I know that’s like asking for Call of Duty without the guns, but the FOEs are really cramping my style. When I think Etrian Odyssey, I think cutesy art, hand-drawn maps and FOEs, and I really hate the last two. And I knew I’d hate them, that’s why I’ve avoided the Etrian Odyssey series all these years.
Anyway, I don’t know how many hours I spent on Etrian Odyssey IV
My verdict: I would gladly play an Etrian Odyssey with auto-drawn maps and no FOEs. In fact I think I did play such a game, and it was called 7th Dragon. It was pretty good, too. For this demo I deliberately picked Casual Mode, which allowed me to experience the game with a minimum of stress, but if they had an Ultra-Casual mode without the FOEs, it would be a definite buy for me. Are the FOEs that much of a dealbreaker? In a word, yes. I can’t relax and enjoy my dungeon-crawlan and grindan when there are implacable homicidal super-mobs lurking around every corner. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Atlus actually expects me to provoke those bloodthirsty nutcases and then run away with their hot breath at my heels in order to progress? How about NO, does NO work for you?
All the other niggling flaws were more or less bearable. For example, I’m not a fan of the way selling works in this game. One Baboon Skin makes one Poofy Mittens. You want more Poofy Mittens? Kill more Baboons. Is it realistic? Yes. Does it suck? Double yes. But I can live with that. In the same way, I also think it’s a little unfair how much EXP quests give as against enemies (1500 for a 5-second quest vs 1758 for 5 minutes spent fighting a bear?), but that’s within acceptable limits. It’s good for those who want to cut down on the grinding, and for people like me who like sidequests despite all our protests. Even map-making isn’t quite so terrible once you get the hang of it.
And on the flipside, there are lots of good things about the game. Bright happy colors! <– Had to get that out of the way. Cutesy character designs rarely do anything for me, but as usual I appreciate the attempt. The 60 item limit is remarkably generous for a game of this sort, and a storage facility is open right away. The rogue-like way the FOEs work also means it’s usually easy to avoid an unwanted fight. If you get cornered, use an Ariadne Thread to run away before the fight begins. Or just mash Escape in the battle, and you’ll usually get lucky. Casual Mode FTW. All the classes seem to be useful (except Nightseeker, which I avoided purely on the basis of the grotesque designs), and since the skill trees are completely transparent, I can start planning my builds from the get go.
So tl;dr – Etrian Odyssey IV was better than I expected except for the FOEs. Because of them, though, I can’t ever see myself dropping $39.99 or $29.99 or even $19.99 for this game. Even if the owner of the 3DS ever bought it, I’m not 100% sure I want to play any more. I don’t think I can’t stomach those “provoke FOEs into helping you” stages. So… yeah. I’m glad I found all that out before blowing good money on the series.
Now, on to the real reason why I borrowed the 3DS: Ace Attorney. I haven’t started it yet, but I will sometime this weekend. Apart from the first two, I wasn’t that crazy about the AA games, but I’m sure Capcom has learned a lot from the mistakes of the past. This should be good. And best of all, it didn’t cost me a cent. >:-D
FOE gimmicks were really pronounced in 4 because they had the extra power to display them on-screen, rather than be orange floaty balls.
I guess since I come from a background older Western DCs, FOEs are really kind of a step down for me in difficulty. Strong mobs can wipe your party, would be mixed with normal ones and have the same sprites and names until you identified them.
ICK. Strong party-wipeable mobs shouldn’t be anywhere near my party. But if they have to be, I prefer them to be like in EO4 – easily-identifiable mobs rather than vague blobs of terror.
did you ever post impressions of the other EO games? as somebody who’s not a big fan of them i’m pretty curious to hear what you think about them
oh also if you haven’t tried it,might i recomend elminage?
This is the first EO game I’ve tried. I’m not ruling out the others, but I’m not too fond of this one.
I’ll add Elminage to my to-play list. I think I heard the localization was rather iffy, but I can always play in Japanese if necessary. Is it anything like Class of Heroes? I didn’t like that game at all.
Kind of depends on what you don’t like about CoH. I mean my big problem with it is the terrible dungeon design.
That was number one, followed by the limited magic system. Everything looked so same-ish it was utterly confusing. I hear the sequels are much better, but I haven’t been back since.
The magic system in Elminage is… well, just about exactly the same one it is in Wizardry 3-5.
Dungeons are better designed, and the unique thing about El is that outside of the starting dungeon, it allows you to do the dungeons in whatever order you please unlike something like EO where you just have one superdungeon to clear.
Honest confession: I have never played a Wizardry game in my life. I have a pretty good idea how they work though, and the magic thing has always bugged me. Still, the prospect of unrestricted exploration is a highly attractive one, so I’m definitely going to try Elminage.
yeah the translation of elminage is pretty bad with a lot of weird phrases and just bad spelling mistake (did you know stairs go up and dwon?) but it’s still serviceable if playing it in japanese is too much of a chore
is it anything like class of heroes? well you still a make a party of 6 guys and go delve into a first party dungeon but unlike class of heroes
1. battle are much faster,there is never a battle where you fight more than 4 monster together and group attack aren’t that hard to have
2. the game shower you in loot,a lot of items have unique effect like being more effective against certain kind of enemies or inflicting/resisting certain status… it’s a huge far cry from class of heroes “here’s part of a weapon that’s a slight upgrade over the item you already have”
3. the art is really good and there is a lot of variety between monster,here’s a video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P938wbQR0_M&list=PLTxRGcfVSBDM3QAC1arh4DoBKDU8qc1TQ&index=41
4. you have more freedom on it since you can tackle dungeon’s in any order you want… the only thing you need to do to clear the game is to find 5 rings so as long as you find them you can ignore the rest… the 5 rings are placed at random in any of the dungeon of the game and can be found by wasting fame which you gain by clearing sidequest
Elminage sounds like my sort of game. I’ll definitely look into it, thanks.
I found EO3 relatively enjoyable, the whole sailing aspect can get a bit tedious though. Not sure about EO4, but in EO3 FOE stop being a problem about half way into the game when you get access to better skills. But then repetition became a problem like any other dungeon crawler especially when party synergy is such a big deal you end up doing the same thing over and over almost every single battle. If you found 2020 to be a bit of a chore, I can only imagine the EO series probably would have annoyed you even more.
The lack of freedom was the real killer for me in 2020. I don’t particularly enjoy repetition, but I’ve long since accepted it as a set feature of dungeon crawlers. Maybe FOEs do stop bothering you in EO4 once you get a bit further, but I’m not ready to buy the game to find out.