Etrian Nightmare
Nov. 14th, 2013 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnI had a "normal game turns possessed and does frightening things" dream last night! It's been ages - I can't say I missed them.
Etrian Odyssey was the subject this time, as I've been playing rather a lot of the fourth game over the last couple of days. In this dream, the labyrinth I was in was a walled garden, and the maze walls were made of trellises of brightly coloured flowers that you could just about see through.
I had an ability that would allow my party to take shortcuts through the maze - I would select it, it would say "A path is cleared through the flowers..." and then the walls would become transparent and I would be able to walk through them for about three steps before the effect wore off. After skipping a long route around a winding path I had mapped previously with this method, I came to another wall and tried activating the ability again.
This time, it said more uncertainly "A path is cleared through the flowers?" before whiting out the screen and teleporting me into a room right in front of a huge plant monster, with tentacles and a large red blossom head. Angrily, the game said "DIDN'T YOU FORGET TO READ SOMETHING?" - and I went into the menus and checked the ability's description, where it indeed said "Allows you to walk through walls. Can only be used once per floor." I had read this before, but I had assumed that if you went away and came back again, you would be allowed to use it again.
Both the plant monster and I were entangled in green vines, and so I went into the menu and used an ability to free the party from binds - an ability never used outside battles normally. This freed me, but gave me the message of "2 turns until FOE is freed". I stepped away a couple of squares and then the vines burst, letting the FOE loose along with several others that I saw appear on the map - and these things could move independently without waiting for the player's turn.
I dodged through the room trying to make it to an exit on the west side, but as I reached the door I fumbled for the button to open it, and one of the FOEs ran into me. On entering the battle screen, it revealed itself to be a harmless-looking tiny blue dragon, so I took my chances and attacked it - but before I could act, its sprite opened its mouth wide and the battle message reported "Dragon called for its mum!" - adding a gigantic dragon to the battle.
I struggled to flee from the fight and escaped with one party member barely alive, trying to think of my available options for getting out - then I was suddenly reading accounts from other people on GameFAQs who had encountered this portion of the game. I commiserated with them before remembering that I had an Ariadne Thread in my inventory, which I used to escape the dungeon and also the dream.
Back in real life, I have actually completed Etrian Odyssey 4 now, after having just forgotten to post about it ever since my first impressions of the demo. To review it quickly, it's different from the other Etrian Odyssey games - it's also fantastic for it. It also feels significantly easier - I didn't even feel the need to subclass people until the final boss, and even then it was mostly just to get a quick skill point boost - but I feel I will be swiftly be eating those words as I embark upon the unfettered sadism of the post-game dungeon.
Etrian Odyssey was the subject this time, as I've been playing rather a lot of the fourth game over the last couple of days. In this dream, the labyrinth I was in was a walled garden, and the maze walls were made of trellises of brightly coloured flowers that you could just about see through.
I had an ability that would allow my party to take shortcuts through the maze - I would select it, it would say "A path is cleared through the flowers..." and then the walls would become transparent and I would be able to walk through them for about three steps before the effect wore off. After skipping a long route around a winding path I had mapped previously with this method, I came to another wall and tried activating the ability again.
This time, it said more uncertainly "A path is cleared through the flowers?" before whiting out the screen and teleporting me into a room right in front of a huge plant monster, with tentacles and a large red blossom head. Angrily, the game said "DIDN'T YOU FORGET TO READ SOMETHING?" - and I went into the menus and checked the ability's description, where it indeed said "Allows you to walk through walls. Can only be used once per floor." I had read this before, but I had assumed that if you went away and came back again, you would be allowed to use it again.
Both the plant monster and I were entangled in green vines, and so I went into the menu and used an ability to free the party from binds - an ability never used outside battles normally. This freed me, but gave me the message of "2 turns until FOE is freed". I stepped away a couple of squares and then the vines burst, letting the FOE loose along with several others that I saw appear on the map - and these things could move independently without waiting for the player's turn.
I dodged through the room trying to make it to an exit on the west side, but as I reached the door I fumbled for the button to open it, and one of the FOEs ran into me. On entering the battle screen, it revealed itself to be a harmless-looking tiny blue dragon, so I took my chances and attacked it - but before I could act, its sprite opened its mouth wide and the battle message reported "Dragon called for its mum!" - adding a gigantic dragon to the battle.
I struggled to flee from the fight and escaped with one party member barely alive, trying to think of my available options for getting out - then I was suddenly reading accounts from other people on GameFAQs who had encountered this portion of the game. I commiserated with them before remembering that I had an Ariadne Thread in my inventory, which I used to escape the dungeon and also the dream.
Back in real life, I have actually completed Etrian Odyssey 4 now, after having just forgotten to post about it ever since my first impressions of the demo. To review it quickly, it's different from the other Etrian Odyssey games - it's also fantastic for it. It also feels significantly easier - I didn't even feel the need to subclass people until the final boss, and even then it was mostly just to get a quick skill point boost - but I feel I will be swiftly be eating those words as I embark upon the unfettered sadism of the post-game dungeon.
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no subject
Date: 2013-11-15 07:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-15 03:07 pm (UTC)Did you experience anything in particular on a more… neurological level while escaping the dream with the Ariadne Thread?
I'm imagining that “Didn't you forget to read something?” in the same voice you used for the “Awake already?” from Frog Fractions. And the “A path is cleared through the flowers…” in one of those airy tones like in Chasm, and “A path is cleared through the flowers?” like in The Stanley Parable.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-16 07:32 pm (UTC)D.F.