Video games talk: Etrian Odyssey

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).

Review: Super Isikoro Mario World

 

World 1-4 4hours, W5-6 5h, W7-8 8h30, SP1-7 4h, SP8-10 2h30 (with cheats)

Total time: 24hours

I've seen this japanese hack on smwc and wanted to give it a try. It's more recent than the japanese hacks I usually played. And apparently it gets really hard in the end. Let's see how it goes.

Switches are extremely useful in this game. Don't miss them.

This is a japanese hack. The hack is in japanese language. But the language barrier isn't a problem. There's doesn't seem to have important plot (spoiler Bowser is the good old bad guy). 

Time for deforestation! (notice the icon that indicate secret exit, as all level dots are yellow)

Presentation:

The graphics are nice. Mostly from smwcentral. They are nice sure, but sometimes there's some clash with the BG/FG, and sometimes some backgrounds could have been made prettier (I feel some backgrounds should have used parallax). A good thing is every level in the game has it's own aesthetic (graphics and music), which is nice variety. It's not always good but it's varied. The enemies for the most part are the classic SMW enemies with some classic custom sprites. However the bosses are all original and the boss fight are fun, but classic "dies in three hit". In fact the hack structure is like classic Mario, with classic level themes, classic level names "xxx world 1". A bit too classic for my taste.

This is a japanese hack, but it's kinda weird. It use some tropes of old japanese hacks, but is mixed with modern/classic smwc hack elements, if you know what I means? Like it's not as janky as I'm used to in japanese hacks. This hack is a mix of old JP hacks and classic Western hacks, but it doesn't take the best of both sides. I also found multiple glitches, cut-offs and other errors in the hack. According to the credits Isikoro was the only tester of the game. That explain it.

 

Nice cut-off.

 

The classic swimming under the level into going inside the ground.

 So the game. In jp hacks fashion, it start easy (extremely easy) and ends up hard (extremely hard). As you can see in the completion time at the top of the article, the first worlds go by quickly and the latest ones...  not so much. Yes the first levels are easy, but frankly, I find them boring. Because the game is classic-like, with easy difficulty it's just uninteresting. However in the later worlds, when the difficulty picks up, it makes for some fun challenges, albeit sometimes frustrating. But still, the last worlds feels good to play. Starting world 5 or 6, you will need to go back to farm lives (there's a good spot in 2-2, and 2-3 has good powerups at the start). About powerups, this game is changed so you don't get small immediatly when getting hit while fire/racoon mario (oh yeah, cape was replaced with racoon and I hate floating with racoon Mario), so you can have 5 hits in total before dying. And because some levels start getting very difficult, I started going in previous levels to farm powerups a lot.

Many kinds of plants in this hack.

Each levels are differents in appereance, but unfortunately in fun too. Some levels are challenging and fun, some are frustrating, some are very easy compared to the previous ones. So like I said, start of the game is underwhelming, second half is alright, with some fun levels there and there. There's also some levels that are funs only if you have powerups, without they are more annoying that anything. Exemple is 9-5. It's difficult, I died a lot, but it's a really fun level where you hop on flying beetles. If you have a racoon tail to help you that is, without it would still be possible, but be more precise, and probably more frustrating. And with this high difficulty, I expected 9-6 to be a thing, then I completed it in two lives. What a letdown. And what about the postgame? Well...

The blaarg move along layer 2.

POSTGAME SPOILER START

So first to go to the postgame (special world) you have to find the entrance. I won't tell you where it is. You have to clear a puzzle, that I found to be really clever. Then the first postgame level (aka SP1). The first level you have to carry a shell through the entire level without killing it. That's honestly so dumb, that I opted for the second option which is keep a leaf in reserve box to fly over the wall at the end instead. The post game difficulty is much higher, but like the main games there's some anomalies, some levels that are way easier than the rest SP2&7. The levels are honestly pretty interesting, the problem is because it's postgame it was decided that the levels will not have midway points. But still the same length as the average levels. With postgame difficulty of course. So while some levels are good, I really, really wished there was a midpoint in the middle. Especially SP6, despite finding it kind of fun, took me 1 hour and a half to complete!

