lol I named my Arbitor (spelling?) November.

Well now that I have unlocked the Skills this game is great. The ability to Heal is a little important....you know just a little. Anyway, I am going to love this game. Some good old Hardcore old school action with a great job/skill system! Yes, please. Thanks for the reccomendation gents.

OK H-Mac since I haven't been able to change the name yet November it is LOL. Yeah those foe's on the 2nd floor are still rather hard for me but can take them down now without losing anybody. I would face them if your characters are around level 8 or higher.

@JayArr We didn't recommend it you were trolling us lol

Lol Chris I thought you named your characters already... you know it's 1000en each time you rename right? That's really expensive for the early game. I'm not naming my characters after you guys, no matter how much you deserve it.

Clan Damascus
Ship: The Kinetic

Active Members:
Gladiator M - Rodriguez (Sword specialist)
Hoplite M - Barthus (Shield/Provoke)
Buccaneer F - Camille (Rapier/Status/Chain)
Prince M - Aerhart (Healing/Buffs)
Zodiac F - Omega (Fire)
Farmer M - Edgar (Gathering/Exp Gain/Camping)

On the Bench:
Arbalist M - Revas
Wildling M - Bear
Monk F - Crystal
Ninja F - Akira

I wish the multiplayer quests were over WFC so we could quest together.

Agreed on the later part. Yes ill fork over the moneys to change the names. At least is a little easier to get money in this game! Bad thing is I need to change 5 names. o_O

Holy crap just took down a raging tyrant and just barely survived. Got stuck in the mud and was unable to escape due to the fact that my back was up against the wall. No way I should have been able to survive that just yet got lucky took over 15 turns to take down.

All this Etrian Odyssey talk has inspired me...to give the first one another shot. Obviously, my discussion can't match up with yours, but I wanted to list my naming skills nonetheless.

Guild: Quaith.

Main party:
Landskencht: Kardth - M
Survivalist: Plark - M
Protector: Melyna - F
Medic: Farina - F
Alchemist: Vintel - M
Extras:
Dark Hunter: Layna - F
Troubador: Rhydiah - F
Survivalist (gathering specialist): Gati - F

I'm currently a chunk of the way through floor 2. Still a sweet game.

@Stuffgamer That is one hard long game good luck. I had to look online to beat the boss on level 30 and still need a lot of luck at that!

I might as well join in on the fun. I got Etrian Odyssey 1 and Dark Spire last week and put in over 10 hours each.

In EO, I'm almost at the end of the first strautem. It's been difficult going in, since I refused to put a medic into my party, relying on potions instead. Luckily there's plenty to farm, and my party is strong enough to take down the enemies on the first 3 floors with ease, with the Floor 4 and Floor 5 monsters only being a enough of minor concern. Plus, I found a way to make tons of easy money using Survivalists whose only purpose is to Chop. In a half an hour, all of my money concerns were gone. My Party consists of a Landschneck, a Protector, a Dark Hunter, a Survivalist, and a Troubadour - All Female, and all up to level 16. I finished about 5 Quests, with two more underway, and I finished the prologue mission and am in the middle of my first real mission.

In Dark Spire, I've progressed through most of the first and Second floors, and explored a bit of the 3rd floor and basement. When you consider the fact that there are only 7 or 8 floors, that's quite far in actually. My party member all have at least 1 class that's level 5 or over, with several abilities and added points in a secondary class. I just used the canon characters since they're better than anything I could make.

As for what game I like more, it's too early to say, but right now it's Dark Spire by a long shot. It has some great writing with an interesting and mysterious story that's revealed over time. The Tower feels like it has a real history to it, with other things going on that you don't know about. In fact, the Tower itself is very interesting to explore, with lots of secrets and traps and puzzles and treasures. In fact, the whole thing feels like one big puzzle that you have to solve, and I love it. It's also less frustrating once you get the hang of things and know your limits, to the point where you actually don't have to spend much time grinding. The comparitively extensive amount of options you have when it comes to improving your characters definitely helps in that regard. No character is restricted to learning the skills of one class, and they can also get secondary classes and advanced classes later on, as well as abilities and skills that makes it so in the end your character could come out to be very unique from someone else's character of a similar type. Dark Spire is the best kind of clone - a game that capitalizes on what made the original Wizardry series so good in the first place, and even exceedind it in several areas. To put it simply, it's an adventure and I love it.

