It's a great game that will last you at least 50 hours. Nice deal!

I kind of want to try the demo, but I'm so overloaded I may not get the chance before the sale ends! If I do buy it, it will go immediately into the backlog, which I hate doing. So torn!

I'm sure it's not the last time the game is going to be on sale. And the nice thing with digital releases: they don't get rare.

Just wait. But do try the demo when you have the chance!

@VickiL

It's going into my long-term backlog, but I had to jump on the deal while I had the money to do so.

I think I want this game but I just can't decide!! People who have played the game, help sway me one way or another.... aaaand go!

PS - I played the demo and I still can't decide.
PPS - If the game didn't have the "keep your XP when you die mode" (unlike previous entries in the series) there's no way I would pick this game up. If that helps.

I found the game pretty damn forgiving, and I played it on normal "load up your last save when you die" mode. I dunno. Did you like charting a map as you went? You'll be doing that a lot, so you better enjoy it.

@Guillaume

See, I do like that. That's why I got pumped when the game went on sale. I needed a new game like I need a hole in my head, but there went some money...and I'm happy. I feel like I got a deal.

Allow me to populate this thread with my posts from the Adventurin' thread. They're longer and fresher impressions than I can give out now.

Guillaume said:

I think I've caught the EO bug in a big way. It's hard to not think about the game when I'm not playing it.

So I made a party that I think made sense to me. I'm not sure if it will hold up later on, but right now it seems to get the job done, as in the past few hours only one of my characters died, once. Pretty good, right?


On the front line, I have a Fortress and a Dancer. The Fortress is getting all her skill points invested in Taunt and in Iron Wall (passive physical defense skill). She's gonna absord ALL the damage so that the rest of my party doesn't have to.

Next to her, I have a Dancer. I'm investing everything in Fan Dance, a passive skill that raises her evasion rate, just for those cases where the enemies decide not to hit the Fortress taunting them. I'm also investing points in Counter Samba, so that she has a chance to counter every time someone attacks the front line. She's actually my main attacker. Weird, eh?


In the back, now, I have a Sniper. I'm not sure what to make of him. I thought early on that I would only improve Bow and Arrow skills, but I'm not finding them very useful. I thought I'd avoid improving the Stab abilities, but I just might have to rethink that. So I've kind of buffed up his Scavenger abilities, and I'm waiting for more useful skills to get unlocked. Heh.

Emmet, my Medic, is just basically in charge of healing the Fortress, so that's where his points go.

My Runemaster sometimes gets to use his fireballs, but most of the time, I just have him hit weakly with his cane. I'm looking forward to unlock more powerful spells.

So there you go. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that I don't have too many blind spots here.


A question: the price of staying at the Inn goes up every time. Is there a limit to that? And is there any other way (free, is possible) or regenerating MP?

Guillaume said:

I just started going back to previous mines and areas to clear up the FOEs in preparation for what I think will be a huge battle. I think I've over-leveled for some of them, though. Perhaps I shouldn't have waited. But I find that to get the maximum enjoyment out of these battles, you need to be just leveled up enough to have a chance, and still struggle. It's a tough balancing act.

Guillaume said:

After about a dozen hours if I include the time sunk in the demo, I've entered the second area of the game! The boss of the first area was pretty damn tough, and I beat him by the skin of my teeth. By the end my Dancer, my Sniper and, most tragically, my Runemaster, were all dead. I had only the Fortress and the Medic to chip away at his health, but I prevailed in the end!

Losing my Runemaster was a real blow though. He could dish out about 120 hit points in damage every time with the electrical attack, and when using the "Ice Coffin" Burst skill, he's do about 250 of damage!

I think my current team is attack power-challenged. It doesn't feel right that the only ones doing real damage are the Dancer and the Runemaster (when using his skills).

Guillaume said:

Still playin'.

In case you missed it, I talked about IV on RFN.

I had to keep my EOIV addiction in check during PAX East, continuously playing it would not have been very social and missing the point of PAX.

BUT I did get a ton of EOIV streetpasses! Many weren't as far as I am into the game, a few people were much farther. Some had not tied one of their characters or a treasure map to their adventurer card, but many had.

What that translates into is that if you have the Dowsing Rod equipped on your ship, it will for sure point out if you are over a treasure indicated by a map. If the person giving you the map hasn't found the treasure themselves, you don't get coordinates. But if they have, then at least you get a quadrant.

Treasure hunting is pretty fun to do if you're not feeling like exploring a dungeon. I do it when playing on the subway, when I don't want to take a stylus out to chart a map, and have only limited time to play.

Guillaume said:

After 71 hours, Etrian Odyssey IV is FINISHED!

Ahhh. I don't know what to make of the whole experience.

Mapmaking and exploring is definitely addictive, but I don't think that's what has kept me hooked for so long when I usually would have given up long ago.

Initially, the difficulty felt refreshing, too, but eventually I became overleveled and combat became a bit less satisfying. But gaining XP and leveling up is addictive in and of itself, I guess.

