Well. The most important question, then:
"How's your pie, mister?"
"Soooooo good."
*self-satisfied smirk*
Intro
Etrian Odyssey is a delicious, delicious pie; literally everything I wanted it to be, but dared not hope it'd be. It MORE than fulfills the gap that the cancelled GBA Wizardry game caused, as far as handheld dungeon crawlers are concerned. I put about 3-4 hours into the game last night, and another half an hour this morning. I made enough mistakes last night that I inevitably decided to restart (from scratch) this morning, and within that half-hour session, managed to acquire roughly 50% of my lost progress. So I definitely made mistakes last night. Alas. Learning curve.
It plays like a combination of Dragon Quest (battle system, physical/elemental system, some skills), Wizardry (perspective, narrative style, game structure, some skills, character development), and Digital Devil Saga/Shin Megami Tensei (perspective, some skills, character development, on-screen indicator for incoming random battles). It's a perfect melding of some of my favorite RPG styles, all polished off with a classic Wizardry/AD&D flair. I won't go into too many details regarding the actual combat, exploration, or leveling/statistics mechanics, since those are fairly typical if you're familiar with a solid number of the RPG franchises I've listed in this paragraph. All you really need to know is that both exploration and combat are in the first person perspective, the touchscreen is used exclusively to draw and customize maps; jot down notes; occasionally doubles as a virtual keyboard when necessary; and that leveling up nets you increases in HPs, TPs, your stats, and 1 skill point.
The following are a combination of my early impressions, musings, tips, pointers, and potential strategies. Very preliminary stuff. Not much in the way of spoilers (nothing you won't learn from the manual or the first few minutes of playing...)
Characters
I independently came up with what I felt was the most 'traditional' initial party for this type of game:
Guild name: Hylia
Front row:
1 Protector (paladin type). A female I named Theusse.
1 Landsknecht (warrior type). A male I named Rath-En.
1 Survivalist (ranger type). A male I named Al-Abran.
Back row:
1 Alchemist (elemental mage type). A male I named Diamede.
1 Medic (healer type). A female I named Firinel.
As it turns out, this is the very same party that the director of the game (also the director of Atlus' SMT series) prefers and recommends, according to interviews with him (or so I've heard.)
The Protector is strong in offense, and the strongest class in defense. Uses swords and shields to great effect. Can learn minor healing spells to back up a Medic. Probably not good enough to REPLACE a Medic, particularly in the late game. Can develop all kinds of defensive buffs (focus enemy attacks on herself while boosting her own defense, eventually providing both defensive AND elemental defenses to the whole party, etc.)
The Landsknecht is a fairly typical fighter type. One of the strongest in offensive abilities, and fairly worthy in the defensive. Can specialize in swords or axes skills (or both), with a broad range of attack skills to suit. As you'd imagine, many of his skills require that he have a matching weapon type equipped. So it might be a better idea to have two of these guys, one that specializes in axes, 1 in swords, if it comes to that. Features a decided lack of elemental abilities. Can learn to multi-hit for massive damage (heh) eventually.
The Survivalist is weaker than other fighter types, and actually works fairly well in both rows. He uses bows as his weapon of choice, and has quite a few abilities that require that he have one equipped. Can eventually develop abilities that allow him to hit multiple enemies. Also seems to be the only class (so far) that features multiple harvesting skills (more on this later).
The Alchemist is your typical 'black mage'. Awful offensive and defensive abilities, but very strong in elemental magic, he belongs in the back row exclusively. Seems to have 4 main ability trees: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison. Much like in Dragon Quest, you'll encounter enemies that are very strong against physical attacks, and particularly weak against elemental attacks. This is where the Alchemist becomes absolutely vital. Some enemies, on top of being weak to any elemental attack, are additionally weak against specific elemental attacks. In such cases, any elemental spell will do increased damage, but the specific elemental spell they're weak against will do even more! Do not disregard the Poison branch. It is a brutal magic type in this game, particularly in the early game.
The Medic is your typical 'white mage'. Another back row creature, she has better offensive and defensive capabilities than the Alchemist, but far less offensive skills. Her domain is that of healing damage and curing status afflictions. She also has very handy passive skills (more on that later) that allow her to perform very minor (but TP-free) healing on all after every battle, boost chances that enemies will drop loot, auto-regenerate her own TP, etc.
