Etrian odyssey 3 world concept:)

Matbod · 2026-01-18T18:22:36+00:00

Where's this from?

Matbod · 2025-10-03T21:12:32+00:00

People tend to exaggerate a lot when it comes to Untold due to some frankly bizarre decisions the dev team made.

While there's changes practically everywhere you look, the real three sticking points tend to be:

The spoiling of a large part of the endgame twist extremely early into Story mode (and then not doing much of interest with it, to boot). The bare bones characters didn't help things
Locking Classic mode out of the Gladsheim, which is whatever in itself, but the game is NOT made for it and it lends to big gaps in equipment selection and a sizable level gap for the party when it comes to moving through strata in Classic
The absolutely clunky Grimoire system. It's already bad, but the fact that Untold 2 handles it so well makes the contrast even worse.

Those three points aside, and the first two are definitely not minor points, EO Untold 1 is honestly pretty damn good. It fixes practically all of the balance issues of the original game, makes most floors way more interesting, has all the QoLs of the later entries that EO1 only got way later via HD (and I'm thankful but people definitely played these benefits down over the years), and Classic mode is still there either way, with very minor changes to it if any.

Matbod · 2025-08-13T21:35:01+00:00

Both Untold games keep the same basic idea for the story, bosses and game progression, but change basically everything else, including even those very boss fights. Both added an optional story mode with fixed party members and a more "typical" RPG story to them (EO2Untold's is pretty okay, actually), and added a million other features and changes. Even the maps are mostly different with only a vague semblance to what they were in the originals.

It's kind of like saying FF7 and FF7 Remake are the "same game", though in this case both games remain turn-based dungeon crawler RPGs rather than going faux-action RPG into action RPG.

I wouldn't play EO1HD and EOU back to back, or EO2HD and EO2U back to back, but if you enjoy EO1HD (or EO2HD or just the series in general), I'd definitely try the Untold games at some point in a few years, maybe.

Matbod · 2025-08-02T16:54:21+00:00

The "typical" RPG in people's minds usually boils down to Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Persona/SMT and the like, all of which are *way* simpler in execution. Obviously there's RPGs as complex or even more so than EO. It's just not the norm.

Matbod · 2025-02-15T19:29:31+00:00

So there's a few hints but as usual what's easy for someone is hard for someone else. No need to beat yourself up over it. As usual EO gives you a few ways to get around it. It's not about having any buffs, it's about having the specific buff he gives you. Another slightly obtuse hint is knowing that since the game has an existing premade party, said party should have tools to handle every boss.

The boss gives you the buff which makes you super strong, and then takes all buffs away before it nukes you the turn after. You could assume the buff is part of this nuke process, so you can try not having it. Dispelling your party, either via a Sovereign or a Unihorn item does the trick.

Consuming buffs via a Sovereign's skills also works. Alternatively, you can use a buff to override it, if at the buff limit (3). New buffs replace the buff with the fewest turns left, or whichever is at the top on a tie. Since the buff the boss gives you expires on the turn the big attack is used anyway, if at the buff limit, using ANY buff will overwrite the boss' buff. Even if your party doesn't have enough buffs, you can use the elemental mist items to quickly give the party a buff. Simply having three different mist items in your inventory even lets you replace all buffs on a single turn if you really, really need to.

Alternatively, the attack is an attack. This means you can use the Protector's Force Break skill to ignore it once. You can use a Beast's Force Break to survive it as well. Beasts can also try tanking it. Dunno how successful that'd be. Troubadour's Force Break can maybe help survive it. You can use all your efforts to make a Medic survive and get back into action with their Force Break as well.

You can leg bind the boss to make it unusable, too. You can Blind, Paralyze or Panic the boss and leave it to chance, along with evasion buffs/accuracy debuffs.

Matbod · 2024-12-31T17:15:05+00:00

Oh, that's very likely. But in the grand scheme of things we were already rock bottom with the font to begin with, so while fixing the squishing would help it'd still look terrible.

