Just finished beating Casual Mode of Etrian Odyssey IV. It was an amazing game. I felt a little choked up at the ending. I guess it was fairly emotional. It definitely feels like an accomplishment. The series feels like it's coming into its own. I felt like I was playing something very polished and cutting edge. The 3D enemy models look good. The only issue was that they had way too much recycling and reusing of the models. There's another term for this - reused assets?
Anyway, according to my activity log, I played 60 hours and 27 minutes up to this point - beating the main story, basically. Throughout the game, I used story characters in my party, along with a Runemaster and Sniper. My Fortress got dropped at Level 40 and Landsknecht at level 55. My Dancer, Medic, and Nightseeker didn't make it much past level 20 or 30. My endgame party was Bushi (Arcanist), Imperial, Arcanist, Runemaster, and Sniper. One of my goals early on was to get the unlockable classes unlocked quickly. I think using one of each classes was my idea originally. However, I built up so much momentum that they got set aside for the playthrough.
There is a ton of things I want to try on a replay. Anyway, money in game wasn't much of an issue because drops are worth a lot, and I only upgraded when I needed to. I'm wondering how much of a difference playing on Normal difficulty will make. EO games are definitely not known for being easy. I think that they get their replay value (which is important to me as a gamer) from the battle system. The mazes are not randomly generated and starting the maps over from scratch might be tedious. There is a lot of experimentation in the battle system, and so much customization that everybody will play it to suit his or her own play style. One of my favorite parts are the mazes. The series has excellent design. There might be a couple confusing parts, including some of the bar requests, but I'm sure there will be threads and FAQs on the internet in case you get stuck. It happened to me only really once or twice in the same line of quests, when looking it up on gamefaqs very easily explained what you had to do. Otherwise, despite being labyrinths, it's hard to get lost if your map is good.
Very good and I hope to find things to do so that I can continue to play and replay it.
Anyway, according to my activity log, I played 60 hours and 27 minutes up to this point - beating the main story, basically. Throughout the game, I used story characters in my party, along with a Runemaster and Sniper. My Fortress got dropped at Level 40 and Landsknecht at level 55. My Dancer, Medic, and Nightseeker didn't make it much past level 20 or 30. My endgame party was Bushi (Arcanist), Imperial, Arcanist, Runemaster, and Sniper. One of my goals early on was to get the unlockable classes unlocked quickly. I think using one of each classes was my idea originally. However, I built up so much momentum that they got set aside for the playthrough.
There is a ton of things I want to try on a replay. Anyway, money in game wasn't much of an issue because drops are worth a lot, and I only upgraded when I needed to. I'm wondering how much of a difference playing on Normal difficulty will make. EO games are definitely not known for being easy. I think that they get their replay value (which is important to me as a gamer) from the battle system. The mazes are not randomly generated and starting the maps over from scratch might be tedious. There is a lot of experimentation in the battle system, and so much customization that everybody will play it to suit his or her own play style. One of my favorite parts are the mazes. The series has excellent design. There might be a couple confusing parts, including some of the bar requests, but I'm sure there will be threads and FAQs on the internet in case you get stuck. It happened to me only really once or twice in the same line of quests, when looking it up on gamefaqs very easily explained what you had to do. Otherwise, despite being labyrinths, it's hard to get lost if your map is good.
Very good and I hope to find things to do so that I can continue to play and replay it.
