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Etrian Odyssey IV:Finally out in Europe. EO I Remake demo, 9/16 on US eshop
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Monks had a nice set of fist skills and a couple of skills based on bonuses-on-death, though they weren't necessarily popular. Just had a little different flavor to it.
From a brief look, it appears that the Medic is the only class with revive, so I think I'll want it at least as a secondary. Probably a Dancer/Medic and a Mystic/something else. Mystics really cover you on a variety of fronts.
Edit: Look at the Mystic's Poison Field. Wiping the floor with the first three strata is plausible.
EO3 had 18 class skills (along with a row of generics) and EO4 has 20. EO3 looks like it averaged 150-170 points available within a given class, a lot of 10 point skills with a few 5 pointers. Despite having two more skills for each class, EO4 averages 130-150 points available, a good mix of 4/6/8/10 pointers. And you don't have the generic TP Up/HP Up to consider, and your class skill only costs 3 points instead of 10, and your secondary class only has half the points available to you.
We're going from having 111 points to spend among 360-400 potential points, to 200-230 potential points.
(Didn't include the bench XP skill or Chop/Take/Gather etc. in the equation, those weren't really taken seriously for a battle team.)
Wooden Spoon on Steam
3DS: 1005-8709-0277
This is pages old, but check out the demos for these games: http://www.spidweb.com/ Their demos are bigger than a lot of games I've played.
30, right? And isn't it spread out in groups of 5 instead of straight down?
I think it's significant that they're separated because they weren't in EO3 despite the map.
That kinda takes away some of the oomph of this whole thing.
Also, which element tends to be the most useful? Like, are there usually a bunch of enemies immune to fire?
I'm considering a Landsknecht built for Link Boost (tons of post-Link hits), and a Sword Dance dancer to proc them.
Or a Nightseeker subbed Dancer for dual wielding massive damage attacks against status-inflicted stuff... and a Nightseeker/Mystic to keep things forever-statused.
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I haven't played EO4 yet but here's the breakdown of class design in EO3 vs. the rest of the series.
EO1, 2, and 4 are built on giving classes roles and specific jobs to do. It's boring in a sense, but it allows for people to more easily choose their style of play. I have never liked Hexers in this series, because status ailments aren't my particular cup o' tea (though I should try it). So to avoid status ailments I had to avoid using a character, and maybe some abilities here and there on others. I'm more of a 'binds' type of player. Hence Dark Hunter love (though, maybe that's a result of loving the class theme)
In EO3 though, the class roles are a little muddy. In fact for the most part I don't feel like there are roles. The draw of each class goes from the role to the class-specific ability that you can't get from sub-classing. In a very general sense, and I know there are exceptions, that dictates everything about your party makeup. It's not perfect but I feel like that was the intent. The result is that if I want to avoid status ailments, there's no one character I avoid - I have to avoid particular skills. And my desire to be bind-based? Now it's a mess of figuring out what character classes do which binds, but worse yet (and this is the huge drawback of EO3's design), I have to invest my skill points in very, very precise manners, often to my disadvantage. And it must be hell for the developers, because now they're not just balancing skills themselves, they're balancing the time and investment on the player's part needed to get skills, to have focused strengths of parties.
What I like about EO3's class designs is the lack of roles, for sure. I mean, the Monk and Hoplite were very much role-driven because "heal" and "defend the group" will never go away in turn-based games. I liked the goal of making parties more widely diverse, that your party members synergize together quite effectively. And hey, I adore the aesthetics of the classes. Doing away with traditional names of classes and designs in favor of things that are just different is great. That last one though doesn't have to go hand in hand with the mechanics and systems. The big thing that got in the way in EO3 was the skill tree design. To date it's the best game in the series (like I said, no EO4 demo for me
Now, the Monk was a Medic with a modernized / streamlined healing set, which made room for the Fist skills. Cure 1, 2, and 3 went away. There was just "Healing." It grew on a scaling rate. There's a Full Heal that operates exactly as Cure 3 did, but gets to the point with the name. There's Line Heal and Party Heal, each their own skills also scaling as the Healing skill, no more of this Salve 1, 2, and 3 shit. Hopefully all those changes carried over into EO4 for the medic. I really hope so. If so, you lost nothing for the healing class mechanically (and specifically regarding healing) in going from 3 to 4. If you mean aesthetic - okay, fair enough.