The two other initially open character classes are specialists. I don't know much about them, since I haven't really created these characters yet.
The Dark Hunter is weak fighter type (does better in the front than in the back) that also can inflict nasty status effects. Not so strong in either offensive or defense, but status effects can be very debilitating. Poison does vicious damage, even early on in the game, and the Dark Hunter also learns binding abilities. (Head, arms, legs, etc., can be bound, limiting skills that relate to those body parts. Elemental and healing abilities from the head, weapon abilities from the arms and legs, as appropriate).
The Troubadour seems fairly useless in combat. I would imagine that he specializes in buffs, boosts, and harvesting, but I haven't even felt compelled to examine his skill tree. Yawn.
Additionally, there are two unlockable character classes. Again, details are sketchy since I've yet to unlock them.
The Ronin is, I believe, is the most powerful (offensively-speaking) fighter type. He seems to have the ability to flow from stance to stance, which presumably affects combat options and/or effectiveness against certain types of enemies. I think he also lacks elemental skills, and I do know that changing stances takes up combat turns. Seems like a more strategic fighter class to use.
The Hexer seems to be like a back-row mage-type version of the Dark Hunter. Much weaker in in offense and defense, clearly, but also with the ability to inflict all kinds of nasty status ailments. Additionally, I believe he has the ability to dominate, and eventually control monsters. Seems like more of a strategic mage class to use.
Skills
Skills are generally broken up into two categories: Active and passive. Active skills have to be selected (in or out of combat) and cost TPs. They are further broken up into categories such as offensive combat abilities, defensive combat abilities, and curative abilities (in and out of combat). Passive skills are buffs and miscellaneous abilities that are 'always on' and do not cost TPs. These can boost core abilities as well as your character's statistics, such as Strength, Vitality, HPs, TPs, etc. Upon leveling up, you gain 1 skill point, which can be applied to learning an available (unlocked) skill, or used to boost your mastery of an already-learned skill. I believe that skills are mastered once you reach level 10 (put 10 points into it), though there seem to be significant bonuses at the skill level 5 and skill level 10 marks.
You can unlock new skills by meeting skill pre-requisites, which can be checked by going into your skill (Custom) menu and selecting (with the A button) any locked (greyed out) skill. A resulting window will tell you what the requirements are for unlocking that skill. Typically, unlocking a skill requires that you raise an earlier skill within that same "branch" of the skill "tree". For example, a Medic with a level 1 Healer skill can learn Cure (first healing magic), with a level 2 Healer skill can learn Patch Us (very minor but TP-free auto-heal for all party members after every battle). Etc. Note: Unlocking a skill only makes it AVAILABLE for learning. You still have to put at least 1 point into it to be able to start using it! Characters max their levels at 70, so assuming that there is NO other way of accruing skill points save for leveling your character, it seems that we'll be limited to 72-80 skills points per character (more on this later). This will force you to consider well which skills you merely learn, and which you fully master. With a couple dozen different skills per character, there is absolutely no way to fully master a broad range of class abilities with only 1 character of that class.
There is a miscellaneous category of skills that can only be utilized in very special circumstances, and generally do not cost TPs either. Primary amongst these are the harvesting skills, of which I've encountered three different ones: Chop, Mine, and Take. Most character classes can only ever learn one of these, though the Survivalist has all three! Basically, scattered throughout the Labyrinth are "item points" that can be accessed from the main exploration view. Approach an interactive mine or swath of flowers and start harvesting. You can only harvest so many times per game-day. The higher your relevent harvesting skill (and the more characters that have these skills), the more you can harvest each day. You can check how many remaining harvests you have for that day (and for which item point types) in your main party menu (hit Y).
Missions, Quests, Cash, Equipment
Most dungeon crawlers provide little incentive for playing them save for the fun of dungeon crawling and powering up your characters. Etrian Odyssey has all this, and more. The game constantly provides you with excuses to explore and battle, in the form of missions and quests. Missions are jobs made available by Etria's ruling body, whereas quests are jobs taken from patrons of the local pub. Both involve lots of exploring and battling, usually in order to map parts of the labyrinth, slay a certain number of specific baddies, or accrue a certain number of materials. Rewards include cash and/or items. The game logs quests and missions separately, and you can always pull up a menu that lists which quests and missions are active, and which have already been completed.
