A small Etrian Odyssey 3 update
Mar. 16th, 2011 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnI just caught myself thinking that I'd better finish off Apollo Justice, before remembering that it wasn't me but the game who had stopped abruptly without really letting me finish it.
Therefore, I suppose it's about time I wrote an update on where I am in Etrian Odyssey 3, as it's been a while since my initial post about it. I sort of burned myself out on it previously by playing it for such an incredible amount of time over the Christmas period - there doesn't seem to be an in-game timer for total playing time, and frankly I'm quite glad of that, because I think it would be well into the hundreds of hours already. I wonder if it's possible for a single player game to conceivably have a four-figure expected playing time - if it is, then there's no doubt that this is it (particularly if you count the amount of thinking and planning you feel compelled to do even outside it).
As far as party changes go, Cheech the ninja was the one on the shakiest ground with regard to usefulness - her distracting tactics were reasonable, but she just wasn't keeping up with the amount of damage dealt, something that could partly be blamed on the Ninja class having really rubbish equipment. Prince Sonata of Arctica over here, then, is her replacement. He was one of the experimental characters that I put together at the start of the game and then just left waiting at the guild in case they were ever needed - and despite starting ten levels behind the rest of my characters, he's proved an asset to the party. Instantly on adding him, the whole dynamic changed - suddenly I didn't have just one protector/healer, as Siegfried has the ability to restore the party's health between fights as well as providing a little boost each turn if his own health is at maximum, and I was so impressed with the effect that I eventually subclassed my otherwise fairly useless Farmer, Joe Grundy, to have those abilities as well and give some doubling up of the automatic healing.
If I were to suggest an improvement to the game, I would undoubtedly say that it needed multiple save slots, because you have to make so many important decisions blind with only a small conceivable period of experimentation if you opt to try out changes and then reload from your last save. The place where you open a new character class as well as the concept of subclasses for everyone else marks a point where you really have to think ahead to improve your party, to the point where someone put together a Javascript skill simulator that you can use to think up the optimal arrangement for your characters. I had put the final decision on this off in favour of gradual improvements (which I think is working to my advantage, because some routes involve sacrificing half your level count to re-class yourself), but the changes are definitely beginning to take more shape as I venture close to the end of the fourth stratum.
I knew that for my next big character change, Joe Grundy had to go - with the Farmer's abilities suddenly available as a subclass on somebody else, there was no more reason to keep someone who wasn't otherwise useful in a fight around. The first experiment was with a new class that my path through the game unlocked, the Yggdroids - and my one was called Megabyte. (Curiously, I can't find a picture of them anywhere on the entire Internet.) When you start a new character this late on in the game, it's striking how pathetic they are compared to the gradually-improved characters that you're familiar with, but they level up so quickly if you keep them around during difficult fights that you begin to notice some improvements before too long.
Having an android as a part-time Farmer seems like an unusual career choice, but my plan was to introduce him as another heavy hitter that could still have the resource gathering and escaping abilities on the side. Unfortunately, as he gradually got stronger I realized that the "heavy" part of the plan wasn't really working, as he had the same equipment shortage that the Ninja had, was doing about as much damage as the original Farmer had done by whacking people with his spade, and was regularly falling into his component pieces at the slightest poke from an enemy sword. Much later on, there's the promise of getting HP Cannon, a move that promises damage in the tens of thousands if you set it up right (the skill simulator says that it does more than 100% of your normal damage multiplied by the difference between your current and maximum health) but it seems so much trouble to obtain and use, requiring that you disable all arm, leg and head moves and get a prerequisite ability that sacrifices 127HP per turn whether you want it to or not. In the face of all this, I decided a more appropriate name to match his usefulness would be "Sinclair C5", and sent him back to the manufacturer before his standard warranty had even expired.
That left a slot open again, and I was beginning to realize that Bernard the monk was being a bit tripped up being a fairly decent hitter and a healer at the same time - both are useful properties, but you sometimes have to sacrifice an attack to heal, or vice versa. I also decided that there weren't any mistakes in the game that you couldn't really undo - just that it's a bit of a time investment to do so - and finally chose to retire the Farmer outright. This allows you to start again with a new character that's half the level of the old one and comes with bonus skill points, which is vastly preferable to starting with a completely new character like I'd done before.
