Board 8 > all of the games I played in 2022, but the twist is that I'm not Mac Arrowny

(+) Yeah! (+)

AriaOfBolo posted...

Well now I'm curious because the character building in Labyrinth of Touhou is one of the main draws for me! I'm gathering it's a lot more open in EO?

https://aturfah.github.io/eo2u-skillsim/

this is what the builds look like in Etrian Odyssey. Untold 2 uses the classic system where you have access to the full sheet and nothing is locked behind story progress. also has the Grimoire system where you can equip a single skill from any class. (EDIT: Actually characters can only equip a single Grim stone, but the stones can hold multiple different skills. I think up to 5? It's been a few months since I touched the game.)

you get 3 points at character creation and 1 extra skill point for each level. a normal completed build with no extra grinding up to level 70 you'll have 72 skill points to work with, and your characters are always making small progress.

some skills are better in the earlygame, some are better in the lategame. some are good against a specific boss but you might not want them on your build forever. you can 'rest' and sacrifice 2 levels to reset your skill points which can be surprisingly effective. if you do it all the time it's going to massively increase grinding, but you can usually do it once before facing a stratum boss, or if you're struggling with enemies on a new stratum, and the effects of losing 2 levels are barely felt because they're massively offset by the value of having a stronger build for the content you're facing. plus grinding back up 2 levels is usually quick unless you were super over leveled to begin with.

anyway long story short with 70+ skill points to invest into every build, you could make two characters of the exact same class who play completely different. to get a preview of this effect you can start capping skills at the top of the build in the skill calculator, then clear everything, and then start from the bottom. you'll notice that the two builds likely will not even have any overlap before they run out of skill points. (EDIT: This effect is even more pronounced in games like EO5 where your race will also determine which of the class skills you are better or worse at using. Like a human ronin being better at a stab that inflicts blind status with luck, or a therian ronin being better at a massive damage dealing sword slash that scales high damage from their high strength stat. There are also games in the series which allow multi-class builds, such as 3, 4, and Nexus. In that case you're also deciding how many points of those points to invest into your main and sub class.)

nice
thanks!

another honorable mention to Advance Wars By Web

I started playing it last year and it's really good. I would say it goes beyond just filling the void of Re-Boot Camp being infinitely delayed, because honestly the ability to play online with other real players is an experience that no AW game has actually given me before.

also that makes one more strategy game that should have been in the stats...

yeah Frontier's a pretty reasonable place to start (particularly with the remaster having a lot of UI/QoL improvements) since it has most of the series staples, isn't too difficult (although Riki has a couple obnoxious battles, and there's a couple places where you can get a game over outside of battle), and each playthrough would be pretty short (probably about 15 hours the first time, once you know what you're doing and everything is it would probably be more in the 5-10 hour range).

the bad ones to start off with would probably be Romancing SaGa 2 (one of the better games in the series, but also one of the more brutal 16 bit rpgs. it's easier once you get some experience with it or use a guide since you can actually hard counter a lot of stuff, and the ng+ feature of the remaster mitigates it somewhat too if you're willing to start over), Unlimited SaGa (since it's pretty unconventional both in terms of the series and compared to rpgs in general since it's going for more of a tabletop aesthetic. might be more worth considering if/when it gets remastered like the other games in the series since increasing the transparency would go a long way to addressing people's issues with the game), and Scarlet Grace (again one of the most difficult games in the series, it's pretty easy to break/fail quests or mess up the reward, and it's also 99.9999999999999% battles and doesn't have towns/dungeons. I'm actually a bit surprised that it seems to have reviewed decently for what it is, since I thought it would end up being a bit of a pariah and hatred by everyone like Unlimited SaGa... I guess the market's just different now and people's expectations are different.) Frontier 2 might not be a great spot to get a feel for what the series is like either, since it's got more of a broad timeline/historical record concept to it and you're basically just picking short episodes with a fixed party from the map (also the final boss is pretty difficult and might require some grinding before you hit the ponr but that's kind of the series in general).

RS3's on the easier side for the series (outside of if you try to kill the final boss without weakening it), though it kind of has the issue that it has multiple characters to select from but it's more of a standard length rpg (compared to SF1 or US) and there's not much differences between them and you'd probably do most of the content on your first playthrough since it's also one of the more unfinished feeling ones. Minstrel's Song is the most polished/complete game in the series (where the original is the most unfinished), but it kind of has the same issue as RS3 I just mentioned where it's a longer game with multiple characters although there's slightly more differences between characters than RS3 (just not as much as SF1/US), more content, some content that can only be done in ng+. There's a fair amount of missable/timed stuff though, which I know tends to give some people aneurysms to think about.

MariaTaylor posted...

Advance Wars By Web

oh dang I figured that would have disappeared by now, wonder if FE by web is still around too

and gotcha thanks

etrian odyssey 1-3 collection hype

I was just wondering if I should replay EO3 in 2023 or wait until an Untold release, but I guess this is good enough.