I didn't know that Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 was due to in the past weeks in America if not for some tweets. I knew it was coming out, but didn't remember when - and if I preordered it already, leading to me purchasing two copies, one of which is on sale (wink wink).
Anyway, I'm not the biggest fan of the first Untold, and remaking Etrian Odyssey 2 would require a lot of work: I judge it as the hardest of the franchise, with some classes in dire need of some serious rebalancing. While I'm far from being able to say if developers succeeded in this remake, impressions are good.
Just like the first Untold, you can select story mode (fixed characters) and classic mode (player-created characters) and different difficulty modes. Unlike the first Untold you can save on the cart or on the SD card, allowing to play story and classic side-by-side; the easiest difficulty apparently allows to clear the game in a rather easy and quick way, although both modes share the same balancing, and according to many players enemies health has been balanced for the story party, which can grow quite powerful.
As usual, I've started classic mode in expert (party annihilation means game over and resume from last save) with a party of Ronin, Protector, Alchemist, Hexer, and Medic. Classes include Beasts from the start (locked in EO2), plus Sovereign (from EO3), and Highlander (from EOU1). I can't hide that I had a lot of trouble with this starting party, with the Ronin one-hit-killed by essentially everything, forcing the Protector to abuse Provoke, and therefore the Medic to heal constantly. I did assemble the party knowing of EO2's late game, but skills have changed: for example the Hexer no longer has her all-powerful untyped spell based on her HPs, but a series of spells based on the party's HPs. At the beginning of the third floor I switched to a Highlander, Protector, Landketch, Alchemist, Medic party and things went a bit better thanks to higher HPs, defence, and attack. It's still tough as enemies can absorb a lot of hits and I'm finding difficult to build a decent economy (monster drops don't sell for much, and I require constant healing and resurrection). Progress is slow, but it's also due to the party switch, my first choices were at level 7 and benefitted from various quests, whereas the new arrivals had to work with monsters only.
I'd say that the balancing is very close to EO2, with tough monsters roaming even in the first floors, still haven't beaten (or tried to) a FOE/boss so I don't know if they respawn (they didn't in EO2).
Classes have a new skill tree closer to the first games, with no distinction between novice/regular/elite skills, you just pour points where you want. Browsing through skills highlighted a lot of follow ups (like first inflicts a status where all attacks create a second elemental strikes, second goes for an elemental attack, this gets element from that attack), along with new or modified skills to make full use of the new classes (the Highlander powers up by sacrifinc her or the party's HPs), so I doubt that combat, once up to speed, won't be fun. Even in the first floors enemies show different behaviours, and there has been a lot of running from FOEs to advance, sometimes using the labyrinth against them (a rather cool thing). The first three floors have been completely reworked as well.
EOU2 has been unforgiving, but I've always liked Etrian Odyssey for being like that.
Technically-wise, the game is very good. Now NPCs have voices, which I find very strange, the music still kicks ass, and the game looks very nice, with a tad more effects than EOU1; I'd say that it looks better than Labyrinth no Kanata, a technically impressive title in its own right, and several steps ahead of Ray Gigant, a dungeon crawler for the Vita.
My biggest fear is that EOU2 will become exactly like EOU1, with a reworked first stratum, but the rest of the game exactly as the original. That doesn't mean it's bad, but for someone that went through all the EOs before (including the Mystery Dungeon spinoff), it's boring because there's nothing really new...and probably there's a bit of exahustion for dungeon crawlers, as I've been playing a lot of them recently. Still, I'd recommend Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 to new players, there are lenty of options for a smooth introduction to the game.
Anyway, I'm not the biggest fan of the first Untold, and remaking Etrian Odyssey 2 would require a lot of work: I judge it as the hardest of the franchise, with some classes in dire need of some serious rebalancing. While I'm far from being able to say if developers succeeded in this remake, impressions are good.
Just like the first Untold, you can select story mode (fixed characters) and classic mode (player-created characters) and different difficulty modes. Unlike the first Untold you can save on the cart or on the SD card, allowing to play story and classic side-by-side; the easiest difficulty apparently allows to clear the game in a rather easy and quick way, although both modes share the same balancing, and according to many players enemies health has been balanced for the story party, which can grow quite powerful.
As usual, I've started classic mode in expert (party annihilation means game over and resume from last save) with a party of Ronin, Protector, Alchemist, Hexer, and Medic. Classes include Beasts from the start (locked in EO2), plus Sovereign (from EO3), and Highlander (from EOU1). I can't hide that I had a lot of trouble with this starting party, with the Ronin one-hit-killed by essentially everything, forcing the Protector to abuse Provoke, and therefore the Medic to heal constantly. I did assemble the party knowing of EO2's late game, but skills have changed: for example the Hexer no longer has her all-powerful untyped spell based on her HPs, but a series of spells based on the party's HPs. At the beginning of the third floor I switched to a Highlander, Protector, Landketch, Alchemist, Medic party and things went a bit better thanks to higher HPs, defence, and attack. It's still tough as enemies can absorb a lot of hits and I'm finding difficult to build a decent economy (monster drops don't sell for much, and I require constant healing and resurrection). Progress is slow, but it's also due to the party switch, my first choices were at level 7 and benefitted from various quests, whereas the new arrivals had to work with monsters only.
I'd say that the balancing is very close to EO2, with tough monsters roaming even in the first floors, still haven't beaten (or tried to) a FOE/boss so I don't know if they respawn (they didn't in EO2).
Classes have a new skill tree closer to the first games, with no distinction between novice/regular/elite skills, you just pour points where you want. Browsing through skills highlighted a lot of follow ups (like first inflicts a status where all attacks create a second elemental strikes, second goes for an elemental attack, this gets element from that attack), along with new or modified skills to make full use of the new classes (the Highlander powers up by sacrifinc her or the party's HPs), so I doubt that combat, once up to speed, won't be fun. Even in the first floors enemies show different behaviours, and there has been a lot of running from FOEs to advance, sometimes using the labyrinth against them (a rather cool thing). The first three floors have been completely reworked as well.
EOU2 has been unforgiving, but I've always liked Etrian Odyssey for being like that.
Technically-wise, the game is very good. Now NPCs have voices, which I find very strange, the music still kicks ass, and the game looks very nice, with a tad more effects than EOU1; I'd say that it looks better than Labyrinth no Kanata, a technically impressive title in its own right, and several steps ahead of Ray Gigant, a dungeon crawler for the Vita.
My biggest fear is that EOU2 will become exactly like EOU1, with a reworked first stratum, but the rest of the game exactly as the original. That doesn't mean it's bad, but for someone that went through all the EOs before (including the Mystery Dungeon spinoff), it's boring because there's nothing really new...and probably there's a bit of exahustion for dungeon crawlers, as I've been playing a lot of them recently. Still, I'd recommend Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 to new players, there are lenty of options for a smooth introduction to the game.
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