DunDunDunpachi
Patient MembeR
So I've fallen hard for this little gem, passing the time during lockdown. For some personal context, I am a long-time fan of "real" roguelikes. Y'know, the old ascii dungeon crawlers such as Nethack, Angband, ADOM, Gearhead, etc.
I've never been in love with the Mystery Dungeon series nor console roguelikes in general. They've always been very simple in comparison to what I grew up with. That's not a bad thing, per se, but after getting used to a feast, I'm not going to be satisfied with a snack. The console offerings are always short on gear, on classes, on total number of monsters, on the uses for each item, etc. There have been a few non-PC standouts over the years like Izuna, Siralim, and Z.H.P, but for the most part I haven't been captured with the newer stuff.
I'm also not a superfan of the overall Etrian series. Excellent art style and RPG mechanics but I'm not typically into 1st-person dungeon crawlers.
(obligatory picture to break up the wall o text)
That said, I'm always watching the non-PC offerings in the roguelike genre, and I think Etrian M.D. might be one of the few that meets my expectations. It has enough meat. Two major features that hook me are the D.O.Es (similar to Etrian's F.O.E boss enemies) and being able to use a full party of 4. The majority of roguelikes are a solo affair, and most don't throw hard enemies at you (they just wear you down with attrition).
Being able to customize your full party is awesome. I love matching up skills to combo with other class skills (like the landsknecht's elemental Links plus the Gunner's elemental shots). You can wreck enemies and bosses if you use all the mechanics, or you can die in just 1 or 2 hits when you venture beyond your party's capabilities. It makes the game easier if you pay attention, mitigating the typical roguelike randomness that can sink your crawl unexpectedly. It's still challenging, but the challenge feels surmountable.
You normally command the leader of your party and the up-to-three followers do their own thing. The AI is pretty smart -- using the appropriate healing skills, attacking from a distance, and leveraging the correct elemental weaknesses -- and you can tweak it further by omitting your choice of certain skills from the AI's list of choices. There's a 'Burst' mode that lets you manually command every member of the party, and this is also how boss battles are conducted. This is where you get to combine skills in the exact way you want for maximum destruction. Since the AI is solid, I actually prefer controlling just the leader 95% of the time. Controlling every character all the time would slow down the dungeon-crawling.
I also like the town-building and fort-building.
Town building metes out content and upgrades but gives some incentive. I mean, most roguelikes have no narrative structure at all. I'm okay with that, but I don't mind a carrot on the stick, either. The fort-building is pretty cool. It "locks" the dungeon structure -- not the layout of each floor, just the overall structure -- and allows you to garrison your other guild members there to passively level up. This solves one of the most prevalent RPG issues: the guild members stationed at forts level up almost as quickly as your main party. This allows you to swap members in and out to try out different party combinations without needing to invest a ton of grinding each time to get new members up to snuff. There's a guild management feature allowing you to save party configurations. The game wants you to experiment and gives you the QoL tools to do so without much hassle.
Really impressed, and a bummer that the sequel never came to the West. Hopefully they'll make a sequel to this spinoff for the Switch someday.
I've never been in love with the Mystery Dungeon series nor console roguelikes in general. They've always been very simple in comparison to what I grew up with. That's not a bad thing, per se, but after getting used to a feast, I'm not going to be satisfied with a snack. The console offerings are always short on gear, on classes, on total number of monsters, on the uses for each item, etc. There have been a few non-PC standouts over the years like Izuna, Siralim, and Z.H.P, but for the most part I haven't been captured with the newer stuff.
I'm also not a superfan of the overall Etrian series. Excellent art style and RPG mechanics but I'm not typically into 1st-person dungeon crawlers.
(obligatory picture to break up the wall o text)
That said, I'm always watching the non-PC offerings in the roguelike genre, and I think Etrian M.D. might be one of the few that meets my expectations. It has enough meat. Two major features that hook me are the D.O.Es (similar to Etrian's F.O.E boss enemies) and being able to use a full party of 4. The majority of roguelikes are a solo affair, and most don't throw hard enemies at you (they just wear you down with attrition).
Being able to customize your full party is awesome. I love matching up skills to combo with other class skills (like the landsknecht's elemental Links plus the Gunner's elemental shots). You can wreck enemies and bosses if you use all the mechanics, or you can die in just 1 or 2 hits when you venture beyond your party's capabilities. It makes the game easier if you pay attention, mitigating the typical roguelike randomness that can sink your crawl unexpectedly. It's still challenging, but the challenge feels surmountable.
You normally command the leader of your party and the up-to-three followers do their own thing. The AI is pretty smart -- using the appropriate healing skills, attacking from a distance, and leveraging the correct elemental weaknesses -- and you can tweak it further by omitting your choice of certain skills from the AI's list of choices. There's a 'Burst' mode that lets you manually command every member of the party, and this is also how boss battles are conducted. This is where you get to combine skills in the exact way you want for maximum destruction. Since the AI is solid, I actually prefer controlling just the leader 95% of the time. Controlling every character all the time would slow down the dungeon-crawling.
I also like the town-building and fort-building.
Town building metes out content and upgrades but gives some incentive. I mean, most roguelikes have no narrative structure at all. I'm okay with that, but I don't mind a carrot on the stick, either. The fort-building is pretty cool. It "locks" the dungeon structure -- not the layout of each floor, just the overall structure -- and allows you to garrison your other guild members there to passively level up. This solves one of the most prevalent RPG issues: the guild members stationed at forts level up almost as quickly as your main party. This allows you to swap members in and out to try out different party combinations without needing to invest a ton of grinding each time to get new members up to snuff. There's a guild management feature allowing you to save party configurations. The game wants you to experiment and gives you the QoL tools to do so without much hassle.
Really impressed, and a bummer that the sequel never came to the West. Hopefully they'll make a sequel to this spinoff for the Switch someday.
