I just got this game as it was the only thing that seemed to look good in the store when I went in with my gift card. If I could have had cash rather than three 25 dollar gift cards to three different places it would have made finding something much easier. (not that it’s necessarily bad to get a gift card, it’s certainly better than getting nothing at all)
The following review describes some of my game play experience, if you are extremely squeamish about spoilers you might consider stopping here, though no plot points are mentioned.
So, I’ve been playing the game for the last several days. The first floor was tricky, and I nearly died running into the Great Lynx which the description after turning it in said it was a newbie slayer. That’s all well and good, and eventually I managed to map out the entire first floor. The first thing I noticed is that you gain exp very slowly compared to the difficulty of the enemies.
The second thing I noticed was that the second floor was much, much harder.
I’d played the first Etrian Odyssey, and so am accustom to FOEs and how to respond to them (RUN) what I was not accustom to however, was taking a few steps into the floor and being waylaid by a normal random encounter so powerful that it seemed the equivalent of my first FOE from the first game. It took some doing, and half of my Monk’s TP in healing, but I eventually killed it, I ran back to town and healed.
Hoping that it was a rare powerful monster, I went back down, having nothing else to do; sailing was expensive and the schools of fish were low for now. I made the journey to the second floor, the enemies now still doing decent harm to my party while at the same time giving almost no exp at all. I climbed down and tried mapping some of the second floor, I dodged the nearby FOE and continued when battle began. The same monster again. Again I beat it after a struggle, and turned to head back to town. Unfortunately it wasn’t done with me yet.
Just before the stairs, another fight began, it was that monster plus one of the enemies from the first floor with a blinding attack. Unfortunately it blinded my main attacker before I could kill it, and by the end of the fight, my party had hardly any TP and barely any life left in them. It was a long and bloody trip back a miracle to have survived.
Its been at least 4 hours since then, I’ve learned the art of farming, and have further improved my sea charts, my team has the best gear currently available and have leveled several times. Yet, the second floor remains largely a mystery to me. Oh, I can handle several more battles than back then, but most of my travel still remains on the first floor and within a panicked run to the stairs in the second.
This is in fact, the first time I’ve played a game that was so difficult it was boring. To put this into perspective; to fight the first boss on the fourth floor of the first game, my party had an average level of 12-13ish, my current average party level is about 10 and I can barely handle random encounters on the second floor. My play choices are curb stomping wimps on the first floor for a level every hundred or so battles, or get mauled on the second floor by random encounters.
The first impression does not bode well so far, you can expect me to write more on it when I’ve delved further into what the game has to offer to tell if it is worth enduring the slow beginning.