So, after having completed the Item Compendium as mentioned as the last accomplishment remaining in my last Etrian Odyssey lovefest, I fired up Etrian Odyssey II and began anew adventures into the unknown.

After spending roughly an hour weighing my party options, deciding on what kind of party I wanted and where to focus my guild members’ attention (and then changing my mind at least three times), I stepped foot into the labyrinth with a War Magus, Ronin, Gunner, Medic, and Alchemist. I was then reminded what pain felt like, needing to take the shortest path possible from the start to the stairs returning me to Lagaard’s safety.

It was comfortable.

In the past couple hours, I’ve mapped the first floor and have been soundly beaten by a FOE whose warnings from the game I gleefully ignored, not at all surprised by the resounding rhythm of my party dropping one by one. I’ve determined where to send my farmers on my next pass, and I’ve come across a couple of EO’s classic “your curiosity will hurt, but the payoff is good” events (including one designed to remind you of your early days in EO). And I’ve run to town with a shattered party and very little money more than once.

Thoughts on the game (in the scarce couple hours I’ve played it) include a couple expediencies in the interface and gameplay pacing (always welcome), a more consistent (by my memory, anyway) difficulty, a tuning of almost every class with more customization options and, in some cases, removal or revision of the überskills. Another welcome element is the game’s enjoyment in reminding you of the past — the event mentioned above, the presentation of the password import feature, and the reaction from the townspeople when it’s soon known that, yes, you are that guild from that place called Etria. It’s a nice little touch.

I’ve decided that I’ll make these little journal entries semi-frequent (so you may see one or two more before I forget and stop updating the site again), and in adding an Etrian Odyssey category to the hierarchy of my nonsense, I noticed that it has been roughly a year since I started EO. Hopefully it will not take me that long to complete the sequel, but even if it does, it’s looking to be just as enjoyable.

I finally beat the ultimate boss of Etrian Odyssey today, meaning I’ve finished the Monstrous Codex and just have the Item Compendium remaining… but, that’s not the point of this post.

I’ve been slowly working more people down and getting them to play the game, and in doing so I’m reminded of what makes it such a great game. I think that some time in the past, I’d said that “the game hates you", and time has led me to reconsider that statement.

The game respects you.

Sure, maybe an aspect of it (primarily the narration, for me) is a bit steeped in nostalgia, but the game knows what you want (or what it thinks you deserve) and presents it to you as clearly and easily as it can — it leaves you with a dungeon and a myriad of options for tackling it. But, practically every step of the way, you’re in control of the progression — how fast you advance, how gut-wrenching you make the FOE battles, how much focus you put on your favorite party members and how rounded your guild becomes. It sets the stage and lets you be the players, without latching itself onto your experience by burdening you with high fantasy plot and saving the world for love. Other RPGs can and do provide you that; Etrian Odyssey is around to relieve you of it. It is pure, as only RPG-fundamental water can be.

For its respect, it demands the same in kind. Having spent countless hours on the game, I’ve come to see my guild as a living thing — something I have grown and nurtured from its nascent stage to its present near-god state, the characters’ skills and names (my retired characters were replaced with those of the same class and name, with a “II” suffix) acting as personalizing scars and records, a sort of living history of thirty levels of dungeon exploration. It’s fun for me to watch other people start their journey.

And how it encourages exploration. The first task, even, is to map the first floor to an acceptable degree, and it sets you up for what the game expects of you — to make something with the blank slate it has presented you. Learn the way that is right for you to map, to equip your party, to set your expectations for the venture into the Labyrinth. There are completion benchmarks, of course, but Etrian Odyssey is wonderfully content to refuse to rope you along in plot or in archetype, to the point that the former is bare and the latter is entirely up to you. Create a traveling party of Medics (a challenge I would expect is only slightly less hardcore than the Final Fantasy four white mage challenge — but primarily so because Etrian Odyssey gives its Medics more options) if you so choose. Ignore the sidequests for a while? Fine. Arm yourself to the teeth by creating a party of farmers to compliment your adventurers? Great!

As my time in Etrian Odyssey comes to close with the last dozen or so items left to discover, I’m looking forward to the sequel. Not because there are unanswered plot points in the first, or a new earth-shattering game mechanic or killer class, but because, absent being able to bottle the experience of progressing through Etrian Odyssey for the first time unaided, I want to relive those first timid steps into a dungeon adventure that, if nothing else, became mine as I was given the freedom to write its story by my actions.

I really believe this is a singular experience, and that console or computer, eastern or western, this is one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played.

So, I’ve been thinking about that whole multimedia experience thing, and for the CthulhuTech game I’ve been running (which is to say, I’ve run it more than once, in a somewhat timely fashion) I want to try having some music playing in the background. This is kind of uncharted territory, so I’m open to suggestions.

I have some ground rules:

• It should not be “busy” — lyrics are almost definitely right out, as is metal and probably anything that you can’t just let sit in the background. Letting it be part of the game, good. Eclipsing the game, not so good.
  • No camp, either. The game may have horror threads woven into it, but I don’t want nonsense like howling wolves and creaking doors and so on.
• It should at least vaguely fit the theme of the game. No happy romance anime music during investigating unspeakable horrors on the fringe of civilization.
• There should be a lot of it within a theme, so I’m not managing the playlist more than I am the game. My initial thoughts are a looping “general play” playlist, a “conflict” playlist, maybe a “touching moment” playlist, and a “resolution” playlist.
• This is more of a personal preference, but contemporary music is preferable, because it’s a modern game. Also, there’s a lot of bland background music, I’m not interested in that; not to restrict myself that is only known and appreciated by the masses, but I’m interested in “popular” music.

So, like I said, I’m open to suggestions. Mark suggested the Vitamin String Quartet for his hypothetical game, which is interesting, and a pretty good suggestion. And, they have a lot to play with, what with their covering basically every artist known to man. Other ideas of my own include Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV, Dale North’s Silent Horror, and a couple video games with a modern/future/post-apocalyptic bent to them. Flirting with sprinkling in Nightwish’s instrumental half of Dark Passion Play into the appropriate theme playlists.

If you have other suggestions, or stories of what worked for you, let me know by leaving a comment or something.