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Etrian Odyssey General Discussion
- Thread starter conchobhar
- Start date
The collection is out; I'm playing the original, on B2F. Impressions and observations:
- the expected updates for game engine speed, interface parity with later games in the series, and so on have all been made. It is now the fastest and most expedient version of the original game you can play.
- resting a character now costs 5 levels instead of 10. Early-game poison Alchemists rejoice.
- they have added difficulties according to later series convention: Picnic, Basic and Expert. I'm assuming Expert is 1:1 with the original game, and is what I'm playing on. You can change difficulties while in town.
- perhaps the most important effect on play through interface adjustments: you can bring up the monster codex in battle now, as in later games. I've not usually wanted to commit to elemental builds or strategies in these earliest games since memorizing all the affinities was tough--now that I can just consult the bestiary contextually in battle, I'm considering running an Alchemist or the like as the system now supports them with the relevant information.
- quests don't give EXP, so that's still an EOIII innovation.
- I don't remember if you could register formations in the original, but that's in here now. I don't usually do too much with farming parties, but the expedience of this makes it more likely to have a secondary party for class-exclusive quests, conditional drops, or such niche needs.
- the skill customization screen has been overhauled; it's no longer a vertical stack of all class skills, but the EOIV and forward flowchart. Given the relative simplicity of the original classes, it's fun to see it all laid out like this and visualize the progression.
- cannot say yet if any of the more famous bugs have been addressed. Is Immunize still a total damage-negater? Do you still need to sit at exactly 5 skill points for the Protector's anti-elemental skills to not trigger the dragons's status effects on their breaths? Is that one item going to stay clogging one of your precious 60 inventory slots forever if you do the relevant quest? Time will tell!
- mapping is about the best they could have done in absence of a touchscreen. For controller play, it's all handled with trigger and analog stick inputs, so there's a hard segregation of dungeon navigation and mapping controls once you internalize them. Playing on PC, you also have options to mix and match, in tandem in whatever combination, keyboard and mouse controls too--drawing with the mouse is exactly as you'd imagine and hope it to be. It's still not an equally fun experience as the original hardware made it--the element of tactile interaction simply isn't there--but it is a good emulation of the concept. You get used to the way screen estate is shared and arranged for the different information, too. Given that these are replays for me, I'm content to turn on automapping for the first time in the series--you'll still need to place your own icons and notes, so the experience isn't substantially different from the usual.
- speaking of PC, I'm just glad these ports just... seem to work out of the box in a stable and very adept fashion. No tinkering like with the FF pixel remasters is required or feels necessary to do; even the English font reads better in practice than in previews. This was a pretty important thing to nail because one of the best aspects of the DS era of the series was that the games just ran much better than what followed on 3DS; they were all a really smooth 60fps. Given how modest the hardware requirements are, you can easily pump these games up to whatever ludicrous framerate and resolution that they allow.
- all the artwork and visual assets scale extremely well in the high resolutions used today. The series was always a looker, and the way it has transferred to a different display medium is really gorgeous. I would play these versions just for that aspect alone.
- all classes having had a new fifth portrait added to the lineup is fun. You can have gimmick or challenge parties with no visual overlap, and Himukai's modern artstyle contrasts pretty significantly with this much older work.
I only booted it up and made a party, so I haven't tried the mapping functionality yet, but I am playing on Steam Deck so maybe the touchscreen works there? No idea. Either way, I'm going to try automapping and see how that goes. At the very least, the main two problems I had with the original DS version of the first game - the difficult to read font and extremely slow text speed - are fixed here, which is going to make playing that game much more pleasant. I'd like to play through each game in order, but the temptation to just jump to III - my favorite game in the series - is strong.
Each individual game in this trilogy costs about what I'd expect to pay for the entire package, which is giving me pause, so I think I'll wait for a sale, but I'm looking forward to seeing them on the TV!
That said, for folks who aren't aware, there is one thing to sweeten the pot for early purchasers:
That said, for folks who aren't aware, there is one thing to sweeten the pot for early purchasers:
I was planning on waiting for a sale, but… you make a persuasive argument
Managed to beat ... just about everything in EO3 except ... several of the post game bosses with just a Princess/forgot subclass and a Ninja/arbelist duo.
Got most of the way through 4 with a Landsknecht and a Medic before life murdered my free time.
Now I have to decide which duo do I run with my revisit of these games.
Got most of the way through 4 with a Landsknecht and a Medic before life murdered my free time.
Now I have to decide which duo do I run with my revisit of these games.
Wait how does 5 Ronin function as a viable party?
Death is the best status ailment. In EO it is the weeb who causes the most death.
Source: see shoguns in eo3
Also in EO1, Medics can turn anyone Into a frontline fighter.
Source: see shoguns in eo3
Also in EO1, Medics can turn anyone Into a frontline fighter.
Purple
(She/Her)
It has seriously been a while, but if I recall, the logic went something like:
- EO2, broadly, rewards rushdown tactics to the same absurd degree that EO1 rewards turtling.
- Ronin have really great initiative and raw damage output, and they've got builds that buff the hell out of speed and attack power, with little to no setup time/MP cost.
- They're also one of those classes that can cover pretty much all the bases on damage types and conditions, so you (almost?) never need swap-outs for item drops.
- Not having a healer is weirdly not a big deal. You enter with like almost a full load of cheap healing items, use'em as you go on the few wounds you take before everything dies, and naturally free the space up for drops.
- The two in the back aren't doing full damage, but whatever, you've still got the fast actions and you can rotate people around to save a few healing items/as people burn through MP.
- Against bosses it's actually pretty nice having a D&D style miss chance on the whole party too.
- EO2, broadly, rewards rushdown tactics to the same absurd degree that EO1 rewards turtling.
