Kolzig

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I never really thought i'd be into the whole Wizardry-derived style of RPG, but i've consistently heard that Etrian Odyssey is one of the best examples of the genre, and i'm finding myself to be quite enjoying EOIV thus far.

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Yeah, EO is definitely in the top tier of Wizardry-style dungeon crawlers these days. Rodi, if you're enjoying 3, I think you'd have just as good of a time with 4. They took the improvements and additions (the overworld vehicles, better skilltrees, and such) from 3 and rolled them into the general framework of 2 to great effect.

 

If you guys are hungry for more, I highly recommend Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey and The Dark Spire.

 

The latter had a painfully small print run because it was a super-niche Atlus game, so if you see a copy anywhere for a reasonable price, snag it. Its art style is faaantastic, and features a setting that lets you completely replace the graphics and music/sfx with old-school pixel art and chiptunes.

 

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The SMT series has always seemed particularly intimidating to me, for varying reasons depending on the game, but i've definitely heard excellent things about Strange Journey. (Though i know people who have burned out on it, feeling overwhelmed by how much it throws at the player.)

There's that upcoming remake of Soul Hackers for the 3DS, any opinion on that?

I also think SMT4 looks pretty interesting.

I'm probably not starving for more, but i enjoy exploring unfamiliar genres every now and then.

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I played Strange Journey 2. That game is not for me. EO is about the most 'JRPG' I can stand in my dungeon crawler, so when SMT drags in a whole Pokemon system that you have to explore (god, these people are more obsessed with their complex systems than Microsoft is with Excel), that's just a way too high barrier. I played Strange Journey 2 on the Game+ of a friend, so I didn't have to bother with it and just enjoy the pretty nice environments and mazes and story. That was fun enough! But even with Game+ I couldn't defeat the final boss, so that's both way too JRPG and way too grindy for my tastes.

The best dungeon crawler I played on the DS was Orcs & Elves. Yup, good old Carmack's Orcs & Elves. A game less concerned with ingenious systems and more with straight-up delving atmosphere and world building. I think I like them much better that way.

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Strange Journey... 2?

I like a good complex set of systems in my RPG's, but the ones SMT runs with always struck me as the kind that are fraught with potential for irrevocably damaging player error, the kinds of games you need to play with a guide open. Scary as hell when it's something like a JRPG that is asking for pretty much a guaranteed hundred hour investment of time.

As for Orcs & Elves, i think it's probably a little outside the scope of Wizardy-likes, but i definitely agree that it was a really fun little game. I would have liked to see more games in that style out of Id. There was also Doom RPG, right? But that was it, i think.

Also, i think i might keep an eye out for Dark Spire, but if it's rare even by Atlus standards... Well, yeah.

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I don't know why my mind filled in a '2' there. It's just Strange Journey.

I would love love love to see more western style dungeon crawlers on the 3DS. Where's my goddamn Lands of Lore port? It so perfect for the system. Focus more on exploring beautiful and intricately built worlds (environments, story, choice) and less on systemic combat (grinding, spreadsheets), and you've got me hooked!

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I am, for all intents and purposes, done with Etrian Odessey 3. I had a good time with it while it lasted (13 hours in, sufficient enough that I can say I gave to a fair shake), but I just started to realize more and more that there was nothing more to the game, no greater point, than the grind. Killing monsters for the sake of killing monsters. That works [for me] in games where the basic interactions are enjoyable in and of themselves (e.g. Diablo), but EO consists only of static fighting screens and menus. I will put up with that if there's a bigger pay-off beyond, but not when it's its own end.

Thus, goodbye EO. I had fun, but this is just not for me. I need a story, I need a real sense of exploration. (You could make a point that EO is all about exploration, but I found it more like the rote mapping of a random maze, rather than delving into a believable, inhabited world. There's no sense of history to it, it's a facsimile of a fantasy world, rather than a convincingly authentic one. As such, my keen exploration senses were never triggered.) I don't bear the game a grudge, I can see that it's the best thing if this is your cup of tea.