Perhaps it's a combination of the two, plus the fact that each new area would have its own gimmick. I would say the game did a better job than most long games at keeping itself fresh. But while it's thrilling when a new twist is introduced, that's just a momentary burst of "new". You'll then be doing the same thing for the next couple hours. And I'm not a big fan of that. If I were to chart my enjoyment of the game over time, it would be a very serrated graph, with lots of peaks followed by lots of valleys.

I haven't found all there is to the game, there is another maze that has opened up after the credits, and I hadn't finished all the sidequests in the first place. I don't rule out the idea of trying that maze one day (the game IS sitting permanently on my SD card, after all), but it's unlikely. I'm all Etrian Odyssey'd out at the moment.

And my closing thoughts on RFN.

Apparently the sale is sponsored by Atlus and runs until June 10th, and the game is also $10 off at most retailers. I decided to order a copy from Amazon, supposedly they still have some with the soundtrack and art book, though I'm not expecting that to be true.

I'm not sure when I'll get to it though, as I still have Etrian Odyssey III to play...

@Mop it up

Most retailers = GameStop, Walmart, Target, etc?

Bought from Amazon.ca for 29,99$!! Pretty sweet deal! :D

Finally sunk tons of time into this game and made it to the last boss. This may be one of my new favorite game series.

Turns out I got completely obsessed with EO4. I devoured that game and loved every minute of it. I think I 100%ed the thing. I eagerly picked up EOUntold shortly after it came out. I started it and it didn't completely grab me so I put it down for a while, then I got back into it and made a bit of progress and then put it down again and haven't picked it up since. =\

I know that one day I will finish it, but, I think the trade-off between picking your own party and experiencing the story is putting a big damper on my experience. =\ I thought EO4 balanced things perfectly because you could create your own party but then there were also the pre-made characters that advanced the story and could be used in your party if you wanted. THAT WAS SO PERFECT! =\

@NinSage
Could you please elaborate a bit on what the differences are between playing EO4 and playing EO Untold's Classic Mode? I thought they were essentially the same system, with the exception of the airships and pre-made, plot advancing NPC characters turned playable? I know EOU's story mode is plot heavier than its classic mode, but if classic is close to what we got in EO4 I think I'll be good with that.

I started playing EO4 last spring, beat it and all the post-game stuff in July, then jumped straight into EOIII, beat that and the post-game this christmas, and now I'm already eager to make EO Untold my next summer distraction (which will no doubt become an obsession lasting until fall).

But, I can't quite decide if I should go with the story mode or the classic mode. I can't imagine playing through the game twice just to experience both modes, especially not since I'll be going with the single save file cartridge version, so I need to figure this stuff out.

@r_hjort I want to jump right into Persona Q, but I need to beat SMT 4 first. By the time I beat that, Majora's Mask will be out. There's something comforting knowing that I will always have Bravely Default and Persona Q to buy when the 3DS has a drought.

@Scrawnton
I think Atlus alone's released enough stuff for me to survive a year long 3DS drought, and then there's stuff like you mention, Bravely Default and the Zeldas I haven't grabbed yet. I feel spoiled, in a stressed out kind of way.

I just finished beating the game and I had NO IDEA there was a NewGame+... I wanted to start SMT 4 (only ever made it 5 hours in) the moment I beat this game but the awkward satisfaction of steamrolling through the game at a high level is so enticing to me.

For the record, this game has some of THE BEST music in any video game. I am a big fan of Alan Parsons Project and this soundtrack is so progressively 70's in an amazing way that I turn off all sound effects and play this game with headphones on at full blast.

@NinSage

I would love to elaborate but what I've played so far has just been Story mode. I love anime cutscenes so, I also wanted to experience those. It's a shame because, once again, I feel like they could have accomplished all of this in one mode. You could have the cutscenes just focus on the pre-made characters and have the camera be the first-person view of your custom character at times. *shrug* Just a thought.

um, IF the Classic Mode uses the characters from story mode as optional playable people and also uses them to advance the plot, that would be great. .... I wonder if it would inspire me to delete my save and start over. Like I said, I love me some anime cutscenes, so, I don't want to sacrifice those. hmm =\

I looked into some of this before I started playing because, like you, I wanted to do things in the "right" order. But, I didn't want to spoil things for myself, so, the biggest thing I learned was, quite simply, in order to see everything, it's smarter to do Story Mode and then Classic Mode. =\

@NinSage
Well thanks for sharing what you know about it so far! I too have heard that doing Story first and Classic later is the way to go, but that sounds like a hassle to me. Part of what I like about making my own party from scratch is trying to adapt to what the game throws at me in terms of enemies and environments as I go along, so if I've already seen that stuff in Story mode I doubt it will feel as fun. Then again, missing out on classes and places, not to mention the fancy cutscenes sucks too, and doing Classic first and losing the party I built up (I guess?) to make room for the pre-made characters would be awful.

I guess I'm with you, I think they could have pulled it all off in one mode if they'd put their minds to it.

EDIT: Just realized Etrian Odyssey Untold has a Miiverse community! Thought none of them had one, for some reason. Guess I'll see if anyone there can help out with the specifics!