Topic: Etrian Mystery Dungeon

I've been playing it ALL. DAY. I honestly think this is the best mystery dungeon game TO DATE!

I mean I know people who are really into traditional roguelikes prefer the first game and don't care much for the later ones in the series... BUT, if you're a fan of the series as a whole, I think you will be REALLY happy with this one, even if you aren't familiar with Etrian at all!

The thing that's really standing out to me: the AMAZING AI for the characters in your party when you aren't controlling them directly. In Pokemon MD (which I LOVE, so don't hate me for this criticism) it always felt like the rest of your party didn't... DO too much on their own, and it was always up to your character to take the burnt of battles.

This game has REALLY improved on that though by LEAPS and BOUNDS. Your characters will actually move to position themselves appropriately for their attacks if it is safe for them to do so, and their really seem to be many different actions they may take in any given situation. They also seem to really take into consideration their resources as well, so your casters aren't constantly running out of TP because they're wasting it casting constantly.

My favourite example of this is with leg binding. The leader of my party is a Protector, and so if he gets his legs bound obviously he can't move up to enemies to attack them. My medic seems to have three possible responses to this situation:

1) If there are enemies in the room that are NOT incapacitated, and are NOT adjecent to my Protector, but ARE adjacent to my allies or within attacking range, my medic will automatically heal the bind.

2) If there are enemies in the room that are NOT incapacitated, but ARE adjacent to the protector, the game actually STOPS and ASKS me if I want my Medic to heal the bind.

3) If there are enemies in the room that ARE incapacitated in a way that they CANNOT attack OR move (paralysis, sleep, etc.) then the Medic takes no action, leaving me to either put in the command manually, or just wait until the leg bind wears off.

Maybe I'm the only one freaking out over this, but I'm honestly just so impressed. That is not a level of complex mechanic that I've come to expect from the Mystery Dungeon series, and it's really nice to play an MD game where it really DOES feel like my other party members are DOING things without me having to order them around. And then when a boss is engaged, the game lets you decide what each person does one by one, which is definitely good when during those battles one hit could take out your Runemaster of Medic, so having that level of control is really necessary.

There are a bunch of other things I am loving too, but I'll give some time for other people to chime in as they will probably say some of the other things I'm thinking! Had to share that though, SO SO pleased with how the AI works.

I just started. Still at the beginning, but I'm already enjoying how self-aware the dialogue is. Moments like the guildmaster commenting on how many explorers already left after hearing that you lose all your gear on death (alluding to the unpopularity of roguelikes), or "hmm, am I holding your hand too much?" after 20 or so text boxes of tutorial, it's kind of charming.

Sounds great so far.

I really like What little I've played so far. I love the familiarity of the menus from Etrian. Makes me feel at home there!

So I went into my first dungeon and all was going well then boom, out of nowhere on the 5th floor an enemy appeared that I didn't see and proceeded to wipe out my whole party lol. I'm not upset as this is my first experience with this type of game but wow, I wasn't ready for that. I switched games after that but I want to get back into it for sure. Something just feels right about the whole presentation of this game!

I'd say everything outside of the gameplay is 100% Etrian so far.

I just got the special edition today! I really want to start playing it, but I'm trying to make an effort to clear my game backlog first. I somehow logged in about 90 hours in Etrian Odyssey IV, so I'd really like to take my time with this game. However, I haven't played a Mystery Dungeon game before, so I hope it's not too complicated (although that wouldn't be much of a problem anyway).

They're not really all that complicated.

You just need to be careful and ready to die a lot.

Not bad! Looks like my good patience will come in handy.

I'm still stuck in Etrian Oddyssey 4. Prince baldur and his 1HKO move saddens me (T-T)

Do you have an Imperial and Fortress on your team? They're work pretty great from what I remember. I specifically remember how Imperials deal loads of damage and how well Fortresses can protect your units with low HP. Imperials are the best! I would even go with more than one if I had trouble.
If you have no other options, then it'd be safe to go get a bunch of Nectar and Amritas. xD

I found the special edition in a music store (coincidentally, the exact same one where I found the limited edition of The Dark Spire for DS a long time ago), so I bought this.

I'm thinking about getting it as I love the Mystery Dungeon series. It is cheaper on the eShop than for me to buy it in store but I'm not sure I will like it and I'm real wary of downloading games now, unless I'm 100% sure it's something that I will play constantly. So I think I will just wait until my birthday to buy it with birthday money or buy it with the money I get from my parents at Christmas.

@Pokefanmum82: If you're not sure wait for one of their many sales. It should be 20$ in no time and it will be less of a gamble.

I would've preferred to have it downloaded and cheaper (paid full retail price), but heh, special edition!

If Pokemon Mystery Dungeon GTI is any indicator, I'll be addicted to this game for a good while.

Something interesting happened...

I wanted my main character to be a gunner, but your first character is forced to be a landsknetch so I used my usual name for that one (Abgar). Then I made a gunner with my other name, Gerardo.

Today I went to the first dungeon to train a bit and found another (slightly evil looking) gunner running around the first floor. His name? Gerasim.

I totally asked him to join my guild.

@Morpheel: That's cool! Let us know how it compares to pokemons version.

i'm thinking that I might just wait for this one to come West instead of buying the first one. I like the box art on the 2nd one better than the first one

@Pokefanmum82 I swear, if EOMD2 gets localized but not EOV...

I need to hear about EOV now. It's the only game right now that can get me to turn my 3ds back on lol. At this point I'll take it on the Switch.

@Spoony_Tech Atlus USA is/was working on the localization of multiple even more niche games (the Caligula Effect, for instance-- a Vita game released after EOV in Japan)-- it'll be a minor miracle if EOV comes over, I reckon.

EOV will be coming over in some form. Altus would be stupid not to. And Altus isn't stupid. They have brought all of them so far.