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Etrian Odyssey. (AKA, weeboo Wizardry)

DragoFireheart

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I ain't seen no topics on this recently. This series has 5 games plus two remakes and later in August of 2018 Etrian Odyssey X is coming out.

Anyone play this?

Etrian-Odyssey-X_Announce04.png
 
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aweigh

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I played EO 3 on Desmume. It was alright. It's supposedly the best in the series because 4 and 5 eliminated classes and enemy type variety, or rather they reduced variety of types, and also simplified the mazes in order to capitalize on the runaway success of the first 3 games on the NDS by making 4 and 5 more "streamlined" and "accessible"; from business side it was a gangbuster decision because 4 and 5, on 3DS, are far and away the best-selling titles in the series.

Mind you this info I'm dispensing here mostly comes from reading reviews and forum posts as I only dipped my toes into EO 4 mostly just to try out the Citra emulator back when it was new, and I can confirm that in EO 4 there is indeed less of everything: less classes, less enemy types, etc.

So TLDR: I played the "best one" in the series, EO 3, and I found it... meh, it's alright. If played when on-the-go as it was intended then it's a very good mobile game I suppose.
 

Hobo Elf

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Hard to have discussions when most people here don't play these games. I'm completely in love with the series, however. They are my absolute favorite dungeon crawler series for maximum combatfaggotry and insanely good party dynamics. EOX is coming out in august but only in JP. I don't think a western release has even been announced yet, so we're most likely looking at a 2019 release.

A lot of people do consider EO3 to be the best but I wouldn't say it's the best and the EO community doesn't really agree with that statement either. I'd say it's an equal split between factions who consider 3, 4, 5 and U2 to be the best one. It really just depends which entry had your favorite class roster.
 

Jacob

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
I played the third game some months ago but I forgot to continue it thanks to stuff happening, thanks for reminding tho. I also liked the costume design since I'm a huge fan of female knights in impractical frilly armor.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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Feb 15, 2012
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I think there were quite a few threads on this series actually.

Anyway, I've played I-IV a lot and enjoyed all of them. I think it's between III and IV when it comes to being the best. Both have different things going for them. IV slightly edges it for me, because dual classing is better thought out and not "sub gladiator on everything for charge" and you don't need to suffer through the obnoxious seafaring part.

These games are better crpgs than modern western faggotry for sure, but I wouldn't call them classic. There are a couple important things that really hold them down:

1. Lack of proper, meaningful stat system and the ability to distribute stats.
2. Lack of proper inventory and even slightly interesting itemization. It's typical jap 4 slots decline and super boring "get a slightly better version of your previous weapon every hour or two" kind of deal.
3. Lack of proper documentation and important info outside of fan made skill calculators. The designers somehow still think that having skills with vague 10 word descriptions that turn out to be 101% shit or not work in a way you think they would after you pump points in them is a feature, which is a typical oldschool ford oldschool's sake idiocy.

That said, the games are great for proper crpg experience of coming up with different, often crazy party builds and then applying them to beat properly challenging boss encounters. I didn't even mind the art and graphics and I'm usually super allergic to chinese subhumanity.
 

Hobo Elf

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EO5 has a 'more' meaningful stat system since you pick your race and class and each race has a different stat spread, which is really significant depending on the class + Legendary Title (class spec) you're going for. For example the default race for Botanist is Brouni but they are absolute shit as a Graced Poisoner since they have such low LUC and will fail a lot at applying status effects.
 

Hobo Elf

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Just some random musings. Class design and balance wasn't my favorite. There were some cool unique concepts but some classes felt trivial compared to how ridiculously overpowered others were. The game didn't reuse any old assets either so it felt fresh. Game was running on a cheaper chip than the previous 3DS entries so the general quality of the graphics was lower. Also the draw distance was shorter and there was one FOE puzzle that relied on you seeing which direction the FOEs were facing but the draw distance couldn't get that far so it required some irritating back and forth trial and error. Dungeon design was generally pretty good and I liked the little mini text events they added for flavor to make it feel more like an adventure, but they became less and less frequent until they were nonexistent in the last stratum, which generally gave off a vibe of rushed production. Overall it's still a decent game and better than most modern releases, but I was slightly disappointed with it. It was made by a B-Team and many of the design choices really reflected that. A-Team has been busy working on EOX instead.