But well, all fun must ends. SP8 is a giant f***** maze. It's not hard, but it's HUGE. And there's some required doors that are somewhat hidden. After 45 minutes, when I was walking in circle for a while, I ended up looking at the solution (provided by Isikoro itself, when you download the hack there's a folder with image of the rooms of SP8). I feel kinda bad for not finding two doors myself but whatever. Then SP9 is...  a 100 ROOMS CHALLENGE LEVEL!!! You have to traverse over 100 hard rooms, with limited hits (you start with 3 and get 1/2 every 5/10 rooms). Also in this level the invulnerability timer is drastically reduced, so you can easily get hit multiple times!! And I said 100, but there's a few more bullsh** after those. I tried a bit, but after a short while I was like "...no". I cheated to give myself 80 hits, and even then this wasn't enough for the last obstacles. I just wanted this game to end. Also there's a SP10, not hard but also very very long level so I also cheated using rewinds like 5 times because I'm not replaying all this for the start. I totally cheated the last 3 levels and I absolutely don't care. I don't feel bad about it, and when you don't feel bad about cheating in a game, that means there's something wrong with the game. But yeah it was just those last 3 levels, every other levels prior to that (even the other postagames levels) were fine.

If you want to edit the mushroom count too, it's in RAM $63

It's actually 106 but it overflowed lmao.

POSTGAME SPOILER END

This is a game with an extreme difficulty curve (start way too easy, ends way too hard), some levels are fun challenges but some are either frustrating or just average. Overall, after world 3 (which was too easy and boring) and before postgame (which was too hard and frustrating), this was an enjoyable game.

Rating:

⭐⭐

Okay

Review: Mega Man 4 Voyage

Finished in 4h40

My boss order: Bright, Pharaoh, Ring, Dust, Toad, Dive, Skull, Drill

2012-2018... this hack has been in development for 7 years ? Was it worth the wait?

Worst title drop?

This is a hack of Mega Man 4 (and not Rockman 4). Like the original, it start with a cutscene, that has been edited with a new plot explaining why the robot master of 4 are back. With only that you can see that this hack will be heavily edited. This will be confirmed when you start your first level and see how much it has to offer.

 

Some old enemies are back.

 

First the aesthetic: top notch. The graphics are varied, colorful and looks great. The music are all new and sound good too. But I didn't recognize any familiar song... I'm pretty sure all the musics are original composition. That's really neat. Some musics just feels like they would fit perfectly in a real Mega Man game. Some great efforts were put into the presentations. The (few) cutscenes were also greatly done, and there's some nice surprises in the plot.

You too?

The game has a lot of modifications. There are a lot of enemies from other Mega Man games that were implemented, and work just like the original. All the boss fights are different, and they are so good. The bosses are probably the best part of the game: not because they are modified, but because they are modified in the best way possible. The bosses attacks and pattern were made with great care. No bosses have cheap attacks (there may be a few attacks that are hard to understand at first, but nothing annoying), it's not too hard (I beat most boss with mega buster & no charge shoot only), but more important they are creative. Figuring the pattern of the boss to beat him unscratched feels so great. Even Toadman, who in the original MM4 is the lamest boss ever, is a formidable opponent in this one.

It even has one specific boss that I will not spoil, a boss from another Mega Man game that I usually hate, but in this game it was made in such a way that it was extremely fun to fight. I was really impressed, good job.

Finally, a good Toadman boss.

 

The level design is great too. Honestly the level are nicely constructed and the progression is good. If I would say one bad thing, it's that the levels sometimes have too much ideas. It's okay in Wily's castle to mix elements, but even the standard robot master levels have too many different enemies that you see a few time, where I would have liked if some enemies were exploited more. The level are slightly long, and sometime the theme shift too much (Toadman stage start with ice aesthetic and ends in a electric central?). But other than that, the levels are fine. The layout of the level and the obstacles are nice, no complains.

Some stages have secrets/alternate paths, for some lives or E-tank. I didn't find the two items of MM4 (I don't know if they are still here, I think yes) but I found something else very neat instead. Don't hesitate to explore previous level before tacking on Wily's castle.

Yes those are here too. But more fair.

