Xiahou Shake posted...
MariaTaylor posted...
high build diversity which can be fairly unforgiving in the earlier titles if you mess up a character
Yeah this was a big part of why I dropped EO1. I generally dislike looking stuff up for games I'm playing for the first time, but in EO1 it felt like the only way to find out a skill was utter garbage was to skill in to it and find out the hard way... which I would be fine with if there was any way to respec, but to the point I got I saw no sign of such a feature. (I've since looked it up and found you can respec for a 10 level loss which feels pretty brutal but at least it's an option I guess.)
respec has always been an option in the games, but they toned down the punishment with each subsequent title. the most recent game is basically less than a slap on the wrist to change up your build.
I'm not really in love with that conceptually because it means you can tune your party for each specific stratum or boss without losing much progress. I think the game should have done more to reward a player that can construct a solid party that does well against a variety of environments and encounters.
still, EO5 is probably the best entry in the series since EO 1/2. I was actually surprised at how much I liked it because of how different the core system and rule set are for making builds and such. they went probably further away from the standard formula than any previous game. but they did A LOT to make the exploration and difficulty feel more similar to previous titles, and coming from someone that hated how dumb and simple EO4 was, this was a refreshing return to what the series should be about.