Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City - Spending an hour picking your first character
 

Fuck, this shit again. For us dungeon crawlan' fans, it's another dose of Etrian Odyssey. First we descended the dungeon, then ascended it, now we're traveling outward! Exciting.

We still have mostly the same deal. Create your guild, spend three hours deciding on a party (not that it matters, you'll end of scrapping half of it a few hours later and replace them with other classes), then proceed to get assraped by FOEs.

All of the old classes are "gone." In their place are classes that fulfill most of the same roles, but have been fairly significantly retooled to give a new experience. For example, the Protector has been replaced with the Hoplite, a spear-wielding defender who focuses less on healing and can attack from either row. Another major change is the addition of multiclassing, which allow you to pick a second class to supplement your current abilities. Want that Shogun to dual-wield some pistols? Okay, just sub the Buccaneer class and give him some Gun Mastery points.

For reference, here are the classes (their roles are pretty obvious):

Prince(ss)
Gladiator
Hoplite
Buccaneer
Ninja
Monk
Zodiac
Wildling
Arbalist
Farmer



That is all for now. Anyone pick it up? I wasn't kidding in the title. I'm still thinking about what classes I want.

Oh. my. god. That's awesome.

My copy is in the mail actually, ordered it off of Amazon. Should arrive here by next week.

Picked this up, but don't know when I'll get around to it. The pre-order artbook is really nice.

So I've started playing through, just barely got to the 4th floor. Artbook is gorgeous and features artwork from all three games, including character classes, monsters, locations and the like.

The ship sailing game introduced in the third one is pretty fun too. I've almost spent more time on that then I have in the labyrinth. I've also decided to rotate around a few of the new classes to try them out. Right now I've got the Zodiac (Fire / Ice / Lightning Magic User) and the Farmboy on the back row in alternative rounds while my Gladiator, Buccaneer, Warrior Monk and Hoplite tend to the killing.

Zodiac is going to run out of TP a lot at first, so I'd recommend not starting out with him, as once he runs out of TP, he's about as useful as drying off with a wet towel.

Been playing for the better part of the last week, just as addictive as when I played the second one, which I admittedly never finished. Started exploring the 7th floor and am able to handle the FOEs there with a little luck. I like that FOEs give experience (and good chunks of it at that) as if I recall correctly you didn't get any in 2, just their drops.

Characters are around level 25 now, using Prince, Hoplite, Gladiator, Arbalist and Zodiac. I like some of the tweaks to the standard archetypes. Hoplites would generally be your front row tanks but to get the most from some of their skills they need to be in the back row, and vice versa for the Arbalist. I also really like the Prince class, able to to be a competent fighter, but best in the back row boosting morale (HPs), boosting stats, weakening enemies, in more of a generals role. Plus he frees up from needing a dedicated healer class which is nice.

Still need to experiment with some of the other classes and do more with the sailing. Right now I've passed on the sailing bits because I want to dedicate all my money to new gear.

Also I don't know what it is about this series, but damn if I don't love drawing me some maps.

I've been playing this just a bit this week and I'm glad I actually bought this. I think it has lost some of its charm in terms of classes, as I actually liked seeing familiar faces when I started playing the second game. It's pretty hard experimenting when you consistently make the wrong choices. >.< However, I must say that I really like how they made the maps trickier in terms of FOEs and avoiding them.

OMG. I love the sailing portion. It's so addictive. In a matter of probably three hours I have mapped out most of the South Sea. I love how it really is exploration based and your not really limited on levels and stats like how it is in the main labyrinth portion. I wish I was already on the second stratum, so that I could have the extra slot for equipment. =/

I really need time/suggestions to plan out skill sets for my party. I've got Princess/Gladiator/Bucaneer in the front and Arbalist/Zodiac in the back. I'm starting to think that the Bucaneer is a waste; although she's the fastest, she doesn't really pack too much of a punch, at least with guns.

Made it to the third stratum now and am stressing over what sub-classes I want. Haven't even really developed my main classes the way I want, let alone ready to worry about a secondary class. On the upside, having a Prince in the party can make those hazard tiles much less of a worry considering any damage from them can be recovered in another step.

Is it just me or does the Arbalist get a lot better gear faster than the other classes? Those crossbows put everything else to shame.