Etria's ruling body also invites you to log all encountered monsters and materials in one of two compendiums. Once logged, the appropriate entries are kept updated. You can always return to the town hall in order to check up on the stats and drops of monsters, or the selling price of materials.
You receive no cash (en) for slaying monsters. You need to sell materials to Etria's shopkeeper for money, and complete quests and missions. Monsters drop judicious amounts of materials, each monster in the game carries anywhere from 0-3 different types of materials, and once you get them to drop them, your monster compendium is updated with this info. You can even tell how many items new enemies are capable of holding (just not which ones until they actually drop them), since the monster compendium will show 0-3 '???'s initially.
Selling materials to Etria's local shopkeeper is also crucial for another reason. Since the shopkeeper died and the store was inherited by his youthful granddaughter, she is unable to keep her store stocked with materials, thus, she's largely sold out of her best weaponry. By constantly providing her with materials, you're allowing her to create and stock better and better equipment. Sell her a few beast bones, and she'll make Bone Axes available. Provide her with 5 Hard Shells and 5 Hardwoods, and she'll make Hand Axes available, etc. There's a steady and natural progression to how new equipment is unlocked, and it makes for a very satisfying mechanic, much less contrived than most RPGs of this type.
Equipment takes the form of weapons, armors, shields, helmets, gauntlets, and accessories, though apparently you can only equip 1 of any 4 categories at once. Typically, this'll be 1 weapon, 1 armor, leaving 2 open slots for either shields, helmets, gauntlets, or accessories. Some of these miscellaneous armor types protect against certain kinds of damages or boost some statistics, as well as providing defense. Accessories can provide defense, boost HPs or TPs, or provide other atypical bonuses.
FOEs and Other Complications
Etrian Odyssey's version of bosses; they start showing up on the second floor. They stand for 'Field On Enemies' in the Japanese version, and something esoteric and Latin (edit: Formido Oppugnatura Exsequens) in our version. In either case, they're essentially Wandering Calamities. Unlike regular monster encounters, FOEs show up on the map, and for every space you move, they move one as well. Some seem to travel along set paths, others randomly, and yet others 'aggro' and chase you around, should you be silly enough to attract their attention unwittingly. They are incredibly powerful, and many FOEs should not be tackled until you delve deeper into the Labyrinth and power up your levels, equipment, and skills, returning to the earlier levels only when you feel ready to take on those FOEs.
Here's the rub, you'll be spending a good portion of your exploration dodging these beasties. Inevitably, during said dodges, you will fall prey to regular (random) encounters. You may have noticed, during your earlier explorations, that the combat screen keeps a count of the number of turns that have passed for that engagement. The reason? For every full combat turn, FOEs will move one square on the map. If you're being chased by a FOE, and you get slowed down by regular battles, it will catch up to you, resulting in sequential battles (without an opportunity to recover in between.) It's even possible to queue up multiple FOE encounters, if you're particularly slow, clumsy, or unlucky. A sequence of difficult boss battles... yikes.
As with some other Atlus RPGs, there is an on-screen indicator (in the exploration view) of the likelihood of engaging in a random battle. A little pulsing orb can be found on the lower right hand corner of the top (main) screen. It'll pulse from blue to green, to yellow, to orange, and finally to red. The closer the color is to red, the greater the chance of engaging a random battle with the next step taken. Keep this in mind when hunting (or avoiding) FOEs.
Pointers
-You create (and name) a guild of novice adventurers, and can recruit (create) up to 16 characters spanning up to 9 (7 initially) classes. You can name them, select their classes, and then choose from 4 unique portraits (2 of each gender per class).
-I do not recommend creating "jack of all trade, master of none" classes. Starting characters begin with 3 skill points, and only gain 1 point per level. With a couple dozen skills (each which can be powered up to 10 times) per class, and a theoretical max of 72 skill points, there is absolutely no way to fully master a broad range of skills. Specializing may be key.
