Etrian Actuarial Services
Odds of getting trampled by a big red elephant: high. The only way you survive these encounters is willpower – I will not, after all I have done, die at the feet of a big dumb cartoony elephant. That and Disable will get you a long way (ditto Moas, although they’re obviously far less scary).
It’s obvious (or at least heavily foreshadowed) that there will come a time that the Labyrinth will be populated by sentient creatures, instead of merely big dumb beasts. There are, for example, curses to be avoided, and I can’t even create two of the character classes, indicating at least more NPCs and likely whole concertos involving human or sub-human foes. I alternate between thinking that I’m ready for these showdowns (especially after the “Explorer’s Guild” quest – five days on level 8. Pff. Was that supposed to be difficult? I got so bored running into random monsters that I spent the last two days just pacing by the fountain. Clearly I was too high powered, at that point?) and remembering with deadly clarity the first run-in with aforementioned elephants. This is not a game where small britches are helpful. It will get you killed.
Anyhoo, I have some cleanup to do on the white crystal walk of death in Stratum 1. Now that I know that it’s only extremely likely that I’ll die to a big dumb elephant (as opposed to, you know, inevitable), I will probably go mop up there before taking on Stratum 2′s boss. He’s named after a god! Ooooh…
Still More Etrian Odyssey
So I battled down to level 3 only to discover that the FOEs that inhabit the first rooms are far and away too tough for anything below, I’m guessing, level 17. I think it’s possible that I could take them out earlier, so long as I had a preemptive turn and could also double-hit with both of my landsknechts. But I’m just saying, at the moment there is no freaking way I’m doing anything but running the edges of the rooms (the good news is that they’ve got short-term memory issues, so you can maneuver them out of your way and then carry on). That leads me to suspect that I should work to complete the Wolf King (Fenrir, nice touch on the name) quest first, see where I’m at, then consider beating down on the slayers. Of course, it will be extremely gratifying to add their stats to the Pokedex…er…I mean, Monstrous Codex.
These (and other) comparisons are obvious but one relevant point is that there is absolutely no freaking comparison in depth of play, or maturity of title. Having slogged through my share of precious gems, I find myself totally uninterested in Diamond/Pearl, despite having picked the game up like all the other good little DS’ers in the world. But Atlus has it beat by a looong way with Etrian Odyssey.
I should say, “for gamer dorks like me who remember interactive fiction and whatnot, Atlus has Pokemon kold.” I’m pleasantly surprised to discover the reviews being kind to the game even though it’s clear that this title will actually excite an extremely narrow segment of the DS audience. But those mesozoic denizens will be so happy over the next month that they wouldn’t care if the reviews were uniformly horrible. Heck, I played “Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder” on GBA, if you want to discuss bad titles…
Just remember to run from the Slayers. Seriously. Like 95 points per hit.
Then I can get that +5 Skull…
Being something of a slave to the RPG, and having managed to catch the second wave of copies flooding into stores, I am now happily enmeshed in Puzzle Quest. The idea that Bejeweled + Progress Bar is enough to make me engage in high level spatial reasoning in the name of mana development is, I think, some comment on my desperate wish to be considered clever by machines that do not consider me one way or the other. My humble DS can, of course, parse the ramifications of a specific rearranging of the game grid far faster than I can, and seems to smirk at me as I miss the obvious Four of a Kind that I could have done in advance of the cool thing that distracted me.
Until I got the Ultimate Troll Ring or whatever it is, that regenerates three points per turn so long as my blue mana pool is at some level (15?), I was getting schooled. I firmly believe that I was spending waaay too much money on my citadel in the early game, and not enough on bling. This is perhaps a function of not reading the manual, yet. I mean, how hard can it be, right?! On the other hand, much of the Shop is level-locked, so I don’t quite characterize it as misuse of funds, really. Suffice it to say that with the ring my little wizard is rocking the kazbah. Need a new burn spell, though. Fire Bolt is weak sauce.
Anyway, the point is that having acquired an “RPG” which promises dual-dialogue cut scenes aplenty, I was aghast and agog to discover that a bona fide contender in the RPG genre was released today for the DS. Looking a little like the prettiest Hunt the Wumpus you ever did see, Etrian Odyssey has a lot going for it on paper – a mapping subtheme that allows you to remember your own damn way out of the Labyrinth, rich graphics, and spritely anime heroes to level up to your heart’s content. I was a little bummed to see that the dialogue and menu options appear to still require the use of the direction pad and A spamming (as opposed to the immensely more gratifying tap-spamming) but all in all it looks like a pretty darn good game, and a no-brainer for people like me who just can’t wait to spend skill points like a mad fiend…
In other news, I also picked up Touch Detective today, in the hopes that it would be appropriate for the boo boo to play along. She is a fiend for the mysteries. I’m beginning to think that I’m just going to have to design a scenario-based tabletop detective game for her – a la 221B Baker Street, but in this case more like 221B Sesame Street.
Has anyone come up with a workable solution to the “tiny chip, gigantic box” problem with DS games? I’ve seen some tacky little folios that solve the “where’s my game” problem, but I have no idea where to stick the cases…might be time for a purge.
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
As always, I’m late to this party, but I’ve really been enjoying Hotel Dusk. It’s probably too much to ask that the puzzles be a bit more difficult, since I’m only about a third of the way through the game and (one hopes) there is likely an increasing level of difficulty.
Many people (notably, Penny Arcade) have commented on the “interactive novel” aspect of this game, as well as titles like Phoenix Wright. I have to agree that the game deserves high praise for presentation and innovation in “escape the room” style puzzling out of things. But, and here’s the rub, I think the dialogue drags the game down. In the same way that I sorta abhor the meaningless cut scenes in the Phoenix Wright games (and yes, I know these are meant to be enriching – but c’mon, what are we doning in the name of flavor?), I find a lot of the Chatty Kathyness of Hotel Dusk to be a little bit of a drag. Also, from my preliminary peeks into reviews of the game, it’s apparent that there will be times where I’ll have to backtrack, like, a long way because I chose the “be a jerk” option in a conversation at the beginning of a chapter.
I mean, am I the only one who enjoyed The 7th Guest? Can someone do that for DS, please? More puzzles, enough story to be getting on with, and then some more puzzles? Should probably go buy this title and shut up, eh?