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One end of the dungeon
Mar. 23rd, 2011 08:24 pmIs this the heaviest metal to have ever been birthed from a PC-88? It might well be. Or if your ears can't handle that, this piano version of the first dungeon music is extraordinarily wonderful for very different reasons. The soundtrack to Etrian Odyssey is reminding me why I used to love game music - it's got to be good seeing as you're going to be spending so much time with each stratum theme throughout the game, and the first and fifth ones in particular are now stuck in my mind. I only recently noticed that there was a "Super Arrange" remake album for the game when I found it on Youtube, with every piece of music seeming to have a title of at least seven words, such as "Disturbances: Hoist the Sword and Pride in the Heart". The battle music becomes something resembling Soul Blade when performed like this, and the alternative one starts off promisingly as well, but then chooses to use a saxophone as the lead for the main part and it serves to turn it into the theme tune from Neighbours.
I've sort of completed the game now, after a burst of enthusiasm for it led me through the labyrinthine last(ish - Atlus will not let you get away that easily) stratum very quickly. Right up until the end, it still manages to play tricks on you - the kind of things that you know are going to make your life very difficult but that you have to grudgingly admit are clever in the way they're sprung on you. The biggest of those was when I realized that I was effectively dealing with a radar jammer, and would have to go without something I had taken for granted throughout the game - which made things much more difficult than you would think.
I managed to complete the sea, as well. It's easy to forget how much progress you make in that throughout the game from your occasional dips into it - from being able to sail a paltry six squares and make it as far as the local lighthouse before giving up, to having many times that amount of turns and a sail that boosts your movement to multiple squares (making actually navigating through currents and whirlpools a puzzle of Laytonesque proportions), so that you can go all the way to the Northern Continent and rediscover the city of Aeaea (which surely isn't the name of a city so much as the chorus of Old McDonald Had a Farm). As one of the many things that I fell in love with about this game, once you discover each city you're taken back to the increasingly confident harbour master, who enthusiastically quizzes the mute protagonists like he's talking to Sooty. "Welcome back! ...What's that? You made it to the Northern Continent? Oh, that's good, we have a consignment of squid elbows that needs to go there. Would you go and give them to the Yitshak of Aeiou? You will? Marvellous!" You're also given missions to complete in these places as you discover them, and I haven't really bothered with many of them - it's so strange to just see a "100.00%" for exploration of the sea against absolutely anything on the Guild Card screen, seeing as I've only got three of the ten or so medals for an entire run-through of the game.
I had expressed before that I knew it would take me a while before I got past the last boss, and that I would have to rely on some clever setup and tactics to best it, but in the end I just found a really big crossbow instead. Once you've completed it, of course, you're pointed right back to the start of the game and invited to go down the path that you didn't choose the first time (it gives you your existing map, but obligingly re-blocks all the shortcuts you've opened, so that your map is in fact wrong). I'm already near the end of the first stratum again...
It's just occurred to me that I still don't know what the adjective 'Etrian' means.
I've sort of completed the game now, after a burst of enthusiasm for it led me through the labyrinthine last(ish - Atlus will not let you get away that easily) stratum very quickly. Right up until the end, it still manages to play tricks on you - the kind of things that you know are going to make your life very difficult but that you have to grudgingly admit are clever in the way they're sprung on you. The biggest of those was when I realized that I was effectively dealing with a radar jammer, and would have to go without something I had taken for granted throughout the game - which made things much more difficult than you would think.
I managed to complete the sea, as well. It's easy to forget how much progress you make in that throughout the game from your occasional dips into it - from being able to sail a paltry six squares and make it as far as the local lighthouse before giving up, to having many times that amount of turns and a sail that boosts your movement to multiple squares (making actually navigating through currents and whirlpools a puzzle of Laytonesque proportions), so that you can go all the way to the Northern Continent and rediscover the city of Aeaea (which surely isn't the name of a city so much as the chorus of Old McDonald Had a Farm). As one of the many things that I fell in love with about this game, once you discover each city you're taken back to the increasingly confident harbour master, who enthusiastically quizzes the mute protagonists like he's talking to Sooty. "Welcome back! ...What's that? You made it to the Northern Continent? Oh, that's good, we have a consignment of squid elbows that needs to go there. Would you go and give them to the Yitshak of Aeiou? You will? Marvellous!" You're also given missions to complete in these places as you discover them, and I haven't really bothered with many of them - it's so strange to just see a "100.00%" for exploration of the sea against absolutely anything on the Guild Card screen, seeing as I've only got three of the ten or so medals for an entire run-through of the game.
I had expressed before that I knew it would take me a while before I got past the last boss, and that I would have to rely on some clever setup and tactics to best it, but in the end I just found a really big crossbow instead. Once you've completed it, of course, you're pointed right back to the start of the game and invited to go down the path that you didn't choose the first time (it gives you your existing map, but obligingly re-blocks all the shortcuts you've opened, so that your map is in fact wrong). I'm already near the end of the first stratum again...
It's just occurred to me that I still don't know what the adjective 'Etrian' means.