This time, I introduced another Monk to the party, giving him the Farmer subclass and passing Joe Grundy's old Prince subclass on to Bernard. I decided to call him Cadfael, because the closer-to-character role of Monk/Detective is not available in this game. At half the level of the rest of my party, he was initially quite fragile but was able to hold his own quite quickly, and I've been getting him to go in to the Stratum 1 boss and beat him up solo for some quick levelling (it's strange remembering how difficult it used to seem). Therefore, my party is concentrating on redundancy and backup over diversity, with a Monk/Farmer, a Monk/Prince and a Prince/Monk, providing a triangle of protection with two resurrectors, two 'emergency' healers, two passive healers and guardians, and decent damage all round. We'll see how it works when I get to the fourth stratum boss - and I've still got two characters to subclass if I need to.
I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to write all that.
Therefore, I suppose it's about time I wrote an update on where I am in Etrian Odyssey 3, as it's been a while since my initial post about it. I sort of burned myself out on it previously by playing it for such an incredible amount of time over the Christmas period - there doesn't seem to be an in-game timer for total playing time, and frankly I'm quite glad of that, because I think it would be well into the hundreds of hours already. I wonder if it's possible for a single player game to conceivably have a four-figure expected playing time - if it is, then there's no doubt that this is it (particularly if you count the amount of thinking and planning you feel compelled to do even outside it).
As far as party changes go, Cheech the ninja was the one on the shakiest ground with regard to usefulness - her distracting tactics were reasonable, but she just wasn't keeping up with the amount of damage dealt, something that could partly be blamed on the Ninja class having really rubbish equipment. Prince Sonata of Arctica over here, then, is her replacement. He was one of the experimental characters that I put together at the start of the game and then just left waiting at the guild in case they were ever needed - and despite starting ten levels behind the rest of my characters, he's proved an asset to the party. Instantly on adding him, the whole dynamic changed - suddenly I didn't have just one protector/healer, as Siegfried has the ability to restore the party's health between fights as well as providing a little boost each turn if his own health is at maximum, and I was so impressed with the effect that I eventually subclassed my otherwise fairly useless Farmer, Joe Grundy, to have those abilities as well and give some doubling up of the automatic healing.If I were to suggest an improvement to the game, I would undoubtedly say that it needed multiple save slots, because you have to make so many important decisions blind with only a small conceivable period of experimentation if you opt to try out changes and then reload from your last save. The place where you open a new character class as well as the concept of subclasses for everyone else marks a point where you really have to think ahead to improve your party, to the point where someone put together a Javascript skill simulator that you can use to think up the optimal arrangement for your characters. I had put the final decision on this off in favour of gradual improvements (which I think is working to my advantage, because some routes involve sacrificing half your level count to re-class yourself), but the changes are definitely beginning to take more shape as I venture close to the end of the fourth stratum.
I knew that for my next big character change, Joe Grundy had to go - with the Farmer's abilities suddenly available as a subclass on somebody else, there was no more reason to keep someone who wasn't otherwise useful in a fight around. The first experiment was with a new class that my path through the game unlocked, the Yggdroids - and my one was called Megabyte. (Curiously, I can't find a picture of them anywhere on the entire Internet.) When you start a new character this late on in the game, it's striking how pathetic they are compared to the gradually-improved characters that you're familiar with, but they level up so quickly if you keep them around during difficult fights that you begin to notice some improvements before too long.
Having an android as a part-time Farmer seems like an unusual career choice, but my plan was to introduce him as another heavy hitter that could still have the resource gathering and escaping abilities on the side. Unfortunately, as he gradually got stronger I realized that the "heavy" part of the plan wasn't really working, as he had the same equipment shortage that the Ninja had, was doing about as much damage as the original Farmer had done by whacking people with his spade, and was regularly falling into his component pieces at the slightest poke from an enemy sword. Much later on, there's the promise of getting HP Cannon, a move that promises damage in the tens of thousands if you set it up right (the skill simulator says that it does more than 100% of your normal damage multiplied by the difference between your current and maximum health) but it seems so much trouble to obtain and use, requiring that you disable all arm, leg and head moves and get a prerequisite ability that sacrifices 127HP per turn whether you want it to or not. In the face of all this, I decided a more appropriate name to match his usefulness would be "Sinclair C5", and sent him back to the manufacturer before his standard warranty had even expired.
