Etrian Odyssey III: Part 1

I'll start by saying that so far, Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City is my favorite Etrian game, and that's saying a lot because I had a lot of fun with the first two.

Why? Well, first, they completely revamped all the classes. There is not one class in the third game that existed in the first two, so the game is a totally new experience - much akin to Etrian Odyssey 1, really, what with trying to learn party balance for the first time with a whole new set of classes. Sure, I'll miss my ridiculously powerful Ronin skills (well, Mideraba, anyway), but that broke the game, honestly. Also, you are allowed to subclass - which apparently means you can apply another classes skills to your party members, which is going to be awesome once I unlock it.

They also improved the interface: the skills, windows, town, and every way you interact with the game is streamlined very well. When you kill an enemy the correct way, for example, and get a special item, the game highlights it in yellow to let you know that hey, you did something special to get this item. This is helpful because I had no idea in the past how to get certain items. Also, the map scrolls faster, both on the top and bottom screen, there are more icons to put on the map that make sense, and there is an auto-route option. What this means is that you can lay down a bunch of arrows on the map, and when you hit the play button, your guys will automatically follow the arrows without needing to hit a button - they'll even go through doors and down stairs! This is pretty unnecessary and the game would have been fine without it but Atlus put it in because it is very clear they wanted this game to be the best in the series.

Speaking of things that are unnecessary but awesome, they included the ability to explore the ocean via sailing. Your guild is given a boat early on, and you're told to go explore what you can of the ocean, and help people out and find items and fish and stuff. This is a great way to make cash early on (and probably later on, too) and also gain experience. That's right, there are fights to find on the ocean! There are no random battles, but when you find certain locations on the sea, some quests there open up - you can accept them at any time for no cost, and they seem to be fairly difficult battles. You gain experience and usually items from beating them, too, and you can replay them if you want. You can even play these missions with a friend (or four), too! That's right, you can wirelessly participate in these battles and gain experience and items with other people you know with the game. It is local only, though, unfortunately, and since I know only one other guy with the game, it seems we're stuck just using our two best characters, since we can't figure out how to bring more.

None of that was in the first two games. I am so thrilled with all these improvements it is insane.

As far as where I am now, I'm stuck on the second stratum boss. He has this attack that puts me to sleep, and he always follows it up with an attack that will kill any of my characters that are affected by a status ailment or bound in any way. Which means I usually do great in the battle until the very end when he starts spamming these attacks! So I have to figure out how to kill him.

I will post more about this, for sure.