Etrian Odyssey is really hard

[A Black Falcon]

Boring? No, not really. Nice graphics, great music, great artwork, lots to do, mapping, items and stuff... it is oldschool, so there is a lot of backtracking and the bosses are VERY hard, but you can often avoid them and fight them later on, and can see them on the map, etc.

There are seven classes initially, with four character portraits (two male, two female) available for each class. You create characters by giving them a class, a picture, and a name. As they say on that site (and in that comic), this one's a traditional RPG... the characters don't talk or have any personality outside of their name and portrait. There's a nice entry on the site about that...

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.p...92&page=25

How to use your imagination
When your party stays at the Inn overnight, what do they eat?

If you ever catch yourself wondering that, then you know you've formed an attachment to your characters.

With Etrian Odyssey's characters, you only give them a name and a portrait, so no matter how you think of the character, it's technically just your imagination. But even in that case, without your imagination, the character is nothing.

For example, a landsknecht who uses an axe might eat his meat with his bare hands and no utensils, but one who wields a sword might prefer a knife and fork at dinner. You might think differently, but... If you can imagine small details like that, you might find that you enjoy this kind of RPG even more.

The essence of an RPG is using numbers to make calculated decisions, but if you invest those "numbers" with your own feelings, you can spice up the game a little. Think about this:

In your party of five, three characters are dead. Two of them are alive, but they only have a couple of HP left, and no TP. They're certain to die in their next turn, giving you a game over. Number-wise, those characters are useless, but how do you imagine they feel about that? What kind of people are those 2 characters who are about to die? Try to imagine things like that in the brief time before your game ends.

Are they a landsknecht and a ronin, who'll die facing the enemy and laughing?
Is it a protector, ordering the weak medic to run with his last breath?

The game over screen looks the same every time, but in your imagination, it could play out very differently.

The game itself isn't that big of a thing; what you imagine for yourself is much more fun. We hope that the player uses this game as a tool, to create dramatic and fun situations in your own minds.

Now I didn't play those '80s RPGs when I was younger, but I did play stuff like Quest for Glory where a lot of your character's character is in your head and not on the screen, so a lot of that made sense to me... I definitely create internal concepts of what my characters are when I make characters in an RPG. Games don't do stuff like this anymore very often... as the comic says, it's a throwback, but not in a bad way. :)

Oh, and yes, they did use the word "sheeple", and it works perfectly in that context. :)

GR has the game and has gotten farther than I have, for sure, but I definitely think that it's a pretty long game... and then you can retire old characters and create new ones, so it doesn't even end just when you get characters to max level (70?)...

As I've said I disagree with the "less complex" thing but let's not go there. This one maybe though.

How could you? It's a simple fact.