That left a slot open again, and I was beginning to realize that Bernard the monk was being a bit tripped up being a fairly decent hitter and a healer at the same time - both are useful properties, but you sometimes have to sacrifice an attack to heal, or vice versa. I also decided that there weren't any mistakes in the game that you couldn't really undo - just that it's a bit of a time investment to do so - and finally chose to retire the Farmer outright. This allows you to start again with a new character that's half the level of the old one and comes with bonus skill points, which is vastly preferable to starting with a completely new character like I'd done before.This time, I introduced another Monk to the party, giving him the Farmer subclass and passing Joe Grundy's old Prince subclass on to Bernard. I decided to call him Cadfael, because the closer-to-character role of Monk/Detective is not available in this game. At half the level of the rest of my party, he was initially quite fragile but was able to hold his own quite quickly, and I've been getting him to go in to the Stratum 1 boss and beat him up solo for some quick levelling (it's strange remembering how difficult it used to seem). Therefore, my party is concentrating on redundancy and backup over diversity, with a Monk/Farmer, a Monk/Prince and a Prince/Monk, providing a triangle of protection with two resurrectors, two 'emergency' healers, two passive healers and guardians, and decent damage all round. We'll see how it works when I get to the fourth stratum boss - and I've still got two characters to subclass if I need to.
I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to write all that.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 05:38 pm (UTC)I retired one of my spare sitting-on-the-bench farmers into an Yggdroid (which I imagine must have been a Robocop-esque transformation) just to have one of those on the bench, too--thank goodness I had like three or four spare Farmers just for whatever, as not having Mantis (my Yggdroid, because the default male sort of looks like that) start at level 1 was definitely not a use for spare Farmers I had foreseen, but that I was grateful to have nonetheless. Still, Mantis just... did not have anything that fit in with my current playstyle and there was simply no room for him on my already-figured-out team, so now he's sitting right back to sitting on the bench next to the other spare Farmers, who are no doubt looking at him with a fair degree of concern.
And don't worry about post length--Etrian Odyssey does that to people. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 12:40 am (UTC)It seems like an inconsistent and arbitrary restriction, in a game where you're otherwise free to do what you want - I suppose that it's not terribly logical for a human to spontaneously develop arm cannons and be able to shoot their head off at enemies, but at the same time, they've already got someone who can talk to animals and a class that has no trouble carrying an anti-aircraft-class ballistics weapon in their hands.
There must be some use for the class, but I can't really see one unless you really are meant to drag them around with 1HP and bind them all the time.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 12:53 am (UTC)But yeah, common consensus among GameFAQs posters at least is that Shoguns are just plain better than Yggdroids as far as bonus classes, but I stand by my decision because A) I already had my party figured out and thus both were equally useless to me, B) New Game Plus lets you go the other route and thus end up getting them both on the second go anyway, and C) following my heart plotwise just happened to lead me down the road that just happened to give me Yggdroids, so whatever.
Like many people in my back bench that I thought were just completely useless (but I may as well keep them Combat Studying anyway because why not,) Mantis will be overlooked for most of the actual main game but his... highly situational abilities may actually be useful for some specific encounters. I already know there's a sea quest with a fight whose conditional drop involves killing it with a blow that does over 5,000 damage, for example. Without having actually tried it, I am guessing the easiest way to get that would probably be to take in an Yggdroid with just enough HP to survive one tick of Overheat, then turn 1 Core Dump, turn 2 HP Cannon.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 06:00 pm (UTC)(It is worth noting for those reading in hindsight that the Hoplite/Prince thing ended up being a terrible idea after all, and I gave the Monarch March line back to Julian by clearing up room in his Gladiator side--what saved me is the fact that both of the big-name Gladiator attack skills I wanted ended up being a more efficient TP-for-damage deal at level 1 than they are at level 10. But my main point stands, regardless.)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 06:33 pm (UTC)I think that by sticking with them and making gradual improvements as I see them, rather than thinking about how good they could potentially be with everything set perfectly, is helping my sanity at this point. My adventurers have been working well enough for now (nearly all the way through the fourth stratum) that I don't feel the immediate need to look ahead and redo them. Having said that, it's nagging that my Arbalist has a skill point spent on Chop from the phase of the game where I didn't know what I was doing at all, naturally, and I can think of better ways to arrange things if I were to reset their skill points. And there are a few Bandage abilities that were useful at the start of the game and not so much now. And I'm not totally sure if the Gladiator should switch to swords, because though it means passing off the Yagrush club to someone else, the sword abilities are better. Maybe to concentrate more on the Arbalist's full-party Barrage abilities. And I've got too much in Fist Mastery, for someone who doesn't use it. And...
no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 07:41 pm (UTC)Horribly BreakPlay Pokemon Blue (and a page each of splashing Yellow and Gold/Silver just for fun) and decided the pre-MissingNo. :< face is just as icon-worthy in its own way.