EO3 remains my favorite game, but 4 is very, very special to me. You never forget your first.
I'll admit, what got me to try these games wasn't the gameplay or the art; it was the music, and for good reason. EO4 is the first Etrian game to have an orchestrated soundtrack instead of the FM Synth from the original trilogy, and while I LOVE the soundtrack for the first three games, EO4 is bursting through the seams with great compositions.
Lush Woodlands' theme immediately caught my attention when I first heard it. My brother was playing the demo back in 2013, and I just watched him play it for a while. The music seriously captivated me, but I thought the first person exploration and map drawing were kind of weird.
It wasn't until I heard Battlefield - Storm playing on a Marvel VS Capcom 3 combo compilation out of all things, that I decided "OK, I have to give this a try". Hundreds of hours later, I was enamored with the series, and immediately hunted down the previous games.
Coming back to it after marathoning the HD Collection on Steam was a bit tough, not gonna lie. It's capped to 30fps, battles and movement speed can't be sped up, and it's lacking some map tools that later games would add in. But after conquering the first floor of the labyrinth, it all came back to me and felt surprisingly comfortable.
The early game was tougher than I remembered, I actually got clobbered and managed to get a game over a couple of times. This was very surprising to me; either 14 year old me was a god gamer or I just blocked that memory out. It's definitely easier to deal with harder games when you're young.
Mid and post game portions are far easier compared to previous entries, but in a good way imo. All classes feel really unique(Especially the Fortress, my favorite Tank in the series so far), and the possibilities provided by the return of Subclassing make experimenting super fun.
It's also nice to see the post game bringing back certain story beats and aesthetics that we saw back EO1. I could appreciate them way more now that I had the DS trilogy under my belt.
Sky exploration also addressed the one thing I didn't enjoy in EO3: overworld exploration not being tied to the main story. In the third game, Seafaring was basically detached from the labyrinth itself. You could completely ignore it in favor of just completing the main labyrinths.
In EO4 however, you travel to different labyrinths and caves(bite sized labyrinths that were pretty fun actually) through the sky.
Now, onward to new adventures. After I played 4 originally, I went back and played 1-3 on the DS, Untold on the 3DS, and then... Stopped. I never actually played 5, Untold 2, Etrian Mystery Dungeon or the Persona Q games. That changes now; the Etrianthon continues!
I'll admit, what got me to try these games wasn't the gameplay or the art; it was the music, and for good reason. EO4 is the first Etrian game to have an orchestrated soundtrack instead of the FM Synth from the original trilogy, and while I LOVE the soundtrack for the first three games, EO4 is bursting through the seams with great compositions.
Lush Woodlands' theme immediately caught my attention when I first heard it. My brother was playing the demo back in 2013, and I just watched him play it for a while. The music seriously captivated me, but I thought the first person exploration and map drawing were kind of weird.
It wasn't until I heard Battlefield - Storm playing on a Marvel VS Capcom 3 combo compilation out of all things, that I decided "OK, I have to give this a try". Hundreds of hours later, I was enamored with the series, and immediately hunted down the previous games.
Coming back to it after marathoning the HD Collection on Steam was a bit tough, not gonna lie. It's capped to 30fps, battles and movement speed can't be sped up, and it's lacking some map tools that later games would add in. But after conquering the first floor of the labyrinth, it all came back to me and felt surprisingly comfortable.
The early game was tougher than I remembered, I actually got clobbered and managed to get a game over a couple of times. This was very surprising to me; either 14 year old me was a god gamer or I just blocked that memory out. It's definitely easier to deal with harder games when you're young.
Mid and post game portions are far easier compared to previous entries, but in a good way imo. All classes feel really unique(Especially the Fortress, my favorite Tank in the series so far), and the possibilities provided by the return of Subclassing make experimenting super fun.
It's also nice to see the post game bringing back certain story beats and aesthetics that we saw back EO1. I could appreciate them way more now that I had the DS trilogy under my belt.
Sky exploration also addressed the one thing I didn't enjoy in EO3: overworld exploration not being tied to the main story. In the third game, Seafaring was basically detached from the labyrinth itself. You could completely ignore it in favor of just completing the main labyrinths.
In EO4 however, you travel to different labyrinths and caves(bite sized labyrinths that were pretty fun actually) through the sky.
Now, onward to new adventures. After I played 4 originally, I went back and played 1-3 on the DS, Untold on the 3DS, and then... Stopped. I never actually played 5, Untold 2, Etrian Mystery Dungeon or the Persona Q games. That changes now; the Etrianthon continues!