I still wouldn't dissuade you from trying the game, especially if you liked the previous entries. As I said earlier before your favorite EO is going to be the one that has the classes you like the most. I just didn't happen to like the classes overall very much in EO5 so that was a big detriment to my fun. That's not to say that there weren't fun classes, though. I had a lot of fun with the Necromancer, especially when I paired one with a Dragoon who'd draw aggro while the Necro would command his wraiths to counter attack anyone who hits the Dragoon.
 

Zed

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I buy them and beat the first couple of dungeons and then stop playing them. Can't wait for the next one!
 

Ventidius

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It's a good series. Regarding which is the best, Hobo Elf is right that there is no real consensus amongst the fandom as to which is the best, and the series has overall been very consistent in quality.

IV usually gets derided as the easiest, but I'm not so sure this is entirely fair. I mean, on the one hand, the dungeons are less complex, but on the other, the game has much better combat balance than many of the others, especially III which was very easy to break by subclassing. Also, it is not like the dungeons in this series are ever as crazy as something like, say, Elminage Gothic, so to say that the games are harder because of the dungeons is a bit misleading. In fact, most of the dificulty of these games comes from the combat, even the dungeon design itself relies a lot on tough combat in the form of FOEs to achieve challenge, so the differences in dungeon design don't really make that much of a difference. It should be noted that it is moot anyway, as all of these games are harder than most Western RPGs, and they even beat some of the serious Japanese crawlers in this regard, like Stranger of Sword City and the Operation series.

This brings us to how the series compares to other Japanese dungeon crawlers. As I said, it beats many of them in terms of challenge, but overall it sits around the middle, somewhere in between the harder ones like Elminage Gothic and Dungeon Travelers 2, on the one hand, and the easier ones like Stranger of Sword City and the Operation series, on the other. That said, I wouldn't say they are necessarily better than SOSC, as the latter has some things over them like more varied dungeons, better itemization and an interesting permadeath mechanic. I also prefer the more DnDish integrated character system centered on multiclassing used by SOSC and Elminage over the granular system of EO which revolves around the "perks" or skills that you build your characters around. That said, both EO and Dungeon Travelers 2 execute these granular systems very well, so party and character customization are still great in both of them, plus they both complement that with interesting subclassing/class advancement systems. I would say, though, that the Grimoire system used in the EO Untold series is kind of lame.

Itemization is not terribly exciting, but it is not downright obnoxious like in, say, Divinity: Original Sin 2. The combat is better than in most dungeon crawlers except Labyrinth of Touhou 2 and Dungeon Travelers 2. Dungeons are generally among the more complex, but as I said, they don't really touch the cream of crop of the genre.

Overall, I would say the better EO games are not as good as Elminage Gothic, Dungeon Travelers 2, and maybe also Elminage Original and Stranger of Sword City, but they are still great in their own right, and beat most of their other contemporaries in the genre. IV is probably the best entry point as it is the most accessible of the series, but don't be discouraged by the talk of it being "casualized", it's still very much a serious EO game and worth playing.
 
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Tigranes

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Jan 8, 2009
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10,350
I've played EOU2 & EO5, and felt EOU2 is very solid, 5 is OK.

It has a very nice mix of exploring, mapping, set piece fights and character progression, without being amazing in any one thing. The character systems aren't super complicated or expansive, but you always seem to get some good mileage out of them. Obviously skip all the dialogue and ignore the shitty weeaboo character designs, but that's easy to do here.

5 I thought did everything competently while having no real distinguishing feature, and seems like you're either building around Masurao Hell Slash procs or Fencer chain procs and/or stuffing the front row with summons.

EOU2's cooking minigame I actually enjoyed, in terms of how it's integrated into the pace of your dungeoneering, going out and filling in the bestiary.
 

L'Montes

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I'd assume the series gets mentioned in that Wizardry thread, even if it's not quite on the same level of "clone" as something like those Experience-made games.

