#eomd

Technical stuffs:

This game could have been a little bit more polished when it came to the ai. I don’t want to beat on it too much, as it wasn’t a really big problem for me, but my party was rather derpy. There have been many instances where I was shouting “NO I DON’T WANT TO USE THE DANG RESTORE SCROLL, LEAVE ME ALONE” to someone who is paralyzed and could easily be un-paralyzed by walking into them. Moreso, I practically had to bar my entire team from doing any skills (save for the medic) because they’re absolutely tp crazy. I couldn’t get past a couple of floors during the first part of the game without having tp problems. Sure, I could leave only one skill for the ai but from my experience, that’d be the only move they would do... and I’m far too lazy to always order everyone individually. I guess you get my point, kinda.

Story:

Nothing too spectacular, but enough to keep me pretty entertained. A good chunk of my time was following where the story might lead (I’m a sucker for those kind of things tbh) and I found the little side-story about Mr. Magan’s fanclub hilarious. I don’t want to put too many spoilers here, but I was rather surprised I guessed the ending correctly ^^;

Characters:

Sasha’s an innocent cinnamon roll too pure for this world. ‘Nuff said. Hahaha, anyway, I really like the characters. I felt like there was some room for character development with a lot of the npcs, but what the game provided was enough for me to scrape by. Don’t wanna spoil much, but yeah I guess. I liked the racial diversity though. European, African, kind of American, Japanese, and other ones I’m too lazy to recognize or name, it’s a pretty good set of characters imo.

As for the playable characters, they’re so cute I jus’ wanna pinch their cheeks. *ahem* Anyways, I really did take a good liking to them. I forced myself to switch out two characters for every dungeon that I go through, so I was able to get to know each class pretty well. I’ve used my landskneicht and medic (Crystal and Floret) the most though. They’re my favorites -w- I should also take note of the sovereign glitch. I never once tried to attempt it, but I really do think it’s gamebreaking (obviously *slaps self*) and idk if they patched it or not. All in all, I think my favorite team setup was Landy - Gunner - Gunner - Medic just because I found the gunner’s range to be really handy as good ol’ Crystal took and gave a great deal of damage, with the medic backing everyone up, of course. Although, I also should note I found it extremely difficult to do long standing dungeon runs without a medic. The dancer was good, but not as long-lasting as my medic. Oh well, to each their own I guess.

Gameplay:

This was the first Mystery Dungeon game I’ve played all the way through (I only played pokemon via a friend like once or twice) and I found the concept pretty cool. I agree with others when they say that it got kind of repetitive, but the unexpected monster house (that drains my tp, depending on how many enemies are in there, without burst gauge filled) or DOE kept things kind of interesting. I found a good chunk of enemies to be really interesting in battle, but some were just rather tedious instead of hard. The rats were a pain in the butt when they got to the wandering boxes before you, the mayan owl’s hypnosis lost me a handful of good equipment, and many others were really just a nuisance than ‘hard’. (Oh boy, do I sound repetitive >.> NEXT TOPIC!)

Art and Music

I’m easily impressed when it comes to scenic things. I fell in love with pretty much all of the backdrops for the dungeons (as expected from an eo game) and I took a great liking to the ost. It’s nothing “wow” or jawdropping, but to me, it’s pretty memorable. I usually found myself humming to the DOE encounter music towards the end of the game, as I began to treat them more as regular enemies than ‘mobile bosses’. The actual art during the gameplay was pretty cute and had its perks. The chibis were really adorable in my opinion, and it’s really cool seeing a 3d model of a character you’ve grown accustomed to as you play through various eo games. The stage backgrounds were not too shabby either. Although, I was kind of afraid that I’d fall off an edge with a wrecker trap in one of the dungeons (if you’ve played the game, you know which one I’m talking about, hopefully). Idk which song I like the best, but the ones I personally like at the moment are (forgot the titles): The town song, the seventh dungeon song, and the DOE encounter song. I also’d like to bring attention the red lion shoppe’s theme. It’s really catchy but I sometimes either really like it or just want to get out asap. Idk why, it’s just one of those songs, hahaha. (Has anyone ever successfully stolen from the red lion shoppe? Usually, the things being sold aren’t worth much to me, so I’ve never really had the urge to do it. Any other benefits besides the stuff you stole? Red lion drops maybe?)

Final thoughts:

I haven’t played very many Etrian games, but I personally count EMD as a really good installation to the series. Sure, it may not have the same mechanics, but I sure do love the game. As I’ve recently completed it, I don’t have much to say about its replayability, but I hope it’s at least decent. I guess I’ll just add more thoughts later, but that’s that for now. If I have the time tomorrow, I’ll upload my post-game guildcard. I’d really like to see other people’s ones as well. There aren’t very many Etrian fans here where I live... (oh, Oahu, why you gotta be so weird)