The big picture you need to get Sporky is that EO4 seems like a tepid 'remake' or 'reimagining' of the first game. They've learned to compact things (as demonstrated with my healing paragraph above), they've probably learned the value of focused classes vs. the mess that was "everyone does something pertaining to this style of play." In reality it's easier to balance and design for.
Yep - medic skills are compacted to just Heal, Line Heal, Party Heal, etc. with some new stuff (a passive to autoheal people, a skill that makes the next heal go wider, etc.)
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Zodiacs were more suited to elemental damage, but they certainly did not hold a monopoly on it. Arbalists being "ranged" damage means they can attack from the back row, which functionally they did not have a monopoly on either (this is more true than the Zodiac example).
I don't remember Ninjas being based on debuffs at all, not anymore than other classes in the game. They had like a leg bind, a poison, and a stone application ability. That's it. The Gladiator alone was able to bind arms, and stun, and confuse, across different abilities. They're on equal footing.
Beastmasters I can concede to though. They are, however, an outlier as far as I'm concerned. I stand by my view of EO3's design vs. the other games in the series (which includes a cursory glance of EO4, but I'm confident it holds).
Hmm... Nightseekers are both damage dealers (dual wielding, massive damage against statused foes) and status (Every status, but no binds... and the ability to status everything at once).
Dancers are... everything but tanking. The waltz line offers healing, the tango line offers buffing, and the samba line gives chases for damage (Also, the dance line leads to potentially ridiculous autoattacks).
Fortresses and Medics are basically 100% tanking and healing, no argument there.
Runemasters are both TEC-based damage (elemental, mainly), and support (elemental buffing/debuffing)...
Overall, I'd say classes range from heavily focused on one thing (Medic) to being universalists (Dancer).
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The later dancer skills also sound really awesome, although they seem to not be that great in the early game.
Still playing 3 on my end, though it's just endgame boss grinding on the train. Wildling (Beastmaster) is just awful, but yeah, it, Ninja, and theoretically Farmer were your replacement for the one-stop shopping of Hexer in 2. Pretty much all the cloth-wearing classes in EO3 were a bad choice for primaries, because they had the messiest skill trees. Wildling and to a lesser extent Zodiac had way, way too weighty prerequisites to get off the ground as members of your starting party; they really come into their own later on with the out-of-combat XP carrying them until you reach the subclass section. Ninja was a little better put together, but as Jars says, not that effective on its own except as a TP-generation engine with the shadow clones and Monk's TP-on-death passive.
Monk and Arbalist are the best-put-together classes in 3, with Gladiator and Prince being a little messy but largely functional. Prince had way too many moving parts, ultimately, but the buffs were good and the stats were powerful enough to let them off-class as, like, Arbalist or Buccaneer and have some other options. Meanwhile, Monk's prerequisites were mostly things that you'd want anyway, and you weren't going 15 points deep into three different skills to unlock Fire Prophecy, for example.
The real tragedy of in 3, imo, was Hoplite, which is a super-effective class that is utterly useless at anything but standing there spamming one of four guard-something skills. Buccaneer has a similar problem, where it's a pretty darn good class with a super-streamlined but long path to doing any real damage. That it comes without the ridiculous hitting power of Front Mortar or the sheer nastiness of Five-Ring Sword / Blade Rave / Nine Smashes is unfortunate; you end up being better off just making some combination Gladiator / Shogun / Arbalist.