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I'm having a pretty different reaction to Etrian Odyssey IV, i really love it. I'm surprised at how much i'm enjoying it, actually. I bumped the game up from casual some time ago because i am definitely on board with what it's offering. (The fact that it actually saves your map even if you wipe out completely makes it much easier to swallow.)


I understand that most of what EO4 does is take the things EO3 introduced and refine and build on them, so we probably didn't have terribly different experiences. I imagine it really is down to personal taste. I definitely much more need interesting mechanics in a game more than i need a story. (Though what little of it there has been in EO4 i have found reasonably charming.)

 

There was a point that i felt like the game had settled into a rhythm where i knew what it was going to be, only for it to begin mixing things up in some pretty clever ways. I love what the game does with the on-field miniboss enemies, the FOEs. I've also now filled out enough of the skill trees to surface some really interesting possibilities for complicated interactions between different skills and different classes. I'm actually really loving these classes, they're terrific fun to experiment with.


The FOEs though, there was one point still fairly early in the game where i was forced to wander past immobile FOEs who, unlike all other previous FOEs, were not actively moving or seeking me, though i noticed that the random battle alert thing was changing color to red very quickly in this area. I'm quickly thrust into a random battle and i start fighting with the enemies and i notice on the lower map screen that the FOEs in this area have started moving towards my party, one step per in-battle turn. So i'm in this situation where i'm left to try and engineer a way to finish these battles before the FOEs reach my location, join the battle, and potentially wipe out my party.

Even before that, there was another area where the FOEs were moving one step per every two steps my party took, and i had to essentially "time" my movements to run past them on their immobile turn.

Earlier still, having to pull aggro from the FOEs to lead them around so they can angrily bust open paths for my party. (Potentially running into the same situation as described above if you're pulled into a random battle.)

I love it, i think it's all very cool.

I also really enjoy the breezy, adventurous vibe, and i'm finding a lot of novelty in charting my maps. The music is also really, really phenomenal.


I think i'm henceforth pretty on board with Etrian Odyssey.

 

I've seen a lot of people deride the game as being grindy, but if that's purely in reference the dungeon diving and the combat, that seems to be dismissing the entire point of the game. I'm about 25 hours into it, and i haven't found it necessary to go back to earlier areas and beat on weaker enemies for levels, i haven't had that kind of a grind. If something is too hard, there's probably some other more intermediate new thing you can be off doing at that time.

 

Given the reputation the series has as being ass-kickingly hard, i'm sure it'll probably get there, but i think it's being overplayed a bit. I was really surprised how quickly i took to it.

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I hear you, I really do. The fun and surprising stuff they do with FOE's, also in 3, is the best part of the game. I'm wondering how much the music does for this, because honestly, the music in 3 is SUPER bad. Really horrible, generic shit. Maybe if the music is really good, it becomes much less of a slog? It's entirely possible. I could just check out the demo of 4 to see. Who knows? I bear the game no grudges.

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I will say, i think i would have also found the still 2d enemy sprites quite off-putting. The synthesized music less so, but it's going for a specific kind of nostalgia that i don't have. (I've also seen it said that the classes in EO3 were some of the most restrictive in the series.)

You know, but this is clearly a game about its systems, and if those mechanics don't click, there's really not much else to grab onto.

It's good that they put out that big demo though, i don't think i'd have ever tried it otherwise, and i hope other people give it a chance too.

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I hear you, I really do. The fun and surprising stuff they do with FOE's, also in 3, is the best part of the game. I'm wondering how much the music does for this, because honestly, the music in 3 is SUPER bad. Really horrible, generic shit. Maybe if the music is really good, it becomes much less of a slog? It's entirely possible. I could just check out the demo of 4 to see. Who knows? I bear the game no grudges.

 

This is my first post in the Idle Forums, so trust my oponion however much you want, but I am stunned at somebody thinking the music in EOIII is bad. The battle theme alone is probabky my favourite video game song ever.

 

If you didn't like the music in 3, I can pretty certainly say you wouldn't like it in IV, since it's the same composer and the same vibe.

