(EO5 spoiler warning)
It *is* pretty tightly designed. I don't recall any FOE gimmick that was bad nor any floor that sucked really hard or anything. Like it's super refined but lacked anything truly cool, you know? The final boss is just some big mindless evil dragon dude that is supposedly the embodiment of evil or whatever. Like, it just feels generic, you know? EO4's final boss is also pretty generic, but it has a lot of nice build up and lore for it that you get to take part in throughout the game. EO3's final boss(es) are pretty great in how they ties into the story and your actions.
And I kinda feel similarly about the classes. Like, the necromancer, rover, and shaman can all off-heal. And you could be fine in this game using any of those are your sole party healer and using lots of food out of battle. Accounting for herbalist, the dedicated healer class, that makes 4/10 classes that could be your healer. In some ways this is great, since it lets you not worry too much about what classes you pick and you can make it work, but like, this is true for *most* things in the game when it comes to battle. All of the classes specializes in something, but they are still super wide when it comes to what they can do, which makes things feel a bit generic and boring? IDK.
You'd think with more freedom to pick whatever it'd be more fun to build your party, but it really wasn't for me. Character building and customization is something I value super high in RPGs, and the etrian odyssey series has been really great at it since EO3. Like, to contrast, EO4 has a wide range of super specialized classes,
but within those classes there was a lot of really good builds. Like, there are more skills to invest in than you have the skillpoints for, outside of the post game where you can finally max out (and by max out I mean maxing out the relevant stuff, you will not be able to get
everything). So each time you level up you always have to like, make some pretty interesting choices on where to go. In EO5 it was always pretty straightforward to me. EO4 is for sure an easier game, but I actually had to think more about how I built my characters. EO5 locks you into an advancement path, and once you have done that then you already know which skills you have kinda decided to trash. Some of them can be nice to invest in anyway, but there will be a fair few that just makes no sense to get. IDK, this is all sounding very pedantic when I write it out.
For all the talk before the release of EO5 that they wanted to not use multi-classing to make it feel like you always were missing something in a party, I never really felt that when playing. I think you could probably beat EO5 decently well by just picking five random unique classes for your party and just rolling with that, since the food can cover you up. But I think that is true to the same extent in 4, it just uses different systems too. I guess I'm just miffed that the character building ended up feeling so weak-sauce to me.
You can re-class so you can have any class on any race but it don't really matter much? It mostly affects you base stats, the race specific skills are not trivial, but it's mostly what union moves you have access too.
But it's also like, on the plot side of things that I just got kinda bored? There are so many set-ups that I expected them to just, do more shit with, but then they don't. I might miss remember some of the plot details here, but this is sorta how I feel about things atm. Like, you get to this town that is a unification of all the races living in the world, except the people over on the mountains or whatever, everyone else hates those dudes and there was a war against them a long time ago. Like, this is a great set-up, and the game further builds this stuff up past the intro. You get to the town and then you get the main quest ruler of the city, but plot twist, since it's a unified city it's ruled by a council representing all of the races. This is cool, I kinda figured we'd eventually get to meet the other three representatives, but no, we don't, that never happens. It's just extra fluff that goes nowhere. Which, yeah, is not
baaaad, but I just feel the game went the most boring route possible wherever it could (almost). I fully expected the earthlian representive to just be there for stratum 1 or so, and then meet a new one for each and like, maybe have all five for the last one. But they kind grow completely irrelevant to the plot after the third stratum.
Like, stratum 4 is basically like, a new place, you discover it first. I really like that they worked into the plot in this game that you're actually breaking new grounds, because that's not addressed in half of these titles at all. (EO1 and EO4 have good explanations, but EO2 and EO3 are a bit nonsensical about it). Like, you find this crystal cavern full of rare materials, now everyone goes on a "gold" rush to dash in on the new discovery. It's pretty cool, but like, by stratum 5 you are just up there alone, it's kinda suggested that no one else really goes up there almost. The council is just shrugging while happily archiving any new discoveries you make. It makes sense, but it is pretty boring. The post game stratum is pretty cool, especially with how it plays with floor structures in the series. But similarly have very little if any story implications.
I think the biggest plot thread that got butchered were like, the hated mountain dwellers or whatever, from the war. I went into this game blind so I kinda only got the expectations the game gave me, and I was kinda disappointed they never became relevant. They are talked about as these super evil conquers that were fought off valiantly, but... that's just it, they lost the old war for the tree. I figured there might be a twist of them not actually being that evil, since, you know, victors write history and all. What with the theming of the third stratum and the main quest to collect old war relics it's like... they kept that plot thread hanging for me well into the game. I was almost hoping for that they would show up and then you got like, an extra new playable race and possibly one or two new classes. I wasn't setting my expectations there, but I did genuinely think it would be a relevant thing. Each race was already attributing their own meaning to the existence of the tree so them having yet another perspective of it would have added more depth. Instead it's like, nope, it was aliens who spread rumours about the point of it. Like, really?
They don't even go all-in on the sci-fi stuff either, it just exists. Woop-de-doo. I haven't killed the post game stratum boss (which is optional anyway), but I highly doubt they will make anything cool with it. Arken(?) says that she(?) does not have any fighting skills and therefore needs protection. But I was thinking that like,
surely against the thing that literally killed her entire race, she would pick up arms and join in the fight? And it could even have been done well with her having pretty weaksauce stats and just some utility skills or something. I just feel like it would added some extra ompfh to the sole plot thread that runs in the bonus stratum. But no..., it's just a boss fight, that you do on your own. Like, you can even get rid of Arken if you want to not have her in the fight, you just trigger the second credits before summoning it. So even die-hard "I want to do this solo with just my party" could have gotten to do that if they wanted. Like, if you trigger the second ending without the super boss dead Arken will even lament just leaving that evil behind instead of dealing with it. Aaaauuugh.
I might come off as really disliking this game, but I actually had a lot of good times with it. Especially in the earlier stratums before it got going. It's just that there is a lot of missed potential in the title, and a lot of elements that just makes it way more generic even compared to the first two titles in the series (which both had a lot of generic elements).
I mentioned earlier an exception to the badly handled plot and, well, that would be that:
I like that the other explorers you interact with this time around turns out to be pretty cool people and get pretty involved at several stages in the story. Having a different guild with two elite explorers in it have kinda become sort of a series staple (thought it was absent in 4, and completely subverted in 3). It's the one part of the story in this game that I think is actually handled well, they are fleshed out as much as they need to and they have their own good reasons for doing things the way they are.
bleh, this is one of those cases where I don't know I should post, but whatever.
[/incoherent rambling]
____________________
[WIP layout as it's being made! 'w' ]