Etrian Odyssey 2: Untold hard patch
Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:25 am
I love the Etrian Odyssey series. I'm someone who complains a lot about the series, especially preUntold, but it comes from a place of heart. For all the criticisms I give, I've dumped a ton of hours into these games. Untold, Untold 2, and Nexus are by far my most played games on the DS, approach hundreds of hours each and even run counts in the double digits. I think the series had a rocky start, Atlus hit their stride in Untold and every game after it has been pretty good.
I think it's safe for me to say that 2: Untold (I'll abbreviate it as 2U) is my favorite game in the series. Etrian Odyssey 2 was a wild experience with really dumb design decisions and an abysmal QA. It was a really dumb game, but it was a funny type of dumb game. 2U mostly kept all the good parts of the original 2 but removed a lot of the balance issues and a lot of the jank. Classes that used to be basically unplayable got huge buffs and many of the overpowered things got reigned down a notch. There are lots of toys for classes to play with, and with the grimoire system that you'll see later there's a ton you can experiment with. The game also has a massive class roster really helps make this game extremely replayable.
After playing the game a few times, I noticed some issues that really started to bug me and I'll mention them as I go along. The biggest issue I have with the game, however, is that random encounters can be really poorly designed. They're either filled with enemies that have pitiful hp pools, can be locked down a bit too reliably for my tastes, or just simply don't make any sense and the enemies either don't synergize well or have self sabotage mechanics (and I'll rant about the latter as we get deep into the game). EO has had an issue where enemies can't match up to the player since its inception, but at least in the original two games they were mostly just overcompensated statistically (or in 1's case, benefiting from a broken damage formula), and even then the difficulty usually tapers off past the first five or so floors. For a series that refers to itself as "a series for masochists", random encounters in this game can be frankly really pathetic.
And that's why I'm playing this patch made by Kyasarintsu, a friend of mine. In the next post, you will see an explanation of what this patch is and what it's designed to do. In my opinion, it makes the game a lot more fun because randoms were honestly at one of their lowest points in the series. This game has pretty split opinions regarding boss design, their damage, and their HP, but honestly I prefer the bosses because they at least put up a fight. I'd rather fight scripted fights with heavy damage than a ton of enemies that are made of paper and fall over to any aoe damage skill and can be shut down with ailments pretty much all the time.
I'm assuming that people who are reading this know the game enough so I won't get into the gritty details of the game so I won't be going into too much depth regarding the mechanics. I will write my opinion on things as I go and I will detail any changes in enemies and describe what new enemies do, so this Let's Play probably isn't suited for someone who isn't knowledgeable about this game. If you want an informative and detailed let's play for all types of players, there are some really good ones made by others in the community.
I think it's safe for me to say that 2: Untold (I'll abbreviate it as 2U) is my favorite game in the series. Etrian Odyssey 2 was a wild experience with really dumb design decisions and an abysmal QA. It was a really dumb game, but it was a funny type of dumb game. 2U mostly kept all the good parts of the original 2 but removed a lot of the balance issues and a lot of the jank. Classes that used to be basically unplayable got huge buffs and many of the overpowered things got reigned down a notch. There are lots of toys for classes to play with, and with the grimoire system that you'll see later there's a ton you can experiment with. The game also has a massive class roster really helps make this game extremely replayable.
After playing the game a few times, I noticed some issues that really started to bug me and I'll mention them as I go along. The biggest issue I have with the game, however, is that random encounters can be really poorly designed. They're either filled with enemies that have pitiful hp pools, can be locked down a bit too reliably for my tastes, or just simply don't make any sense and the enemies either don't synergize well or have self sabotage mechanics (and I'll rant about the latter as we get deep into the game). EO has had an issue where enemies can't match up to the player since its inception, but at least in the original two games they were mostly just overcompensated statistically (or in 1's case, benefiting from a broken damage formula), and even then the difficulty usually tapers off past the first five or so floors. For a series that refers to itself as "a series for masochists", random encounters in this game can be frankly really pathetic.
And that's why I'm playing this patch made by Kyasarintsu, a friend of mine. In the next post, you will see an explanation of what this patch is and what it's designed to do. In my opinion, it makes the game a lot more fun because randoms were honestly at one of their lowest points in the series. This game has pretty split opinions regarding boss design, their damage, and their HP, but honestly I prefer the bosses because they at least put up a fight. I'd rather fight scripted fights with heavy damage than a ton of enemies that are made of paper and fall over to any aoe damage skill and can be shut down with ailments pretty much all the time.
I'm assuming that people who are reading this know the game enough so I won't get into the gritty details of the game so I won't be going into too much depth regarding the mechanics. I will write my opinion on things as I go and I will detail any changes in enemies and describe what new enemies do, so this Let's Play probably isn't suited for someone who isn't knowledgeable about this game. If you want an informative and detailed let's play for all types of players, there are some really good ones made by others in the community.