Etrian Odyssey General: Cute girls climbing large, girthy world trees edition

Victory (in this case mere survival) like this always gives me a rush, even vicariously. I haven't played V but I know exactly how you feel OP.
Nice job.

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Fuck offn seiyuufag

Full completed it recently. It's my favourite game in the series by far. Everything is so well designed, my only gripe is the small amount of postgame bosses compared to previous titles.

Look at this fag lmao.

EO is one of my favorite series, it's just so damn comfy exploring the labyrinth. Started Started it last week and really enjoying it so far.
I was thrown off by the lack of dedicated gathering parties because of the way the skills are handled in this game. Do the, class skill trees expand beyond the few you have available in the beginning?

You unlock secondary specializations not that far into the game.

Neat.

I've been meaning to give this series a try for a few years now, but every time I'm about to, something comes up like my hardware breaking or everyone telling me that whatever version's available was a shit release.

Is V any good? Are there any others out on the 3DS that are good? Is there a good starting point for a series newcomer outside of the first game?

If you don't want to do release order then IV is a great place to start. It's the easiest in the series but it does a fine job of getting you use to EO. Avoid 2 Untold at all costs.

I'd say that you should just start with 3 or 4 and then play 5. The thing about EO as a series is that it got better with each entry, in terms of balance. EO1, EO2, and EO3 each have a lot of… bad skills. Trap skills that just have no real use to them and exist solely to waste your skill points. Each game progressively got rid of bad skills and instead went for skills that are all around good, or have situational uses. I feel like this is the main reason EO4 is widely considered the easiest game in the series. That game pretty much has no bad skills, and the classes are so powerful alone that it's almost impossible to fuck up a team due to bad synergy.

EO5 is harder than 4 due solely to the fact that the classes individually were weakened and more specialized. Each class in 5 does 2 things, and only 2 things, whereas in 4 you'd have classes like Nightseeker who could run a damage/multi-hit/ailment/crit/instant-kill build all at the same time.

I guess what I'm saying is that EOV is, easily, the best game in the series and you should play it. But do play EO4 before it, and avoid both Untold games, as they're shit and should be avoided at all costs.

Balance improved but I think art style and soundtrack has degraded over the past couple of games. They did away with the FM track and 2d enemy sprites in 4, which were two things I really liked about the old games. The DLC FM track for 5 feels really lackluster, like Koshiro barely put any effort in on it.

I personally still like the art style but I will admit there's considerably less lolis in EOV compared to past games. If you can't get by without your loli portraits this may be an issue. As for the 2D enemy sprites, I mean if that's your thing man I dunno what to tell you. I prefer 3D models over the sprites but I can see why someone would like it the other way, I just don't see them ever going back.

Also, yeah I agree the FM soundtrack in 5 is a mess. I don't know what the fuck happened to make it sound like utter garbage, but goddamn none of the songs sound remotely decent. Thankfully, the normal soundtrack is god-tier.

I've found that some of the 3D models are a little simplistic and less detailed that the sprites were. The ghosts on the 3rd stratum being the most obvious example. Still, they're fine on the whole and I understand that making and animating a model takes a lot more work than just drawing a static sprite.
I haven't listened to the FM soundtrack but I'm guessing the reason it sucks is that the songs were designed for conventional instruments and then just converted. They weren't written with FM in mind.
I actually haven't played 4 yet to this is my first EO without sprites and FM. I thought I wouldn't like the changes but I'm actually okay with it. The heart of the series is still there, though I do miss the lolis.