- Ronin have really great initiative and raw damage output, and they've got builds that buff the hell out of speed and attack power, with little to no setup time/MP cost.
- They're also one of those classes that can cover pretty much all the bases on damage types and conditions, so you (almost?) never need swap-outs for item drops.
- Not having a healer is weirdly not a big deal. You enter with like almost a full load of cheap healing items, use'em as you go on the few wounds you take before everything dies, and naturally free the space up for drops.
- The two in the back aren't doing full damage, but whatever, you've still got the fast actions and you can rotate people around to save a few healing items/as people burn through MP.
- Against bosses it's actually pretty nice having a D&D style miss chance on the whole party too.
Finished the first game.
I speak for myself when I say that people can get pretty exacting about video game remasters and ports and how the original work is translated over and preserved. It comes up a lot in context of RPGs especially, when the material most often the subject of rereleases needs or is put under some kind of process to revise the presentation, with varying results. In that context, these revisions of three DS games adapted to various big and small screen platforms are some of the best treatments I've seen in that respect, and I would guess to conjecture why. Most remasters are held back or compromised by a loss of the original assets to work from, making adaptation to larger resolutions and different displays difficult; you see it all the time in whatever "golden age" RPG that's brought back, awaiting with trepidation whether the backgrounds will be a blurry smear, an AI-upscaled approximation, or in rare cases a painstaking manually retouched recreation.
Etrian's presentation consists primarily of hand-drawn character, environment and monster art, which in its original context was digitized into the games, so whether they kept the original pieces around or could source them from various artbooks or other such repositories, all of it comes off looking "native" to the intended effect that's rarely the case with vintage RPGs of this sort. The other visual aspects consist of the 3D labyrinths assets, which to my eye look upscaled in the traditional sense, and the menus, which are likely newly created but all approximate the original interfaces the games ran on. Sure, there are nuances that will always speak favourably to the games's original contexts and hardware--but if authenticity and preservation is of interest to you, these are actually really significant releases for all that they thoughtfully and convincingly adapt. The most important thing these releases had to prove was that the series concept could survive outside of dual and touchscreen play, and while the seams are there, I think it has done that--and possibly opened a door towards one future the series could take.
I speak for myself when I say that people can get pretty exacting about video game remasters and ports and how the original work is translated over and preserved. It comes up a lot in context of RPGs especially, when the material most often the subject of rereleases needs or is put under some kind of process to revise the presentation, with varying results. In that context, these revisions of three DS games adapted to various big and small screen platforms are some of the best treatments I've seen in that respect, and I would guess to conjecture why. Most remasters are held back or compromised by a loss of the original assets to work from, making adaptation to larger resolutions and different displays difficult; you see it all the time in whatever "golden age" RPG that's brought back, awaiting with trepidation whether the backgrounds will be a blurry smear, an AI-upscaled approximation, or in rare cases a painstaking manually retouched recreation.
Etrian's presentation consists primarily of hand-drawn character, environment and monster art, which in its original context was digitized into the games, so whether they kept the original pieces around or could source them from various artbooks or other such repositories, all of it comes off looking "native" to the intended effect that's rarely the case with vintage RPGs of this sort. The other visual aspects consist of the 3D labyrinths assets, which to my eye look upscaled in the traditional sense, and the menus, which are likely newly created but all approximate the original interfaces the games ran on. Sure, there are nuances that will always speak favourably to the games's original contexts and hardware--but if authenticity and preservation is of interest to you, these are actually really significant releases for all that they thoughtfully and convincingly adapt. The most important thing these releases had to prove was that the series concept could survive outside of dual and touchscreen play, and while the seams are there, I think it has done that--and possibly opened a door towards one future the series could take.
Been taking time with it myself, and yeah, the mapping is fine, and the art looks great (Tokyo in particular there looks amazing, I'm glad to see). Just got to the second stratum last night, and I'm curious how the automapping will handle poison floors and whatnot - part of me is hoping it'll color them differently than regular floors so I don't have to put them all in manually, but probably not. Either way, I'll be fine with it.
Sprite
(He/Him/His)
EO is my favorite RPG series by, like, a lot, so I’m ecstatic at how good this collection is. I love the Untold games but they’re remixed to the point of basically being different games, so it’s nice to see the originals get some loving and remain so faithful while adding a couple of tweaks to bring the QOL up to par.
I’m playing III and it automatically switches colors on the marsh tiles, so hopefully it does the same for poison floors?
I assume no, since the context to play it in doesn't exist, and all the music in these releases is the PC-8801 FM original tracks (I think--that is what they opted for in the Untolds too as the alternate soundtrack when the hardware actually allowed for it, instead of the DS synth versions). As discussed upthread, Koshiro composed a new track for EOIII, but that seems to be the extent of any additions to the material.
There is this, if you want to mod the PC version, apparently, although that's only for the first game. That said, it wouldn't surprise me if someone did something similar for 2.
Getting the 3DS games to run at 60fps would do a lot for their presentation, and I would assume pretty much any console or potato rig would comfortably accommodate that kind of performance boost should they be converted to this model. Their top screen view used the 3DS's 15:9 aspect ratio, so it's not quite as direct a widescreen adaptation as it could be, but given all that's been done to make this very different display context feasible already, I'm sure they could get that to function too. I hope it happens eventually... especially now that 3DS is a closed system and that part of the series is as inaccessible as the DS run was before these ports came out.
Got my Asian region copy of this. Looking forward to murdering this guy again:
Sprite
(He/Him/His)
Did you get the stylus? I’m having trouble finding pictures of it.Got my Asian region copy of this. Looking forward to murdering this guy again:
No I did not. I did not need more random stuff in my junk draw. But a quick Google search did turn this out.
