Multiple save slots? Mother effin' finally. I'm the kind of guy who'd be starting new playthroughs of Etrian Odyssey all the damn time, but I don't ever want to erase my main files to do it. It makes me more excited than it probably should that they've finally added this. Hope it continues.
I actually just started playing through the first Untold, which had been sitting around awhile in my backlog (the impending release of EOUII of course spurred be to finally get it going). Though I'm not sure what to think about having all these talkative characters running around my EO yet, I'm enjoying what they've done. Since I played the first one back when it came out, it was cool the way they rope-a-doped me with that completely exact-same reconstruction of the first floor, only for the second floor to gradually and then suddenly be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. It was a cool subversion of my expectations. And then there was that unexpected new extra dungeon. It was a fun bit of fanservice to have Ren and Tlachtga join you for the tutorial part too. Has me hyped to see if EO2 does some interesting mixing of the familiar with the new as well.
I'm with you on the Grimoire Stones being kinda underwhelming though. What've they done to make them better this time around?
That's really cool re: Atlus mixing it up w/map layouts. I knew that some maps were reasonably different in the Untold version. Was curious about the effect that might have on someone who played the original game.
Re: talking heads in an Etrian Odyssey game: yeah, I know what you mean. I want to say the dialogue is a bit better in EOUII? Or at least, there's some effort to make those sections a little more engaging if you're not feeling the writing or characters. I'm only on the 2nd stratum right with EOUII.
Re: Grimoire stones: one of the biggest changes for EOUII is that you open up and run a cafe within the city. In part, it serves the same function as the mansion in EOU, but it's also where you can develop new dishes which have different effects on your party (i.e. increase speed, increase material yields, add volt damage for the first round of attacks, increase poison resistance, etc.). Like the weapons, you get ingredients by killing monsters and harvesting, but they occupy a different space than monster parts that you sell at the shop. So you have to "solve" recipes by reading their descriptions and guessing the right ingredients. You can then advertise these recipes to different parts of the city to get more entals (which, thanks to the dialogue in EOUII, is apparently what the currency is called). Another aspect of this cafe is that it serves as the place where you can equip grimoire stones on your party (up to 3 slots unlock as you progress through the game) but you can also trade the random grimoire stones you receive in battle for higher-level versions from visiting adventurers. I think there's also a way to sell or break down unneeded stones, but I haven't had a chance to take a closer look at that. All of this rolls out slowly over the first stratum. Plus, I just feel like grimoire stones drop at a much more frequent rate.
I played a bit of the demo and it seemed neat. I always find these games really charming and I end up buying all of them but I'm never able to sink enough time into them. I think I'm still halfway through IV and just a few hours into the first Untold. Am I wrong or does the main character have a lot more dialogue options than in the first Untold? That was just the impression I got through playing some of the demo, it seemed like they were giving me more of an opportunity to shape my character's personality.
Now that you mention it, yeah, there's way more opportunities to interact with your crew, and also pick how your character responds to things/voice how they feel about things. Plus, sometimes when you rest at the inn, there'll be a story beat where you get to know a character a bit better. They're all still mostly fantasy/anime tropes, but charming enough. It doesn't look like the dialogue options necessarily tie in to an approval meter or anything, but a few of the scenes reminded me of hanging out with friends in the Persona games, so I wonder if that might be on the table for EOV.
EOIV is the first of these games I managed to actually "finish" and I really liked it, but that required some on-and-off attention for over a year. I'll burn through a stratum or two and then let it ride for a bit and then come back. If it weren't on a portable device, I don't know that I'd have ever beaten it, since I could play while watching a movie or doing other stuff.
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