Decided I'll redo it for posterity, and relinking my old review for the fuck of it:
https://arch.b4k.dev/vp/thread/55850905/#q55853155
>The Good
Everything I said about the presentation, the music, the fact it feels like a 'real' game in a way that unfortunately Essentials games sort of struggle with still rings true. There was obviously a shit ton of effort put into the regionals and they all look great. I know people maybe wanted more, but there's already like 40. I also have to applaud the portraits for every character in the game, they all look really good (maybe not entirely necessary in some cases, though).
I still (mostly) like the gameplay, I like all doubles, I like the myriad of options you get via all the rebalances and the different Etrian forms are a lot of fun to experiment with. You can already get into lategame weather or similar strategies by basically the second 'gym' and there's a lot of different builds you can go into within each paradigm, that's really good.
The ship is still really cool. I do think it's unfortunate that you can basically freely explore the whole ocean by the second gym and past that there's a small handful of sidequests that are gated by stratum progress. In general the side content in this game is alright, and it for the most part gives decent rewards.
Overall, the experience the game delivers is overwhelmingly solid. It's fun to play, looks great, plays well. Even though I'm going to verbally rip into it a bit I do want to make that clear that I think this game has a very enjoyable foundation.
>The Neutral
Last time my biggest issue was with the grinding. This game did what is probably the most severe 180 on a singular problem I've ever seen where it wraps all the way back around to where the 'fix' is actually maybe just as problematic. By the end of the second stratum, you basically have a perpetual Showdown slider in your pocket where you can freely adjust any variable you want on the fly and have infinite amounts of money and resources.
This also took a major hit on the difficulty, where it went from 'reasonably challenging, but maybe feels like you're locked to a single team' to 'I was 6-0ing a lot of fights, including the true final boss, without even trying'. I obviously wasn't doing a dualtype this time, but even if I were I really doubt much would have changed. In general it just feels like you are way too powerful for the quality of teams you're facing, especially once you get past the weather bosses in the earlier stratums and bosses for the rest of the game don't really pose any kind of unique problem or take advantage of doubles outside of the occasional Follow Me or something. It also isn't just the erased opportunity cost from grinding being entirely free, it's the fact that a lot of the Etrian regionals are fucking insane (and maybe even normal mons) and no enemy was balanced around the bullshit some of them can do.
I'm putting this in neutral because it's rare that a game being 'too easy' is that big of an issue for me outside of cases like OWD where the gameplay just literally did not even exist. I'm just disappointed at the comparison in difficulty to what this game was before and the regular Etrian games, but I don't think an external comparison is fair to mark as an outright negative.
>The Bad
After this update, I need to move the story down here. There's just way too much yapping for a story that did not feel like it warranted it. As I said last time, I assume this is the Made in Abyss influence but it's weird because the first half of the game seems like it's setting up for Etrian's more laidback and simple storytelling before you get bombarded with characters and tons of dialogue and anime forms and fantasy lore that has nothing to do with Pokemon during the latter half. The story isn't
bad on it's own, I suppose, it's not something where I outright hated the characters or narrative like, say, OWD, I also liked the ending, but as a result of poor pacing it feels paradoxically like it's just there and too in-your-face at the same time. For instance, I can already I can tell replayability takes a major hit from scenes like Olympia reminiscing about her fallen comrades for 20 minutes, which, yes, it's a nice scene and good for Olympia's character development, but could have also been done in a much briefer and succinct way.
On a final note, it's regrettable to say this game is very much 'a Pokemon game, with an Etrian skin draped over it' if that makes any sense. There's clear homages gameplay-wise to Etrian, and there's obviously more effort put into this than, say, Kanto but every Pokemon is replaced with Digimon or Yugioh monsters, but the good ideas that could have been adapted from Etrian either were not present or did not mix well with Pokemon.
FOEs are forgettable and minor nuisances (it's not like there aren't some easy FOEs in Etrian, but they are legitimately a complete non-factor in this game), you blaze through stratums too quickly because they were mapped awkwardly onto a pseudo-gym challenge, there are barely any puzzles or FOE puzzles (I think there was precisely one of the latter in the entire game), and even when you get to the multi-floor puzzle-filled stratums like 7 it's still mostly a very linear and short affair that feels like an attempt to try and make up for the lack of heavy exploration for the rest of the game. The levels are just 'serviceable' which is alright for a Pokemon game but they're not on the level of the game they've taken inspiration from. The dragons and superboss that are usually extremely hard fights meant to push your build to it's limit are complete jokes. The story on it's own oddly has as little to do with Etrian as it does with Pokemon and only vaguely uses themes and ideas from 3. Pokemon being able to customize into several potential builds IS something that's present in Etrian, but the ridiculously free and weightless nature of the grinding with no penalty at all is a sharp divergence.
I could say more but I can see most was already said in the Odyssey playthrough thread. I'm not going to autistically seethe about things like weapon crafting from monster scraps being left out, but it feels like there could have been a better attempt to incorporate Etrian elements into Pokemon that hopefully the sequel puts more of a focus on that.
>Final Verdict
The bad section looks bigger because I had more to say on it, but I still think this is a very high tier fangame and one I'd easily recommend. There is just more of a caveat now than before, and for people familiar with Etrian (and/or maybe just enjoy blobbers/DRPGs in general and have certain expectations when they hear the Etrian name) I think this ultimately may end up feeling this is a bit dumbed down and are going to be a bit harsher.
7/10 seems the perfect score. It's what I gave it last time, but it's maybe a bit of a 'lower' 7/10 so I'd probably move it down a bit on the tierlist, though a 7 for me is higher than most people's. Numbers are fucking gay anyways so whatever
>>18136
very based. I dunno if the discordfags outside of friv know about fullchan but it'd be funny if he stole it
>>18142
>promoting fangame at an e-sports event
that's new kek