So after two months of playing this god forsaken game, I'm done. I got every achievement possible, and please don't do this to yourself, it's three total playthroughs, granted two of em are like 4-5h long... but still.
[h1]Setting[/h1]
[h2]this is a gameplay game idk I guess I'm just gonna ramble a little here[/h2]
This story is pretty run out of the mill actually, I can't say there's a lot of meat in it and the characters are mostly just NPCs you do odd jobs for... but I did grow to like em, they're charming on their own way and the story of the two ""protagonists"" of this story did make me soften a little. But all in all, this series has always been about making your own story with your own party, and your journey as practically the piece in the gear that makes everything in the plot happen, and it delivers in that department. The endings can get truly heartwrenching.
The world is still just as juicy as the one on Untold 1 and 2. I barely remember the stratums in EOU2, but I can for sure say that the fifth stratum in this was actually as beautiful as the fifth stratum in 1, While the shock wasn't as big, I was still in genuine awe when I reached it. The OST, the entire dungeon design... just beautiful stuff.
Screw getting the true ending though, it is very counterintuitive.
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
[h2]Play this if you hate yourself, and I very much do. Also this part is gonna be long, imma just put a TL;DR on the bottom.[/h2]
It's extremely trial and error, there's way too much back and forth and money income in the first half of the game is HORRID, requiring a farming party to buy the most basic kind of consumables is genuinely not a great start.
Some fights are genuine bullcrap, and sometimes the game punishes you for going for specific builds by making the bosses themselves be resistant to them.
[strike]this last part is just the salty tears of a Drawing Slice N/G player.[/strike]
You may think I hate this game from this, but no actually no. For all the bad stuff, the game itself has some genuinely top notch progression, slowly realizing your build and developing your skill tree based on what playstyle you may aim for is the way this game works.
It doesn't hold hands when it comes to it, so for the people who don't want to spend hours on end trying to figure out what to do with their team it may not be a bad idea to check a guide... this game truly is a product of its time man.
The way progression works in terms of the dungeon exploring is something you feel too. It's a true power trip when you realize how you've gone from needing like 3-4 trips through a floor to even reach the end of it, to cruising through them in a matter of one to two minutes.
You can feel it in the fights too, coming back to a boss you struggled like crazy back then and OTK-ing them is also a pretty enjoyable feel.
[b] TL;DR: Maso game, lots of anti-consumer and kinda dated design BUT also lots of genuinely good and very interesting stage design and an outstandingly incredible character progression system. [/b]
[h1]Visuals[/h1]
It's a high quality port of a DS game, don't expect genuinely beautiful visuals, but the stages did stand out the test of time and they are genuinely pretty to look at, it's a bit of a time chamber in terms of looks and it makes me genuinely nostalgic
As for the fights themselves, I'm a bit too used to the 3DS models being fully 3d and seeing the FOEs in the overworld so it did take a bit of getting used to the old-style PNGs for the fights. It's genuinely pretty damn clean looking still, most menus feel slick and stand out really well... hell, I actually recognized some of the icons and menu design in some unrelated fanarts up there, I'm not sure if that's my brain rotting after this way too long of a playthrough or the menu design just being that good.
As for characters themselves, they're REALLY well designed, the classes look awesome, the NPCs stand out hard and have genuinely slick designs too, specially a certain a-hole that may or may not have stopped me through the dungeon too many times. Screw you, Kujura.
[h1]Music[/h1]
Very DS, very damn good. I've been listening to the Fifth Stratum's OST, Cold Justice, and the final bosses' theme for way too many hours, they're absolutely beautiful. I think the theme that stuck the least with me were the Second and Third's Stratums, they're not too impressive.
Also genuine praise to one of the themes said before, Cold Justice. The sheer feel of guilt and weight it carries is just something I haven't feel in a long time with OST in games in general, it does give me some shivers every once in a while when it hits in the right moment.
[h1]Final Thoughts[/h1]
Man, I did have a decent few bad moments with this game, and I do have several complaints about its game design, but I can't say it isn't worth of being up there with some of my favorite games.
All in all it's just an incredible gameplay experience, I haven't felt this way in a while, and the way I reacted after seeing the full completion achievement pop is something I probably won't forget in a decent bit of time. It may have a lot of backwards design but I definitely recommend it to those who want an old-school style dungeon crawling experience.
This is probably somehow longer than my review for Demons' Roots and that one was probably on my top three favorite games so yeah, I think it probably is just a statement to how much of a good time I had despite its major flaws.
[strike]That or my masochist side is just showing... it's likely the latter[/strike]