 

The hack isn't too hard, but especially the hack isn't mean. The creator really wanted to not be too annoying. Like the "quickman lasers" doesn't instakill you, there's plenty of E-tank (you can completely beat the game without using these tbh), plenty of health/weapons refill, even the final boss give you some lives. That's nice... but I felt like it's TOO nice, and the hack could have been mean a few times I wouldn't have minded. But imo if you don't use e-tanks, the difficulty is perfectly fine. I liked it.

There's even a warning sign to signal those enemies.

 

This may be one of my favorite Mega Man romhack. It is full of new content with fair and well crafted level design and awesome boss battle.

Oh no, not again.

Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Amazing, must play

Review: Rockman 2 ONN

 

Finished in 6h20

My boss order: Metal, Flash, Wood, Clash, Quick, Air, Bubble, Heat

I decided to play a Mega Man romhack. Of Mega Man 2 again, despite me thinking it's clearly not the best Mega Man to base a romhack upon. This one is more recent than the one I usually play, only ~+5 years ago. Let's see.

These big fish always cause clipping.

What to say? It's a Mega Man romhack with heavy modification.

Aesthetic, the new graphics are good. Except the second part of Heatman's stage where the background was too bright, it's clean and looks good, with graphics from various other games.

Same for the music, overall goods, except one or two that are okay, but nothing bad.

Seems like the author liked the gameboy MM games (multiples musics/GFX from it).

Oh and something to notice: a lot of the things were made faster (filling energy bar, the text when getting a new weapon, etc.), that's pretty nice.

Monkey trouble.

The level design is sometimes good, sometimes okay. The levels are designed with specific ideas in mind, like in the screenshot above where it use conveyor for all the ground. It's just that sometimes the ideas are a bit wonky, or sometimes just a bit too hard. You will probably Game Over at least once every stage. But I can recognize some levels are creative and have interesting setups.

Just a small warning, I've found some glitch. In the Woodman boss room, if you go too far to the right, you may enter the next screen by error and get stuck as seen below. If this happens, don't hesitate to reset (if you didn't wrote the password, use a MM2 password generator).

Game broke. I'm stuck.

 

Some of the enemies edit are nice too. I like the new dog mini-boss, and that the robot that slide on the ground and get faster when you're the same height (idk the name) can be killed with the mega buster now.

But sometimes enemies are placed in a really annoying way, and it's harder to hit them since the good weapons were nerfed.

About the weapons, they're kinda okay. The only problem is you have less option to hit enemies in certain directions.

To note is Flash stopper is finally good because it's not a use once until you deplete it completely.

But the best is definitely Quick weapon's. It give you invulnerability for like one second, that's okay, but there is a glitch were you can underflow the energy, giving you infinite uses which is extremely useful, particularly in Wily's stage 2. Here's how to do it (spoiler) Deplete the weapon completely, then grab a big weapon energy. That's it, when you use it when there's 2 bar left, it will go past 0 and underflow(/spoiler). I feel bad using glitch like that, but sometimes the hack was so mean I felt no remorse.

6 projectiles at once?

The levels are fine, but the boss are in my opinion, bad. In that they are hard, but annoying. Kinda spamy, sometimes movements are too eccentric. Without using the boss weakness, some would be a real pain in the butt. Some bosses fill the screen with projectile, for real. Some even has projectiles that stay on screen (but you can destroy). I wonder what would happens if I survive long enough in Metalman's battle when all sprites are used, will he not shoot anymore? Will he replace one? Will it crash the game?

Mecha dragon is the boss I hate the most. Battle on one-tile platform, where most of the time getting hit means dying because of the recoil pushing you into the abyss. Even worst in this hack because you only have two platforms, and the weapons you have to use against it is one of the worst.

Oh and special mention to Wily's castle 4 boss which as always is a real pain in the ass. And this time it's not clever, just weird and annoying.

Fuck you you're the worst Mega Man boss.

Also why do in most Mega Man 2 hacks, Wily's stage 2 is "a thing". In this one the thing is (spoiler) no enemies, death blocks only. It's not the worst, but it's "a thing".

 

Overall, the level design is good, except some enemies placements, and the bosses...  could be better. It's a nice hack, not the best I've played for sure. But thanks to the weapon underflow glitch some parts were way less infuriating (laugh).

Why so many lives?

Oh that's why.

