The graphics are great and fit the game to a T, good music, and most importantly it's super fun to play. It's definitely molded in the old school of RPGs at their best. It's also really fun to generate your own maps, and frankly just about everything in the game is great (including a good challenge). Therefore, you'll probably lose track of time, and instead of doing things you should you'll want to play the game. Therefore, as stated stay way

cheers,

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I hear it's ass-demolishingly hard. Even for an old-style RPG.

After being constantly spammed by enemies in Dragon Quest VIII, I think I WILL stay away.

I don't know who told you it's "ass-demolishingly hard", but it's definitely got a good challenge. However, it's a 'fair' game. If you make stupid moves you can get squashed, but you won't all of a sudden run into an enemy which will just outright demolish your party no matter what you do. I haven't had this much fun with an RPG in a long time

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Yeah, I don't always read every thread and if I were in a rush probably would've taken your word on it without realizing it was a joke.

Heh, "ass-demolishingly hard"... that phrase isn't really easy to say.

If you encounter enemies that are too strong for you, you obviously crossed over a bridge you weren't supposed to.

/Dragon Quest reference

Hehe... I totally forget about those bridges Good old Dragon Quest... I have to admit, even if it doesn't hold up to today's RPGs, the original DQ has a certain charm to it (and a great soundtrack)! BTW, I've heard that DQIV (an NES game) is still a super RPG (even by today's standards)!

cheers,

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It was in a number of reviews I've read online, and in magazines (most notably, Play Magazine said it was super, super tough). Ryu, "Ass-demolishingly" is just a phrase I picked up somewhere along the line. Can't remember where.

Same here. Of course, I pre-ordered it, me being an Atlus fanboy, but for a moment, since I still haven't had a chance to play it (must... finish... building... Pokemon team!), I felt regret. Until, y'know, I opened the thread.

So, like, please don't phrase the topics of promotional threads as warnings. It could very easily work against what you intended.

Yeah I see what you mean, but on the other hand I imagine nearly everyone actually looks at a thread rather than just reading the title, that is unless the reader has absolutely no interest in the topic, in which case it really wouldn't matter too much

cheers,

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Yeah, I kinda thought of that after I posted. Like, if someone was on the fence, they'd probably want to find out why you didn't like it, and a die-hard fan would just ignore it or enter to try to argue otherwise.

Still, that "did I buy a really bad game?" feeling, fleeting though it may have been, was pretty strong... Strong enough that I had to re-read your opening post to make sure I didn't miss a negative.

My thing is that I had never heard of it and would've just took the advice with a shrug and not cared to give it a further thought.  Inexplicably, I clicked the thread anyway, so now I'm all the wiser.  Still don't know anything about the game... = P

Well, it's in the style of the classic Shining in the Darkness. You generate your own map, which really is very fun and truly makes you feel like you're exploring It's not a story driven game though, you don't walk around town talking to random people, in fact there's not much dialogue in general (although there certainly is some), and no cut scenes. Still, the graphics are really quite nice in my opinion. Music is great. It's a VERY strategic game, although it's not a SRPG. By strategic, I mean you really have to think before assigining your characters skill points, and also "little" things like if you have one character in the back row or front row can easily make the difference between victory and utter defeat. Yes, it is challenging, but not to the extent that it feels like the computer is cheating. However, my group has been killed off a few times already, which is unheard of in many modern RPGs! Still, I'm loving this game, and the money/item system rocks too!

cheers,

-avatar!

I would call it a game in the classic semi-3D dungeon crawling RPG style which pretty much dominated on the PC both in the West as well as in Japan in the late 1980s to early 1990s. Etrian Odyssey's directory compared it to Wizardy (and regretted that afterward), his "director's diary" in "columns" at the official website may be quite informative if you don't know anything about the genre.

I find that this comic provides a great description of the game as well. "It's dungeon training!"

I played the game a few months ago and I'd say it isn't so much ass demoloshingly hard as it is extremely unforgiving (yes, there is a difference). Once you get used to the fact that there's no quick save, you become much more careful/paranoid and better prepared for the harder fights. There's also a level cap to contend with, but that doesn't factor in until you're near the last few floors anyway. Some of the optional bosses will also test your patience, but again, they're optional.

Ya know, I just realized that the last time I was killed in the first area of an RPG was Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete, and I'd say that game's difficulty level is a pretty fair comparison for the amount of difficulty present in Etrian Odyssey. Then again, Lunar allowed you to save anywhere, while EO doesn't.

Anyhoo, whether or not you get the game, make sure to watch the FOE music video:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=Kbnu0NKs86Y