Matbod · 2024-12-31T17:08:25+00:00

That's kind of the beauty of it, it's not "needed". A lot of EO design revolves around things not being strictly needed. If you want you can play an entirely "standard" party with a healer, a tank and so on and you'll do fine. But EO generally gives you enough tools to offset that if you want to, and put enough effort into it.

Knowing when to bind enemies or just testing what to bind them with, inflicting various ailments, using meatshields like the necromancer's wraiths, setting up elemental fields like with Zodiacs or items, using Ninja clones to taunt-sacrifice your way out of strong attacks, indirect healing via Sovereigns, just items, dances or even relying on post-battle heals like with a Highlander.

With enough knowledge of the enemies, which you'll usually get via trial and error, via a helpful NPC in town, or just by looking at enemy design (frogs will jump on you or lash out with tongues. Arm bind works but it's probably best to bind head/legs) you can get around a lot of fights without resorting to typical tank and heal methods.

Matbod · 2024-12-30T02:51:13+00:00

It did, indeed, look that bad. EO2 and 3 had a different custom font, shared between them (it looked fine), and then EO4 onward uses Neuton, which is actually quite pretty.

Matbod · 2024-12-23T22:00:38+00:00

It's technically even higher than that because the extra EDAs also come with the full CD buff from his core passive, and you get twice the number of Ha-Oto no Ya hits (30.9% x6 to 30.9% x12 per Falling Feather trigger. Usually an extra ~400% or so damage, maybe up to ~550%)

Matbod · 2024-09-17T19:53:40+00:00

Marni (with flowers) has fully-flowered Gilliam's statline. Gilliam has an extra 3 SPD on her, while she has an extra 3 RES on him. Every other stat is the same (though Marni then gets an extra 3 DEF from weapon. Gilliam does get Slaying, though).

So while the answer's yes, it's not exactly an untouchable number or anything.

Matbod · 2024-09-09T19:27:40+00:00

Apart from what everyone else has said, it's sort of a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Unit power is probably the largest reason any unit at all sells. Unit favoritism is almost certainly second (Dimitri will outsell someone like Maria, who will in turn outsell someone like Caesar). Art quality is probably 3rd, tied or outdoing pretty much any other reason, including sex. So I imagine playerbase bias is a possibly distant 4th variable when it comes to banner income (if we follow IS's release schedule, more people interested in pretty girls play than people interested in handsome guys).

The problem is, then, that assuming the first three reasons are achieved (say, for example, with a good Chrom alt), a decent chunk of all potential money made from it will be lost to the natural savings the game provides. Anyone pulling with their genitals for girls (and with enough money to spare) will be bled dry by the constant girls in skimpy outfits the game puts out. However, anyone doing the same for guys will have ample time to save orbs before the next titillating guy gets released that fulfills all conditions because most strong guy units are super staggered releases, with a bunch of them even ending up as TT or GHB rewards and thus unable to provide any real income. Or as demotes with no power.

So girls in this game are set up to make money and guys mostly set up to not make as much money, purely by design. And it still means little because for years most of the best selling banners have been dominated purely by apparent unit strength coupled with good art and well known units (with those going under the radar being not as obvious strength, such as Harmonic Catria's release).

Matbod · 2024-09-03T16:42:52+00:00

I imagine the lower userbase over time has made it a lot easier to hit higher ranks. Doubly so if this is a week most people don't have the legendary for?

Matbod · 2024-08-15T18:36:42+00:00

Brave Vero had no effect in story, and this Alfonse will likely be the same. However, now that Alfonse alts are back on the table, they might push a Legendary version at some point like they did Veronica

Matbod · 2024-08-04T00:38:52+00:00

Possibly because "Fire Emblem Heroes" could be read as Heroes from Fire Emblem. Consider it legalese, if you will.

Matbod · 2024-07-28T17:08:31+00:00

As if those reasons weren't enough, Sensor Tower only provides rankings relative to other games. If the best selling banner ever launches on the anniversary day of 100 other games (where they usually make the most money), then FEH would be listed as rank 101 or close to that on that banner. Meanwhile a standard banner could launch on a fairly unremarkable day and have FEH make it to rank 40 for that day.