-Characters can have respecced at a 10 character level cost. You can elect to sacrifice 10 character levels (and presumably the 10 skill points that go with them) to unlearn all of your skills and re-apply those skill points however you wish. Beats creating a brand new character and raising him/her from scratch.
-Additionally, upon achieving level 30, you may 'retire' that character and replace him with a special enhanced version, which begins at level 1, but starts off with 10 skill points. (I'm unsure if this is 10 more than the usual 3, making 13 starting skill points, or just 10). This retiring mechanic cannot be 'stacked'. Meaning, you can't then retire that enhanced character when he/she attains level 30 and replace him with a newly enhanced character that has 20 bonus skill points.
-Dungeon floor 1 has two Chop item points. Make sure that every character that can learn chop, has at least one skill point applied to it. Make sure to harvest as much as you can each game-day. It's a great way to get cash and early equipment upgrades unlocked at the shop.
-Alternately, do not teach ANY harvesting skills to your core adventuring party. Instead, create a team of 5 Survivalists who specialize exclusively in harvesting, and use them for your daily item grind!
-Don't spend TOO much money on weapon upgrades before completing dungeon floor 1. If you fully explore floor 1, you'll find a decent sword that'll save you quite a bit of cash. Your initial weapons are good enough, particularly if you have your Healer master Patch Up before she reaches level 5. Also, with the materials you'll accrue exploring level 1, you'll unlock quite a few weapon upgrades. Focus on buying those, not the early ones. That's just wasted cash. Good initial investments include a Wood Bow for a Survivalist, and Staffs for the Medic and Alchemist (they have the same strength as their starting Wands, but boost their Tec stat by a level!)
-I DO recommend that you buy the HP boosting accessories for your front row fighters (available upon start) and TP boosting accessories for your back row mages (available by harvesting (and selling) 1 Red Fruit using the Chop command, found at either of the two Item Points on level 1). The cheap miscellaneous armors (particularly Agility boosting Leaf Boots) are good early investments too.
-Do NOT start selling Soft Skins and Hard Shells (enemy drops), and Hardwoods (Chop harvest items) until you have 7, 5, and 5 of them to spare. You'll need those for 2 very early (dungeon floor 1) quests.
-Materials. Does your Monstrous Compendium suggest that a particular baddy is supposed to drop an additional material that simply refuses to pop up? Try finishing the creature off with an elemental attack. For example, B3F's Mandrake will drop a Vine or a Hardwood with great frequency, but unless you kill it with a Fire spell or attack, it'll never drop you the Charcoal...
-Pro-tip: You can continue mapping during combat! (Or hanging around a shop, resting at the inn, wandering around town, investigating a point of interest in the dungeon, speaking to an NPC... You get the point!)
-Speaking of combat, if you feel the urge to use your Boost power, do it! Initiating the Boost does NOT take up your turn, and if you leave and rest, you'll lose it anyway. It pretty significantly powers up both your physical and magical offenses so far, that I can tell. Probably defense as well.
-Hold A button to speed-select your combat commands (defaults to Attack if first round, otherwise whatever command you used in the last round). Holding A while the combat turn plays out also runs it in fast-forward.
-Pro-tip: Noticed that your inventory gets conveniently sorted when selling? You can sell whole groups of one material at a time by pressing Y at the sell menu, instead of A (which just sells them one by one.)
-Getting poisoned can viciously decimate your forces. However, if you get afflicted by that status condition, yet manage to end the battle within that same round, you will NOT sustain the usual end-of-turn poison damage... and poison is cured after combat!
-On the topic of healing, don't waste too many points on Cure. Learn Salve as early as possible. It essentially heals as much as Cure, but the entire party at once, and only costs 1 additional TP to cast! It's MUCH more efficient than Cure, and consequently will end up saving you quite a bit more TP per dungeon run!
-Spent time analyzing a FOE's movement? Ready to take advantage of a distraction? Engage a FOE from behind (when it's arrow on the map is pointing directly away from you) and pre-empt the bastard! Free combat round ftw!
Whew... As I said, I'm primarily trying to start a focused discussion. Material for a new thread? Or is this appropriate? (I wouldn't want to interrupt people's discussions on possible interpretations of the word 'guild'...)