I typically have enjoyed the initial difficulty and mix through the first few dungeons in all the games. As you unlock more "power" generally though, it usually feels like they get too easy, which is kinda disappointing for the tail end of an RPG. I also tend to dislike the hoops you jump through to RNG-grind your way towards drops for gearing up in the latter half though.
 

Vorark

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Never played EO2U, but I can vouch for the original EO2 on the DS. It was such an improvement over the first one and is still my favorite in the series. Top notch crawler.
 

Doktor Best

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Feb 2, 2015
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I liked the first one enough to finish it, the second one is even better. They got labyrinthian dungeons, a mapping feature, enemies you have to run from at first (FOES, you see them on the map when they are close), a good combat system and intact ressourcemanagement.

Story is weeaboo shit but you can ignore it easily.

While those games are reduced in complexity and dont reach the quality of Wizardry or Elminage, they are still solid 7/10-8/10 titles and very much worthy of attention.
 

Suicidal

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Apr 29, 2007
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It's a good series.

So far I've played EO 1, EO 3 and EO Untold 1 but only finished EOU1. Out of the ones I've played I liked EO 3 the most because of dual classing.

The games don't really do anything revolutionary but they do have a nice mix of party creation and management, exploration and combat, even though they don't really excel at any of these aspects. They also provide a decent challenge and are very polished. If you can stomach the extremely weeaboo aesthetics there's a good amount of fun dungeon crawling to be had.

Apart from the things other people have already said in this topic, I would add to the complaints that the boss battles are pretty ass (at least in the 1st game and its remake) as you will be fighting multiple reskins of the same enemy template over and over again and because the loot isn't very interesting and you can't find powerful items by exploring alone (only monster drops get you gear) there isn't a lot of incentive to explore the dungeon if you don't suffer from the sort of OCD autism that compels you to uncover every square on the map. They also get quite repetitive past a certain point and some of the side quests you can get are straight up MMORPG grind bullshit that involve getting 10 items from enemies that have a drop rate of 1%.

One more thing I dislike is that getting good equipment requires you to obtain loot that only drops under specific conditions (for example, killing a specific enemy with poison or killing an enemy with an element it's resistant to) and the game doesn't tell you about most of these drops so if you're gonna play it just save yourself the trouble and just look at the drop tables on the wiki.
 
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Dorarnae

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Jan 21, 2016
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it's alright, it's better than many crawler.
I haven't played the original first game but I plan to do so because I really didn't like Untold with the grimoire system.
second game(original) was fun, I only didn't like the quest, the reward sucks and you need to complete them to unlock post game from what I understand.
third game is the first one I played. Really loved it at first, but I played it again last year or two years ago and I dunno, it's alright I guess.
4th game bored me til I finished the second stratum and started unlocking the other classes.
5th game was good, my only complaint is the music, I was expecting more.

they're not bad, they're enjoyable but there are a couple crawler that I prefer...but when you've played them all(or most), then these are good.
 

Ventidius

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Yeah, I definitely would say that there are some games that are more representative of the genre. In terms of giving you an accessible showcase of the genre's conventions, Stranger of Sword City does a better job because:
1. It is closer to the genre's Wizardry roots instead of being a more eclectic remix like EO.
2. It has generally better art direction, portraits, music, atmosphere, and QoL features (like instant Auto-Battle).
3. It's a bit easier and the dungeons are generally a bit less complex, but not enough so that it doesn't give you an idea of how Wiz-likes generally challenge you.

On the other hand, in terms of must-play value and as a model of what the genre can be at its finest, Elminage: Gothic might well be the pinnacle of the Wiz formula. The problem with that one is that it might just be too much for a newcomer to the genre to handle without burning out.

That said, if OP already had his interested piqued by the EO series for whatever reason, far be it from me to dissuade him, as it is by no means a bad entry point to the genre.
 
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aweigh

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I really don't like NOT getting items directly as loot while in the field. Collecting monster parts that need to be traded in a town hub is very boring for me.

I normally hate JRPG crafting systems because they're usually too verbose and too front-loaded with lots of busywork but Etrian series is one that would benefit from allowing you to use the monster parts for crafting while still in the field. Having to go sell them back in town to then buy an item is banal-shit-boring.
 

newtmonkey

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I bought all the original EO (DS) games on a whim, and once I put some time into EO1, I found I didn't really like it.

