Comparison to others Dungeon crawler

[Zzyl_tsw]

Hello

I played Sword of stranger city (finished) and "Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk" (somewhere halfway i assume)
How does it compare (without spoiler please xD ) ?

Thanks

[プレロマンス]

there is no story tho

[DxDark]

Coven of / Library are SUBSTANTIALLY better than this...it's like comparing store wrapped-snack cakes to an award winning cake from a chef who had a handover but still went into work.

As above noted: there is no story to spoil, it's just "grind and go deep".

[rane]

Originally posted by プレロマンス:

there is no story tho

There is a pretty involved story actually. III is the first Etrian to feature that. There is even a route split and a true ending to achieve.
That said EO3 was a bit archaic and annoying with its unpolished quirks; whether the HD version is much more usable is a key factor in deciding whether to buy it or just em- PLAY the original version.

The other factor is the myriad of subtle bugs original had.

either way IMO it's no Etrian IV, which is possibly one of the best crawlers in history, but it's still fun. Probably not $40 fun but fun.

[Yomieda]

Coming from someone who played and loved both games/series: Etrian is similar to refrain's "side stories" where you find things in the map and small random events happen. You'll run across things like "you found an injured thing, do you want to help it or not", and you'll have risk-taking choices kind of like when you search for treasure in those eye-like holes in labyrinth of galleria.

There's no "big cutscene" event like Refrain where you get characters, a big story, new objectives (Look into the EO Untold series if you want something a bit more like that) - for the entire Etrian series it's "you are an explorer, you have to explore and find out what's at the end of the labyrinth, and that's your goal."

The big fun of the game is mostly playing around with builds, managing items and drawing your own map, imo.

[Shiroka]

Originally posted by rane:

Originally posted by プレロマンス:

there is no story tho

There is a pretty involved story actually. III is the first Etrian to feature that. There is even a route split and a true ending to achieve.
That said EO3 was a bit archaic and annoying with its unpolished quirks; whether the HD version is much more usable is a key factor in deciding whether to buy it or just em- PLAY the original version.

The other factor is the myriad of subtle bugs original had.

either way IMO it's no Etrian IV, which is possibly one of the best crawlers in history, but it's still fun. Probably not $40 fun but fun.

For me EO5 was the best with its distinctive Races and Character Traits and the godly OST. I'm currently about to play EON as my last 3DS Game in near time so we will see if its even better

[rane]

EO5 classes idea, especially with prestige classes was awesome but I felt the later floors kinda draggged a bit.

[Shiroka]

Originally posted by rane:

EO5 classes idea, especially with prestige classes was awesome but I felt the later floors kinda draggged a bit.

Yeah, first 3 were awesome.

4th was ok, but annoying due to teleport shenanigans and 5th had that weird flying around and we don't talk about 6th...i still have nightmares about that place and how much notes i scribbled on each map just to remember how to get to the upper floors

[Knight Solaire of Astora]

Etrian's gameplay is better, but there's not much of a story in the first two.

[Ignosius]

Originally posted by Shiroka:

Originally posted by rane:

EO5 classes idea, especially with prestige classes was awesome but I felt the later floors kinda draggged a bit.

Yeah, first 3 were awesome.

4th was ok, but annoying due to teleport shenanigans and 5th had that weird flying around and we don't talk about 6th...i still have nightmares about that place and how much notes i scribbled on each map just to remember how to get to the upper floors :steamdeadpan:

I actually thought the 6th stratum in EO5 was the most fair our of the whole series. Once you know what each color teleporter does, you can tell exactly where you'll go before you've even used it.

I'd at least say it was way better than the teleport nightmare that was 1U.

[Shylaar]

Originally posted by Zzyl_tsw:

Hello

I played Sword of stranger city (finished) and "Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk" (somewhere halfway i assume)
How does it compare (without spoiler please xD ) ?

Thanks

If Labyrinth of Refrain is a game with an intriguing story but tedious, braindead, mind-numbing gameplay, Etrian Odyssey is the opposite; it's a series of games where the story is minimal while the gameplay is extremely polished and enjoyable and requires considerable thought and planning from the player.
Stranger of Sword City also has rather braindead combat but more elaborate dungeon design than Refrain; by comparison Etrian's dungeon design is less maze-like and more focused on environmental puzzles.