loved the first one and was the only one i ever beat... Gave up way early on part 2 and part 3 was a major pain in the ass grind fest....

Love to see DLC for this game but highly doubt we will ever see any

Thanks for this. This is the kind of description I was looking for. It's not something I would typically play, but going to get it anyways. Playing Fire Emblem right now and SRPGs have never been something I thought I would like, but really liking FE right now. I'm new to 3DS so I also have Tales of the Abyss to play, so with these games, I should be able to satisfy my RPG appetite for the time being.

I'm [slowly] downloading it right now~

I'll tell you if the data transfer works in some minutes.

I suggest you go today. My Game Stop only had a single copy.

I can confirm that the download version also accepts the save data from the demo. (I don't know why it wouldn't anyway).

I'll come back later to share my guild card after I'm done playing for the day.

Oh snap, I was wondering why was the game so hard and slow now, turns out the data transfer doesn't copy the option settings so I have been playing on normal difficulty with slow battles. Be sure to check that before you start to play if you're used to the casual setting like me.

Decided to get the game in store instead of online since I put off preordering it. I've really piled up quite a collection of great games for my 3DS, and I still have Pokemon Y, Dragon Quest VII, and Dream Team to look forward to.

I have a question for those who bought the physical copy:

Did your copy come with an instruction manual and a Club Nintendo code?

That's a negative. It's just the game, music CD, and health and safety precautions booklet.

Actually you name your guild as well as the classes you've picked. It is during the game, that you actually start building.

There is a story but you don't get swept up in it until you reach the next tier (usually when you encounter your first portal). For the first five levels you are getting to know the NPCs around you as well as getting acquinted with the flow of the game. I'm not that familiar with the first 2 games of the series but having played the 3rd one, I found the story to be epic. There were a lot of twists and turns. The boss battles were so freakin frustrating but exciting and fun.

Still, at it's heart, it is old school, meaning grinding is a big part of it. I believe though that as the series progressed, they've seemed to actually lessen the amount of grinding. To me, that was my opinion after having played EO II and III.

It feels so good to be crawling through the dungeons again!

Is that confirmation that you got it? Or are you playing in the mud at work?!?!

While my work does feel like that sometimes...the game was in my mailbox last night. And then I ended up straying up to late playing it!

Lol. I didn't get to play much. I'm maping out that easy dungeon with the easy deer. I feel like something down there will be hard though!

I plunged right in where I left off...maybe I should go back that the easy one!

I did some of the second floor as well but went back to town and they suggested I go there and that's the last thing I did last night. It's extremely small!

Wait...the second floor of which dungeon...the one with the bears that can be accessed from the city gates without using the airship?

Yeah. The one where the demo ended. I also just got the real foe in the easy dungeon to appear. Not going to fight it till I save the game. One more thing is once you go back to town and talk to the right people you unlock the burst skills. I'm now going to give them a shot!

Thanks for the heads up!! (too bad I'm supposed to be working)

Just wanted to pop in and let everyone know that Atlus didn't send out review copies until this past Friday, so reviews won't be up anywhere for a long while: http://www.destructoid.com/bear-with-us-etrian-odyssey-iv-rev...

WUT??? on both counts. First off, how was Part 3 any more grindy than the first two? It did a lot of things to significantly lower difficulty and need to grind. Yes it was still there, but good G-d, Part 1 was by far the worst offender in terms of grinding. If you can make it through that, the other parts should seem like a breeze.

And secondly, the QR Codes act as free dlc. Some websites even have exclusive quests.

The dungeon with the little deers was fun...

If you kill them all then you start to get chased by their parent which, by the way, can walk on water.
He was no problem though.