49 hours, yiiiiikes! I didn’t think I’d been playing that long! The last boss wasn’t too hard – unlike many other mid-bosses I managed to beat him in one try. I kind of had to, because if I’d retreated and come back another day I would have had to fight the last-but-one boss again, only this time without getting EXP. DO NOT WANT. So desperation added +1 to all my mental stats and with a combination of luck and just stubbornly hanging in there I managed to take him down with minimal loss of life. If anyone finished the fight without spamming Holy Shield with Lolon I want to hear from you, you liar.
Now then, there’s some tempting-looking bonus content that just opened up and that I’m itching to dive right into, but first I said I would write a few impressions of Entaku no Seito after ‘finishing’ it, so let’s get that out of the way.
The bad
A pretty short section because as far as I’m concerned there was nothing bad about this game. I’m really scratching my brain here trying to think of something. The biggest thing is probably the lack of an Auto-battle option. This isn’t the kind of game where you can get away with Auto-Battling all the way through, but a button for “repeat the last round’s actions” would have been helpful. A skip-event button for all the times I got killed fighting a boss would have been nice too.
And if I had to pick something else, I guess the music was a bit lacking. It sounded the same throughout all the dungeons whereas a better game would have more ‘foresty’ music for a forest stage and ‘watery’ music for a water stage, that sort of thing. Lastly I suppose I am still disappointed they never showed actual pictures of all the Golden Pies and Marbled Steaks and Aristocrat Bread the characters enjoyed. I love game food, the less realistic the better.
Everything else one would normally complain about are just standard features of the dungeon-crawling genre: same old same old dungeons, the occasionally annoying sliding floors and pitfalls, not much of a story, expensive and limited equipment, slow growth, high miss-rate, the graphics are rather bland (get the graphically-superior XBox 360 version if you really care about graphics) and there are no character endings even though you’re encouraged to befriend your party. I can’t complain about difficulty or lack thereof cause I chose to play on the easiest setting, which was still plenty tough.
360’s bigger screen = much better detail on dungeons and monsters.
But better graphics only make the ass-kickings more painful.
Everything else was good
Umm… I kind of don’t know what to write. It’s a dungeon crawler. You walk around dungeons and when a monster attacks you, you kill it. You will end up using many of the same attacks over again especially towards the end, but there’s still enough variety and enough surprisingly strong mooks to keep you on your toes. I played on the lowest difficulty and I still got wiped out many, many times, so it’s not for the faint of heart.
Even though it’s a dungeon crawler Entaku no Seito actually had a fair amount of enemy variety, hardly any palette swaps at all. The low encounter rate is a good thing because it gave me plenty of time to thoroughly explore the ridiculously large dungeons. I think the encounter rate is tied to your party’s strength, because I seem to get more battles with weaker party members than with stronger ones. The soul rank and soul gauge system gives good incentive to keep everyone alive through battle, though come to think of it those things will only annoy people who want to focus on combat and exploration.
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The class system is standard – Healer, Fighter, Wizard, Ranger, etc, but after certain events you get to give each member a sub-class so you can have a Healer that doubles as a Wizard or a Wizard that doubles as a Ranger. TBH I can’t comment much on this system because I haven’t used it yet. I don’t really see the point for my magic users because they’re vital in their current roles. All Lolon ever does is spam Holy Shield these days while Eltha nukes the field with charged magic. But it would be good to make my Samurai a Fighter so she gets more attacks, or maybe make my Druid a Healer so she can fill the hole Lolon has left. If I end up doing the epilogue (let’s pretend I’m capable of resisting) I’ll experiment a bit with sub-classes and report back if anything interesting happens.
Aaaand I can’t think of anything else to write. I’ll be getting back to Tales of Hearts soon while continuing to play Entaku no Seito on the side. I’m trying to knock out at least one otome game a month as well, so I’ll start something new on that front as well. L8R.
Bonus: Entaku no Seito Gallery of Rogues – I rather like the character designs.
