Me too. I disliked III and IV because of this, and this is one of the main reasons I’m excited for V
That all sounds pretty great! Thanks for the write up!
I’m about 9.5 hours in and so far I’m only at the 5th floor of the first stratum (though I’ve got most FOEs down). Based on my 3ds activity app I stopped playing EO2 around the 8 hour mark and EO4 around the 12 hour mark, but I might actually see this one through for longer as I’m loving it.
Besides not having the distraction of the ocean/sky/whatever I’m loving the mass amount of quality of life improvements. It seems like you no longer need dedicated farming charaters, the minion slots are nice (especially with the interesting concept of the necromancer class) and I don’t feel like like I’m getting screwed over by randomness like I did in previous games.
I picked this up Friday and am having a blast with it. Like @KallDrexx I found myself getting to the second stratum after over 10 hours of gameplay. My party is inches away from level 20 and we have most of 6F mapped now. It’s really good - lots of what made every past EO game great is here but with further refinements and mechanics that fit well and make the game that much harder to put down.
My party consists of the following classes with my thoughts on each.
Fencer - seems great, I still after 10 hours don’t completely under stand his chain abilities or how best to use them though. :/
Samurai - I can’t possibly pronounce/spell the actual class name, but the katana wielding one. She has lots of decent attacks and abilities though, including one that hits once and then a second time after her target performs an action.
Dragoon - rear line … tank? He’s invaluable as he can summon bunkers and provide defensive buffs. Doesn’t deal much in terms of damage, but can be a trigger for my fencers chain attacks and can debuff the enemy now with a pretty useful skill he learned.
Warlock - Finally starting to pull in numbers that make me happy, going with Fireball and Lightning so far with plenty of points in passives to bump up his power. Levitate is handy as well.
Houndmaster - again, not the name of the actual class but I can’t remember it, I summon a badass hound where most of my points have gone in, and it acts as an extra protection layer (tons of health and defense) while also being able to heal and debuff the enemy depending on which actions I want it to use. Her bow skill is actually doing solid and reliable damage as well.
I am wondering about the other classes, there are several, plus I can re-class my existing characters. I always wonder in EO games if I’m gimping myself by not trying to re-level up my guys and get them to be more powerful than they would have been had I not, or why I have only 5 characters when I could have 30 registered to my guild. Maybe that stuff comes into play later in the game more than it does now?
With the popularity of the switch, I’d love to see them bring some sort of EO game over there. Maybe a spin-off of some sort.
Yeah I haven’t been able to figure it out either. It does do extra damage (just not right away) but I haven’t been able to see it do a follow up attack more than once.
I didn’t play the game much, but it felt like your whole party had to be in support of your fencer for it to shine properly.
Basically you get an elemental bonus attack any time a party member hits with either Stab damage (Fencer attacks, bows) or with the same element that the chain skill is. (That second part was not obvious to me and made it a lot more useful to realize my mage can trigger followups too)
Oh, and that’s probably why my scythe wielding dude doesn’t trigger it either. Interesting, thanks!
Well I’d expect one… they’ve said they’re doing one more 3DS game, and maybe kind of hinted about the one after that being on Switch?
They also announced Persona Q2, which will be an Etrian/Persona 5 crossover … only 3DS mentioned so far. (teaser site: http://cdn.pq2.jp/)
That is interesting. Drawing the map on the bottom screen is a core element of the series, so that does imply either a significant change to the gameplay format or the system. And if they made such a change so that they could release on both platforms, I’d expect series vets to be ticked. Unfortunately, because of my neck issues, playing on 3DS is no longer an option.
I was thinking that they could go side-by-side with the mainview and the map, but I’m pretty sure drawing the map would be terrible without the stylus, so that won’t work.
Map could auto-generate and then allow you to just notate it with whatever you want to add. Don’t know how much that would detract for me. There is something relaxing about drawing the maps yourself, but also can just feel like busywork at times.
I don’t think it’s feasible to make a game that requires the use of the touch screen on the Switch, since you can’t interact with the touch screen while docked. I know 1 or 2 games that do it but those are more mobile centered games (phone ports) and even then it’s dumb.
I have it set to automate walls and floors, because I find that tedious and a waste of time. I don’t mind annotating statues, chests, notes, etc… though.
Aaaaaand that’s a wrap. Whew! Man what a great game! And it’s not actually over - there is another stratum to explore post-credits, looks like, so I’ll dive into that later tonight.
43hrs to complete, and I only used one party - no B team was needed, though it would have been fun to experiment a bit more. By the end of the game we were level 68/69 and I had points in everything I was interested in but had skills I’d have liked to tried even with the classes I played with the entire game, so I’ll likely roll up a new party at some point.
Through the last several weeks and 40+ hours I rarely got frustrated or had problems I couldn’t work through oh my own. The last level was an exception, there is a lot of puzzle here and while it wasn’t complex, I was running myself in circles so I looked up a map online, for the third time. Just like the previous two times, it ended up being a part of the map I had mis-drawn and that was why I was stuck, so it was my own damned fault. There were the occasional "bullshit!’ enemy of course, but overall this has been such a great ride. Minimal (only in service of greater challenge and all optional) back tracking and lots of fun/forward progress always being made. Highly recommended for anyone that enjoy Wizardry-like party-based RPG’s. I’d have to give this one a 9, for sure. Maybe even 9.5, given I have an entire new stratum before me and have been just heaped upon with awesome loot for completing the game!
Okay, off to explore!
Sounds awesome, thanks for the review! I’ve yet to play this one with XBC2 monopolising most of my time, but I did install the demo.
I got a copy of that today as well but I have to wait until Christmas. :)
Congratulations! What group did you run? My strike team is on 25 now and making progress toward the end.
Duelist (Chain), Samurai (multi-Katana), Dragoon (Tank), Warlock (Elemental), and Rover (Dog Tank/Debuff). It wasn’t the most efficient team (I didn’t understand how chaining/duelists worked when I built my party) but honestly it was pretty effective overall, with few weaknesses.
How about yourself? What’s your party lineup?
I’m running:
Impact Pugilist: a one woman wrecking ball who gets even more dangerous when injured.
Blade Master Masurao: Reliable generalist with heavy armor. Good damage, sleep status, counters physical damage with mirror moon.
Necromancer: I use whichever one that has zombie powder and gates of hell. Extremely useful insta-death attacks. I alpha strike with zombie powdered wraiths, and then either go on the defense with the wraith shields or gates of hell for more friends. Lots of fun tools. You’d be astonished at how many FOEs aren’t immune to zombie powder…
Divine Herald Shaman: Buffs plus minor heals on every little thing I do. What’s not to like?
Healbot Botanist: Heals for daaaaays. Reflex heal is fantastic, as is the ability to overheal.
I’m currently playing with a Fencer, Harbringer, Necormancer, Botanist, and Rover. I’m partially regretting some of my choices now that I understand more of how the game works (only at floor 10 at the moment). Luckily my Harbringer is a power leveling monster so it should be easy get someone up to speed, just need to figure out who I want to swap for what.