IV has more gameplay variety than III and has a lot of usability tweaks, but if you didn't like the core gameplay of III, I doubt you'll find much difference. The fun of EO is a combination of exploring and mapping out the dungeon, feeling your party grow and experimenting with skills and party builds. If none of that appeals to you, then the eries just isn't for you.

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I recognize what the earlier Etrian Odyssey games are trying to evoke, but i think that style of synthesized sound would really start to grate on me after a while, so i think i can understand where Rodi is coming from. It's a very sharp, hard sound.

There's undeniably quite a difference between

and
.

I might be putting words into his mouth though, if he just hates the compositions... Fuck, i don't know.

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I like the FM synthesis, but I agree about the new instrumentation. It's funny, because I know there are plenty of people who don't like the switch. However, Rodi seemed to be complaining more about the compositions, not the actual sound quality.

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Wow, that really is a huge difference, between III and IV. I found the music in III so off-putting that I switched it off, which must've robbed the experience of some pleasantness. The reason the music doesn't work for me to a huge degree is that it doesn't fit my definition of 'atmospheric adventuring'. I found it to be ill-advised, generic J-pop, going for 'hyper skippy bouncy anime girls', rather than 'exciting exploration'. Consider the tone of Elder Scrolls music: that puts me in the mood, draws me into a world. Perhaps the level of orchestration I hear in IV would appeal more to me.

But I do agree with you, tberton, that EO is probably just not for me, since no matter how wonderful the embellishments, I'm not getting a lot of joy out of the core systems in the first place, and they take center stage here. No biggie. Tons of other games to play that appeal more to me.

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Off topic, but bloody play Wizardry 8! I dan feel myself gearing up for another playthrough

EO3 was a bit tough and grindy for me, I'd love to give 4 a spin, but alas no 3DS.

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Oh cool! Some EO4 action. I just picked it up and am looking to crack into it this weekend on a long train ride.  I'm genuinely excited to see there's chat about it here and I shall return!  

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So Nintendo lost a lawsuit for the first time in what feels like a really long time. The 3DS infringes on a patent produced by a former Sony employee, so they've been ordered to pay him more than thirty million dollars.

 

At the risk of sounding defensive of Nintendo, I thought that the stereoscopic display tech was originally developed for the Gamecube. They've said before that Luigi's Mansion was supposed to be in 3D.

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I read about that last week on Gameindustry.biz. It seems that because it's creating 3D with different technology than what the former Sony employer says he had, Nintendo is pretty much not going to be gouged by this. In some ways it also seems to insinuate that the former Sony employee gave Nintendo the idea to start developing 3D without glasses, but the Virtual Boy didn't exactly require glasses either.

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Yeah, this seems to specifically be about the autostereoscopic top-screen on the 3DS.

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God I failed at reading and did not see that they flat out lost already. Sorry about that guys.

 

I was thinking it would be another patent dispute taken to the jury in an East Texas court, but it seems this took place in New York. I am still curious on how different the technology is compared to what Nintendo developed and what the ex-Sony employee showed.

 

Here's some more detail:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-13-nintendo-found-liable-in-3d-patent-infringement-lawsuit?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=european-daily

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The NeoGaf thread for Etrian Odyssey IV seems to have collected all or most of the QR codes for the game.

The items are only useful for the first region or so, but there are quests for throughout the game.

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There's a pretty good deal for a 3DS XL in a Dutch store right now. I can get one for 150 euros - cheapest I've seen so far. I'm tempted, if the original line-up of primary colors wasn't so entirely unappealing. Where's my lime green? I'm telling you, lime green is the best color for any handheld. It just works and is so fresh.

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"Hmm, I should get a 3DS XL already. On the one hand I'm sure there will eventually be a special edition for Pokémon, but that won't be for a while and it probably won't even leave Japan, just like the Pikachu XL."

 

[2 weeks pass]

 

"GOD DAMNIT"

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Damn that Pikachu edition is cute. Should I pay 60 European Cashmoneys more for it? What a perfectly decadent ponderance.

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I think this is finally the moment I break down and purchase a 3DS.

 

Not for Pikachu, but for that "buy a 3DS and Luigi's Mansion and get Super Mario Land 3D!" offer.

 

The only two games I'm interested in!

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