DS #5153: Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (USA)

[SaddQ]

but as many have stated before those who pirate and those who are buy are usually two entirely different kinds of people...so in effect it was wasted effort on their part.

Wrong. I do both. For example, last week I bought Last Window though I already 'owned' the ROM on my SC. It's perfectly playable in its ROM state, but I wanted the real thing anyway. I'll probably keep the game sealed however, just for collecting purposes.

 

[Aia]

Usually, being an operative word. Effectively, there's three categories of downloaders that are relevant: "would not have bought", "would have bought but did not" and "bought as a direct result".

I have the distinct impression that the first category is the largest and the third is the smallest. The first category can be entirely disregarded as, well, they're not paying and would not have paid anyways. The second category is probably the most important. After all, they would have bought it if there wasn't a free alternative... direct lost revenue. The third category is a bit more interesting and one that's probably the most difficult to get good quantifiable data on-- how many people actually bought the game after securing an alternative copy because of some positive element? [That is, not explicitly because of AP or whatnot.]

Sure, there are blends and variants, but I think that covers the major categories that matter. ...And on a second read-through, I'm lacking a few details, but alas-- brekkist calls...

 

[McDash]

Still waiting for the fix, but if my money comes first (sep 30 - oct 3)from Japan. I'm gonna buy the original.

 

[DJ91990]

Never friggen beat any of these games, I enjoy them but dang the grinding level is set WAY HIGH! I hear that this game has problems when running on Wood Firmware and AKAIO so I think I'll pass until there is a Childs Play Patch or other AP Patch or a firmware update, no point in getting stressed out like I did with Pokemon. I don't think my nerves would be able to handle that amount of stress. *Goes back to Playing Pokemon Black*

 

[Hopeful Death]

I've only completed the first game so far but uh, I didn't have to grind at all. No idea what people are talking about when they say these games have grinding.

 

[Zarcon]

I've only completed the first game so far but uh, I didn't have to grind at all. No idea what people are talking about when they say these games have grinding.

Typically they pick a team that's too unbalanced (nigh impossible in this one), don't spend skill points wisely, don't pay attention to weaknesses, or part/all of the above.
Knowing what is weak to certain elements/damage types makes a huge difference.
Same with knowing what is weak to certain status ailments and what killer moves are negated by binding what body part.

It makes something that "needs" 10 extra levels of grinding an easy win 10 levels earlier.

 

[dgwillia]

Personally, i never really cared about the tiers or what not. For this game i picked....

Gladiator, Ninja, Arbalist, Zodiac, and Monk

 

[lukecop80]

WELL IT WORKS FOR ME ON AKAIO 1.7.1

AND REALLY I DON'T THINK ITS THAT GREAT

 

[Deleted-220713]

WELL IT WORKS FOR ME ON AKAIO 1.7.1

AND REALLY I DON'T THINK ITS THAT GREAT

ok but do you have to use caps lock?

 

[Clookster]

ok but do you have to use caps lock?

I gave you an internet for that.

 

[JohanX]

WELL IT WORKS FOR ME ON AKAIO 1.7.1

AND REALLY I DON'T THINK ITS THAT GREAT

HAVE YOU ... oops, sorry ... Have you tried sailing yet, lukecop80? You will definitely hang then.

 

[Ruri]

Personally, i never really cared about the tiers or what not. For this game i picked....

Gladiator, Ninja, Arbalist, Zodiac, and Monk

It's not precisely a matter of tiers. But in general, you won't be able to beat an EO game (or, at least, you'll require massive grinding) if your team is poorly-balanced and lacks all of:

-A strong way of dealing damage across multiple elements.
-A healer capable of healing your entire party at once.
-Defensive buffs capable of protecting against all of the game's physical and magical attacks, or boosting your max HP.

The problem, I think, is that most people don't have the last one, so they find most of their party getting killed by late-game bosses and assume that that means that they need to grind more. That's not how you're supposed to play EO -- it's more about making sure you have a counter to whatever the enemy is using, and a way of hurting whatever the enemy's weakness is. You don't need the "best" class, but you do need to have a wide variety of abilities or you'll get slaughtered. You also have to make sure that your entire party has something useful to do at all times, which can get tricky with some of the more limited classes -- though dual-classing helps a bit with that, you still only have so many skill points to spend...

(Of course, EO3 might be a bit different than the last two. They seem to have nerfed a lot of the traditional strategies -- anti-element abilities are now slower to learn, say, with it requiring 10 points rather than 5 to get total immunity.)

 

[McDash]

Still no fix yet?

 

[DS1]

Still no fix yet?

Nope. Maybe a normal release group is waiting until they dump their own copy, and then release it with a fix. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people who debug roms are a little sore at the fact that someone totally random dumped the game before they did. There used to be a lot of petty infighting in the scene over that stuff.

 

[tsol]

seems more likely that the AP isn't trivial to deal with like most.. there seem to be reports of crashing in tons of different area's.. could also be that no one with the skill set to patch it cares enough or is too busy playing pokemons. a patch will come out, sooner or later, though..

 

[WarioMCP]

seems more likely that the AP isn't trivial to deal with like most.. there seem to be reports of crashing in tons of different area's.. could also be that no one with the skill set to patch it cares enough or is too busy playing pokemons. a patch will come out, sooner or later, though..

It's not areas that crash the game, It's certain special attacks (Monster special attacks as well as player ones) and sailing.

 

[DS1]

seems more likely that the AP isn't trivial to deal with like most.. there seem to be reports of crashing in tons of different area's.. could also be that no one with the skill set to patch it cares enough or is too busy playing pokemons. a patch will come out, sooner or later, though..

I'm pretty sure it's the latter.

 

[godreborn]

I still believe it's a compatibility issue rather than ap. I would think if it were ap they'd make it next to impossible to complete the game. the fact that it appears to freeze with things that r unnecessary to complete the game makes me think otherwise about it being ap.

 

[doyama]

(Of course, EO3 might be a bit different than the last two. They seem to have nerfed a lot of the traditional strategies -- anti-element abilities are now slower to learn, say, with it requiring 10 points rather than 5 to get total immunity.)

The needs for buff/debuffs in these kinds of games is pretty important. Otherwise you're in for a world of pain and suffering. Ok.. well pain and suffering above and beyond the usual salt in the wound pain and suffering these games are supposed to have. EO still isn't nearly as unrelenting as Dark Spire was. At least EO showed you the big nasty monsters as blobs trying to kill you. Dark Spire seemed to have some kind of entropy random number generator designed to party wipe you at any point in the game.

 

[doyama]

I think I might be the only person who really disliked the whole map-drawing thing. Aside from that though, this series is alright.

I'm sorta torn by this. On the one hand the map making part is so retro! I recall the fond days of me mapping out dungeons in Bard's Tale. Cursing the day they invented spinners+darkeness+teleporters! On the other hand, once auto-mapping came out in later Bard's Tales it wasn't like I missed having to map out reams of graph paper.