Etrian Odyssey, on the other hand, has been fairly disappointing so far. It's much more linear than it could be, and the Forest in general hasn't been very interesting to explore so far, with the first Strautem feeling like one long tutorial. It just seems like all you're doing is trying to get to the next floor, with little reason to do so. Character development is also needlessly linear, the only choices that you get to make being what skills they learn and upgrade. Considering the type of game EO is, that's majorly disappointing. Every character is restricted to a specific role with zero flexibilty, which makes putting together an adequate party very difficult. In the end, I guess it's still a good game but my first impression of it hasn't been a good one. It just doesn't seem like it knows what it wants to be, and tries too hard to bridge the gap between Old school CRPGs and modern JRPGs, while sacraficing the best and most appealing aspects of both sides. I guess you could say it's its own thing, but I've yet to see that come to froition. Not to say Etrian Odyssey is a bad game, it's just no where near as good as it could be, and certainly not as good as I had expected. I think I should've just started with the later games in the series, especially the 3rd, where the classes seem the most flexible.

@Mickeymac Yeah a lot of etrain odyssey story is only told through the mission you receive. Still a great game in my opinion but is a little dated by the new standards set by EO3. Still not much of a story though but sub classes will open things up a lot more for the characters. Its not meant to have story driven characters though as You make your own set up and all.

@Mickey... yeah Im actually glad Im starting off with EO3 myself. Im sure Ill grab the other two EO games at some point if I run across them at a good price, but EO is fantastic and will hold me over for a long time. Honestly I enjoy just picking it up and hour here and there and having some fun, its not really the type of game I want to sit and play for 5 hours at a time (Ys 7) but Ill be playing EO 3 for months and having a blast and I can see that already.

How far is everybody in EO3? I'm trying to do the second mission on floor 4 and have just been leveling up my characters. My highest one is at level 18. Also anyone see a random foe running around in and out of between walls? I fought it a couple of times and it runs before I can kill it.

Edit: How is everyone doing on the ocean exploring. I still have not found a cannon or a way to get over rifts or sea weed. Anyone catch one of those really big fish that takes multiple tries to catch?

I just purchased EO3 this weekend but have not started it. I am trying beat DQ9 before I start it but I'm not sure I can wait for that. Am I in for a brutal time?

I'm playing Super Robot Taisen: OG Saga: Endless Frontier. Really awesome game which I'm about halfway through. Anyone else go through it? I hope its recently released (in Japan) sequel-Exceed-makes it over!

@Merg - The first hour or so could be classified as brutal, in my opinion. After that though it's just challenging in a good way. I felt DQIX was freaking piss easy. So if you had any trouble with that you could be in for rude awakening.

@Tech - I just got to to B4 haven't run into Narmer yet though.

Has anyone heard of Radiant historia? I hope it comes to the west.

@Jay Yeah the game definitely gets easier later on thanks to your characters getting better skills. The difficulty curve seems really good though - each new floor is always a challenge when I first visit it.

@mariofanatic128 Radiant Historia looks really interesting. Definitely hoping for a NA release!

So that was his name couldn't remember. Fought him once and got him about half way down before i lost. I'm a lot stronger now but need moneys to up grade all my weapons and armor first. Also anyone find any special weapons or armor from the sea questing yet. I have a couple of scrolls tell me of some legends but not found any yet.

@Tech101 I've been doing a lot of sea exploration and haven't found any special weapons from it yet. I have a few scrolls though. I guess you just follow the instructions on them... though they're kinda vague.

My characters are around level 23, on B6F just killed the ancient fish FOEs. Gonna go to B7F soon. The fish were pretty tough lol. I'm really glad Nectar only costs 50en, used like 2 in that battle. In terms of ocean exploration I've reached the north ocean and I have a cannon and a way to get through the seaweed. I can also move for 24 turns although I prefer 20 because I found a really cheap food source for 20 (it's 70en). I think I've found 7 destinations which I can do sea quests at, and I've finished the sea quests at the first two. The exp from sea quests is awesome. Also I'm now at the point where I can defeat random encounters in the labyrinth and heal up back to full HP without using any TP at all, so I can explore to my heart's content. I think I found a really good party combination.

The golden enemy which can run through walls is the Pasaran. The characters in town talked about it. I killed it once before it ran and got loads of exp.

Looks interesting. I too hope it comes out in the west. I love a good time travel story.

Ooh, time travel and Yoko Shimomura? DO WANT!