I don't like these kinds of games where you have to invest points into builds (skills) without any idea really what does and doesn't work. Especially when there are umbrella skills, like (just an example) MAGIC skill, and then under that, FIRE, ICE, etc. The only option is trial and error (or looking up stuff on wikis I guess). Unlike, say, Wiz 1, there is no easy way to build up a new character from scratch if you decide you want to replace a useless character with something more useful, so it feels like you get punished for trying to actually explore the skill system.

It would be okay if the skill system wasn't so important, but it really seems like you can innocently build a useless character pretty easily. Also, because of the range of possible builds, from ridiculously overpowered to useless, I wonder how the game can be balanced? I didn't run into any balance problems with the few hours I put into EO1, but I wonder how my suboptimal party would fare later in the game (would I just have to sit there and grind out battles to catch up?)

As aweigh just mentioned, it also sucks gathering 100 squirrel penises for the privilege of being able to buy better stuff, rather than just opening a chest and getting a better piece of equipment right there in the dungeon (or being able to craft stuff on your own in the field, I guess).

The art is also pretty terrible.

On the positive side, I liked drawing maps, and the music was very relaxing. FOEs seemed gimmicky and broke immersion (blobbers only make sense when completely abstracted; when you introduce bosses on the map chasing you that you can actually see moving around, it begins to call into question everything else [why turn based, why grid based, why 5 characters instead of 6???] etc etc)... however, it's still an interesting addition.

I don't think they are bad games at all, I just don't think blobbers and skill/build/crafting stuff mix well (or at least, in a way that satisfies me).
 
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aweigh

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yeah if you're not happy with your skill investments there is nothing else to do but grind more. Also it's such boring design to force the player to grind battles and more battles just for the privilege of making their Stun attack have 1% more chance to stun... much better to have level ups actually matter instead and have each level be a dramatic increase in party output.

Also don't like how strictly classes are relegated to doing one thing well and not be able to do anything else of worth, like the knight type class being there for turtling for the party and nothing else, or how only a damage-dealing class can deal damage but can't do anything else, so on and so forth. This is pretty standard since after all, no one likes the other extreme: everyone can do anything, because then everything becomes meaningless. It's, for lack of a better word, a matter of balance and EO series (and EO knockoffs like 7th Dragon) don't strike a pleasing class balance for my tastes.

in wizardry for example a spell-casting class can only do one thing, cast spells, BUT the spell system supports this by having arcane and divine schools (and later on alchemical and psionic and summoning) be extremely versatile with spells that can come in handy in almost any situation be it picking locks, confusing enemies, charming an NPC, lighting a dungeon, etc. This kind of system-dependent emergent game play just isn't there in these EO games.
 

Dorarnae

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yeah the loot system is not my favorite either. as you progress, you just find slightly better gear(atk or def) after each floors.(kind of remind me of the wizardry renaissance on ds, which I didn't really enjoy the loot too).
my other problem with the series are the dungeon map, by having a space between each room/corridor....and that's the reason I didn't enjoy 3 as much as the first time, I felt like I was seeing the same pattern used many time when drawing the map.
 

Hobo Elf

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FOEs seemed gimmicky and broke immersion (blobbers only make sense when completely abstracted; when you introduce bosses on the map chasing you that you can actually see moving around, it begins to call into question everything else [why turn based, why grid based, why 5 characters instead of 6???] etc etc)... however, it's still an interesting addition.

You begin questioning the fabric of reality as soon as you are put face-to-face with your first FOE? That's a pretty strange leap in logic.

The itemization is pretty tepid in EO, but you guys are acting hyperbolic over how you need to grind 100 items just to unlock a new item. :MI've never, ever found myself at a situation where I needed to grind a specific monster drop to unlock an item because simply clearing the floor that introduces said monster will have me fight against it enough times to give me all the drops I'll probably ever need. To get the actually valuable stuff at the end game you're going to have to kill the stratum boss fights again but this time go for conditional kills since that way the bosses will drop their monster ingredient.
 
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