Etrian Odyssey II: Complete

I just beat Etrian Odyssey II. I'm glad I did, too, because that last Stratum was quite annoying. Stupid Beamedge's everywhere, annoying layouts, etc.

The last boss probably would have been very tough, had it not been for my RIDICULOUSLY POWERFUL duo of Ronins - Kaitlyn and Shiren were insane. Mideraba is easily my favorite skill in the game.

Before I get to that, though, I changed my party makeup for the last few floors. Once I realized that the level cap is 70 for first time adventurers, I wanted to level them up some more or at least change around their Skills. To do this, you have two options: Rest a character, to allow you to re-spend their Skill Points in exchange for knocking down their level by 5, or Retiring them, which knocks their level down by forty levels, but allows you to both re-spend their Skill Points and earn one more once they level up enough. My complaint about this is that it's only one - I embarked on Retirement for all five of my characters because I thought they'd be able to level up to 75, which would give them 5 more Skill Points total. I was wrong - each time you retire, you only get to level up one more level.

I got those fuckers up to 71, noticed they couldn't level up anymore, and I said screw this, I'm beating the last boss now.

The upside to doing that, though, was that I streamlined the crap out of their skills. I got rid of all the extraneous stuff (like Mining, Taking, and Chopping, which was useless now that I could get a ton of cash easily) and even changed some classes around.

One of the nice parts about Retiring is that you get a level 30 character with 40 initial Skill Points, but you aren't restricted to whatever class that character was. For example, I was sick of my now useless Survivalist (Icarus), so I changed him to Protector, and changed my Landschneckt(Shiren) to another Ronin(Kaitlyn remained a Ronin through the entire game). I bought Shiren another Youtou (the ridiculously expensive Katana Kaitlyn had been using for a while now) and I went back into the forest.

The Metroid Guild was here to kick some ass. And boy, did it.

The final boss went down quick. Icarus spammed Provoke (make the enemy target him more) and Parry (high chance of dodging any attack), Shiren and Kaitlyn spammed the hell out of Mideraba (multiple sword strike for huge damage), Raidou spammed Ricochet (multiple gunshots for good damage), and Yukiko alternated between healing duties and CPR (which allows characters to survive mortal blows with 1 HP like 80% of the time). I beat both forms quickly, with only like three people dying for the first form, and no one dying for the second.

Overall, Etrian Odyssey II is a mixed bag. I really like the interface improvements it brings after the original was lacking a bit - particularly the bigger variety of map icons you have, which makes navigating quite a bit easier. The Force skills aren't quite as useful, but that's okay. I did a few more of the optional Quests this time around, but not too many because once they begin to get really confusing I just give up because I don't feel like running around in circles in the dungeon trying to figure out what to do. I had a lot of fun playing EOII, and even before I broke the game with my two Ronins-o-death, I felt like it was pretty well-balanced. Some of those skills sure are useless, though.

Etrian Odyssey III comes out at the end of this month, and I have it pre-ordered, and the guy said I'd get an art book for the entire series with it, and I damned well better. I'm ready for III - I've heard it is much better than I and II.