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- Saul
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- Lolon
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- Piros
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- Popolog
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- Phoenix
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- Ol-Ohma
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- Oblis
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- Mucab
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- Mints
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- Merlin
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- Mai
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- Lumi
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- Main character
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- Eraste
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- Chibi Eltha
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- Eltha
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- Chupp
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- Bargo
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- “Almadel”
congratulation on beating the final boss! Glad to hear that you enjoyed the game. As for the epilogue, “you-know-who” that joins your party actually has the best stats in the game but it takes a bit of effort to level her up. If you do decide to use her, I’d recommend making her the polar opposite of your main character; for example, if you went mostly with a front line MC, then you can focus on spirit to make her songs better while sub-classing as a healer.
Sub-classing really doesn’t have too much synergy in this game, so outside of the few good combination such as Fighter+Samurai for dual-wield genocide, Wizard+Cleric for Fast Cast buff stacking, or Paladin+Alchemist/Ranger for maximum defense, it really just comes down to having all the party-wide effect and what passive you want in your party.
If you’re interested in a sort of sequel with a slightly different art style there’s 剣の街の異邦人 for PC that has a bit more depth to the combat but even less story to speak of. However, if you’re planning on getting a PSVita, it’s probably a better idea to just play the vita version along with Demon Gaze or the Operation Abyss/Babel games.
Oh, by song I meant basically spamming Song of the Hero with her, makes life much easier when you can use Union Skill almost every turn.
My MC is a backliner so you-know-who will be on the front lines. Being able to use the more expensive versions of skills without having to reapply them every turn and without having to sacrifice other skills will be sweet.
Nyaha! It feels good to finish the game, and I just fought you-know-who once and got totalled so I’m going back with my A party in a few minutes.
I’ll check the other games out when I get a Vita but with Sword of the Stranger, uh, let’s just say I’ve had an ‘advance copy’ for a while ;-p
Ah, I getcha. I’ve done some research on Sword of the Stranger and outside of more bosses, weapons and more portraits with a longer post-game dungeon, the PC and the PSV versions are largely the same. It’s probably not worth it to get it for Vita if you have access to the PC version already. Demon Gaze on the other hand I really want to try once I get my hands on a Vita.
I thought as much. Not much was changed between the three ports of Entaku no Seito either. That said, if I dilly-dally on playing Ken no Machi long enough and buy a VITA first I’ll buy it on that instead.
I heard Demon Gaze was rather boring, but I heard it from people who aren’t really fans of dungeon crawlers, so I think I’ll play it anyway.
British legends would be a lot different if Merlin had to sidejob as a maid.
Come on Davzz, you know full well that this is hardly the strangest thing Japan has done to a western legend. I mean, we’re talking about the country that gave us this:
“I suppose I am still disappointed they never showed actual pictures of all the Golden Pies and Marbled Steaks and Aristocrat Bread the characters enjoyed. I love game food, the less realistic the better.”
Gee, I’m glad to find a fellow gamer that takes in-game food as seriously as I do! 😀 This is actually one of my main gripes with Tales of Hearts R: you can cook tons of delicious dishes whose names alone make your mouth water, but you’re never rewarded with a picture of said dishes. That’s a pity, really: I’m sure such pictures would have motivated me to cook ten times more in that game, and the Vita was more than fit to handle them. Oh, well.
Anyway, I’m still very interested by Entaku no Seito. I won’t play it right away, but that will certainly happen sooner or later! I’m a trifle disappointed that it cannot accommodate a solo run, but that won’t deter me from playing it. In fact, I’ll probably try to clear it with two characters only, which is the next best thing to a solo run. 😛
Cooking in Tales of Hearts? Maybe it’s only in the R version? The option hasn’t cropped up in the DS version, and I’ve been playing for a while.
Entaku no Seito just went through a large difficulty spike now that I’ve hit the bonus boss’s castle. I can’t imagine soloing or duo-ing this place, yeeeowch. More power to you if you decide to go for it.