Rating:

⭐⭐

Okay

Review: Mario in Mushroom Rix Land

 

Finished in ~7h (4h in world 6)

I played Mario in Mushroom Rix Land. This is a hack with no real story, all about the level design. The game also doesn't have any secret exits. Let's see what we have here.

 

BLOCK YOUR CEILINGS AAAAAAAAH!!!

 

The overworld is pretty generic and just serve to place the levels. Some ExGFX could have been good, for the city world for example. The levels doesn't even have original names, they are just "Grassland 1", "Grassland 2" and so on. I don't really like it. The levels themselves are very different to each other, but on the overworld they don't stand out.

That this hack doesn't have infinite lives. They are very finite: very few life farms (I haven't found one until 4-3) and there is no lives in levels except coins. The game save after every levels, so at worst you can lose your midpoint, which isn't too bad (at the beginning). After a level, having Game Over on purpose to refill your lives back to 5 is a viable strategy.

One thing I disliked is no cape. There is fire flowers, but no cape at all in the entire hack. I know cape is OP, but it's fun to use.

 

Even the castle is just called Grassland 5.

 

The choice of aesthetic and musics are nice, no problems here. It's not vanilla, but some SMW foreground and background are used with other elements, that mix well together.

Many sorts of Rexs.

Now let's get to the meat of the subject. The level design. It's quite good. What I like about the game is it has this approach of having a different gimmick every level and also having each level unique in appearance too. The castle levels use a mix of elements of the previous levels in the world.

So many custom sprite are used. All available from smwcentral. They are nicely used. There's just the punching gloves I don't like, but that's just me. Plus the game doesn't explain that's it's better to not hold direction and hold jump when touching one. Could be frustrating if it's the first time you see those.

Blind jumps that put you on grey platforms, forcing you to react quickly.

You could summarize the level design of the hack as quick reaction platformer, where many obstacle are made to be identified and cleared fast. The game use a lot of falling grey platforms and snake blocks to force you to act quickly. Too much in fact. This is nice, but I like to take it easy sometimes too.

One thing I disliked is the game spend too much time at the top of the screen, when you can barely see Mario. It appears too often, and sometimes there's danger at the top you can barely see because it's covered by the status bar.

But overall, I think the level was nicely done, and the obstacle made around the custom elements feels good to play.

There's spikes here. You can barely see them.

So the game is pretty nice huh. The difficulty is good, it's hard but it's some fair and fun challenge...

Yes, until world 6. In world 6, the difficulty take a nose dive and become quickly too overbearing. You will have to start to farm lives to not having to redo the first parts of levels. Let's go into the details of world 6 levels :

First level has moles that spawn in the air you have to hop on. It's seems crazy but is tolerable, except one jump at the end that is incredibly hard and stupid. I could only pass it by taking a hit and by pure luck. Yes, I feels like my victory was only due to being lucky. Maybe there's a trick, but you don't have the opportunity to safely try because it's above a pit and near the end.

Second level is an autoscroll where you have to jump from leaf to leafs... the leafs are 1-tile wide sprites that fall left and right. It is very precise, and requires great execution. You also have to be at the front of the autoscroll to not miss the platforms, so less time to react. This levels took me 90 lives to beat. In retrospective that wasn't horrible, but still not the best experience.

Then a weird level you're forced to be small to go in narrow passage, including a passage blocked by a shell I had no idea to pass it other than using a reserve mushroom. The level wasn't hard, just weird

Next levels are actually alright. A platform level, a thwomp level that way easier than the rest and a bubble level. Those play fine and doesn't feels frustrating like the first two levels.

Then the final level is a bullshit marathon. 6 parts, a midway point only in the middle (before part 4). Each part is the size of an half level (or more), and are the hardest of the game.You HAVE to use savestates, at least one between each room. Trying to do a set of 3 rooms without is pure madness. Although the rooms are a bit creative, too many setups use snake blocks or grey platforms. No multiple midpoints, no instant retry and no infinite lives make it too tedious.

And that is unfortunate. The first 5 world were really good, but the last world is just too hard to be enjoyable, and the quality is uneven (in aesthetic too, I disliked the neon graphics of some levels and the glowing palette of the final level but that's just me).

So I'm gonna rate this world separately because I can.

Have to be at the front, less time to react.

World 1-5:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Very good

World 6:

⭐

Poor