I think I'll play EO2 using the collection version (and because I don't want to spend 100€+shipping for an used physical copy of EO2).
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