Etrian Odyssey III HD

As a newcomer to this series, this seems like it was a pretty representative middle-of-the-road entry point to EO, where they'd begun softening some of the harder, crueler edges from the first two iterations, but hadn't quite figured out (or weren't fully interested in) how to make the series truly user-friendly. This game still hates the player and loves a bit of trolling, and sometimes it's hilarious, but this tendency (for better or worse) only becomes more blatantly apparent the further one descends into the titular Drowned City. The fatigue definitely set in for me towards the end, and I was very uncomfortably conscious that I was dragging a ragtag group of ugly, suboptimal warriors to the finish line, and I probably won't be attempting the post-game content with this first squad, but the reward of having brawled my way to one of the default endings with this crew feels nevertheless very present.

If you're interested in this game, you should be willing in advance to fire up GameFAQs and heavily consult some of the EO wikis out there. This is a niche Atlus game with low QoL features and quirky localization. For example, the game does not give you enough information as to how a character's skill scales, so you can misallocate precious points into a skill that only warrants a small investment (although there are systems in place to reallocate them if needed). Sometimes it's apparent which skills will function with a singular value point, and other times it's completely invisible to the player, as it'll obfuscate the actual numbers and percentages governing the scaling of a given skill. Regarding quests as well, I found that some occasional lapses in localization quality means that it's sometimes quite hard to parse what a quest is actually asking you to do, or where to go to fulfill it. None of this is relevant for the EO sickos that have played these games a million times on the DS, but for a layman like me I had to make frequent use of third-party information.

With those caveats out of the way -- this game is cool. Building The Squad is a joy. Stumbling accidentally into strategies that will actually make a dent in this game's steely, hateful exterior is fun and rewarding. Finding the little crevices in each map that will actually fashion a path of least resistance through this game's grueling strata is incredibly fun. I found the labyrinths actually quite well designed in this regard and they only occasionally crossed a threshold where I felt like they were trying to troll the player too much. Mapping the dungeons is also pretty fun -- it was probably much better with the original DS stylus but nevertheless very functional in this remaster. I played the game almost entirely on Steam Deck and had no issues with it. You are heavily incentivized to take note of switches, one-way passages, traps, dead ends, currently inaccessible treasures, etc., and it's interesting to get the crayons out and do some cartography. Also, there's a story here, but it's kind of charmingly minimal and unobtrusive, which is a plus for me these days. This is a game about playing the game. Your characters do not speak. I preferred it that way.

In conclusion, this game wants you to die, but even with the above caveats in mind it's a pretty good time. Hopefully they eventually give the later games in the series the same HD treatment as I'm interested to see how EO evolved from here.

sovereign...

First time beating a dungeon crawler. I really liked this one, and will be playing through the rest.

It was the right amount of grind on normal. You have to meta and plan how you want to build your team, otherwise you'll be like me and doing some resting even after retiring, but it was still fun. The sea boss fights make it pretty easy to catch back up.

tim tim plays for days in the maze

For Steam Deck users: If you are thinking about drawing the map on the touch screen with a stylus, be advised, it doesn't work very well. The Steam Deck touch screen isn't very good for dragging and holding icons, and the map gets very confused when drawing walls. Not recommended. That said, the controller implementation is fine and, well, everything else about this game is great. It's Etrian Odyssey 3. Recommended on sale.