3's biggest not-weird-skill tree problem is action economy, though. You're probably dedicating one or two characters, by endgame, to full-time spamming of support skills. Within-genre this is pretty normal but it's frustrating to feel like the guys doing the attacking are the only ones you have much say in building.
leg bind
petrification
sleep
poison
instant KO proc
status spreading ability
the majority of their skills are status oriented. they only had two damage attacks
That's a bit of my issue with part 3 vs. the rest of the series. There's a lot more investment in part 3 to get to the things you want, and you're investing in things you're not interested in. At least with the Dark Hunter when I was investing in things I was serving a strategy and utilizing everything along the way.
Yeah. I only lately got a crack at 2 and I was like "Wow, this is much more straightforward than dumping 16 points into hitting harder so I can unlock an attack that runs me out of TP in two turns."
That's funny to me because that's the party I settled on after some experimentation. It does have some survivability problems, but between Fortress's Taunt/Ally Gaurd and Seeker's divert attention skill who's name escapes me, its pretty easy to make sure that the Seeker just never gets hit ever.
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My Ninja Steve does a bit of everything.
But EO4 seems similar to me. The Swordy has one of the Defender/Whatever attack-negating passives. The Runy has the other one.
The Bushi has some binding, paralysing, debuffing (Dekaja), quick attack, and elemental attacks mixed with some endurance and lots of offense. Generating TP with normal attacks mixes well with many subclasses.
Each element is mandatory for some enemy-drops. I prefer versatility, though that can be covered with elemental weapons if you prefer.
Looking at the available skills, I'd first try to make my go-to damage-spells the single-target ones. The stronger "random hits" one for ice, since those tend to work out fine on single targets, too. You need some points in AoEs to reach them, so you've still got some ability to clean up trash.
Those debuffs that work for the whole party seem really excellent, btw.
Oh yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at, it does feel like a remake, but not really to any huge detriment or anything. It's just that in EO3 I was like whooaaa this is nuts and despite some problems with their class design model it felt really cool.
Definitely. The Buccaneer was insane. He had some great stuff as a secondary class but you had to spend 26 points to max out Swashbuckling. 26! 30 if you wanted Pincushion!
EO3 prereqs are 3s, 5s, 7s, and some 8s and 10s. EO4 is all 1, 2 or 3, and honestly all skills look useful. No more investing in weapon mastery you will never use, and less of heavily investing in a lesser version of something you REALLY want.
When do you think you can get a 3DS?
I agree, I especially like the idea of a dancer in each row.
You and me both. At least I have 2 to play through and 4 more EO3 bosses. Beat the red dragon last night. That felt good.
That's a perfect example by the way. Speaking of EO3 I decided to start my file over, trying a different approach to play. The team is a Princess, Buccaneer, Ninja, Farmer, and Hoplite.
When I get a job and get paid.
I always have a tank, this game is no different. It's the 4 other slots I can't decide on.
I want a dancer, and I think I want them as a front row character, with the counter dance, and evasion.
I think I want a front row medic, as a healer / damage dealer, but would that split up the points too much, and make them weak at both?
I think I want the nightseeker, but is there only one line of throw abilities for them? I don't see a good way to set one up, and I can never resist dual wield.
I always have one caster, and the runemaster fits, but, I don't have anyone else using elemental stuff. Would I be gimped to not have this?
Nobody has to remain in their row for every battle. Dancer abilities generally affect one line and they can move between them in the middle of battle, so if you plan on doing this a good team would be 2 in front + 2 in back + dancer.
I don't think you want a front row medic. They are simply poor damage dealers. If you want to do something like that, wait for secondary classes later in the game. The dancer is basically your front row medic.
Nothing wrong with taking a nightseeker and runemaster. It'd be fine for your party to be fortress, nightseeker, dancer in front and runemaster, medic in back. Binds are useful though, which is exclusive to the sniper early on.
I'll look into this...I spent most of yesterday having video game ADD and loading up the demo for 5 minutes, closing it down, reopening, etc. I picked based off what I thought they would do, and only started looking at their trees after.