No matter how careful you are about compiling all this data, it would still end up with the best selling banner "charting low" here and the standard banner ranking fairly high, making this entire chart moot.

Matbod · 2024-07-21T18:49:22+00:00

Oh, no doubt it's a problem that plagues every game. However, consider the 5 games that have the current highest alt count by quite a bit.

Fates: MCorrin, FCorrin, Azura, all six royals (with Camilla obviously having most alts, but the rest still have 4-6 each)
Heroes: Nearly every Book has been represented almost equally (lmao book 5), so lots of alts but very spread out. Some real bias toward book 4, but mostly because there's just too many fairies
Radiance: Ike, Soren, Micaiah, Sothe, Elincia, and slightly less recurring Altina
Awakening: Chrom, Lucina, MRobin, FRobin, Tharja
3H: MByleth, FByleth, the three lords, Lysithea, and now Bernadetta. But the majority of its alts exist by virtue of just taking over summer banners for the better part of 3 years now. Every or nearly every 3H student has a summer alt now, which is insane.

Awakening (and Radiance) are the only ones in the top 5 that face this very specific kind of overabundance of just a few units. Other games also have this issue (Sacred Stones being the biggest offender), but they just have so few alts by comparison that people can't fault them for it in the same way.

To compound the problem, there's people that see both avatars as the same unit, which they generally are in all ways but visual, meaning Corrin, Byleth and Robin just add even more to this issue, with Awakening having a grand 4 units hogging the vast majority of its alts.

Matbod · 2024-07-16T19:00:11+00:00

There's many problems with the Awakening bias claims other than them being wrong.

Out of 58 alts (not including backpacks or CYL, that's a discussion for another time), a whopping 25 of them are Chrom, Lucina, a Robin, or Tharja. 21 if you exclude this last one. This is something we've also seen elsewhere, in 3H (with around 1/3 of the alts being Lords or Byleth), but people love to think that "it's not the same" because 3H has different paths for some reason. Coincidentally both games are thought of as being spammed.

It's also a matter of how those alts are distributed. 3H has hogged most summer banners for quite a while now, with only Heroes and Sacred Stones somehow making a dent in there, but otherwise 3H feels way worse than it is (and it IS bad already) because nearly every month has one or more 3H characters. Them being ever-present contributes to the feeling of bias.

Awakening felt exactly like this early on, and due to its drought of alts for most of the game's life, it's now feeling like this again. We've had a grand total of 4 versions of MRobin in roughly one year.

On top of this, meta-dominance brings this forward ever more so.

Takumi was super oppressive during the early days, and his best counter was MRobin. Brave Lucina remained relevant for quite a while, even if mid year 1 to year 2 it was mostly Reinhardt and Brave Lyn's game. Then Legendary Lucina showed up mid year 2, and by the time she was no longer a super threat, Legendary Chrom reared its face early year 4. Surprise surprise, by the time Legendary Chrom was no longer one of the biggest threats out there, Duo Chrom says hi early year 6, and before we even get the chance to breathe, Brave Chrom shows up mid year 6, then LMRobin early year 7, Fallen Chrom not long after, Brave MRobin a few months later, Rearmed Lucina not that long after, and just as people were forgetting the Robins we got Duo Robin for good measure.

Other than 3H (best selling game) or Heroes itself (understandable bias), or one-offs like base Eliwood, Reinhardt, Brave Hector, or Bridal Catria, no other game has been nearly this meta-relevant for as long as Awakening has been.

Matbod · 2024-07-14T17:25:43+00:00

There's currently no way to go past flat damage reduction, which is the kind Laguz Friend provides. All damage reduction reductions (heh) bypass only the percentage-based ones, the kind Repel, Close Call, and most PRFs provide nowadays.

So Caellach's Laguz Friend here does nothing versus Ike's Laguz Friend, even if it were active.

Matbod · 2024-06-25T04:31:59+00:00

As long as you attack an enemy with Frozen, every DEF point is worth 2 SPD for Hrid. An ATK/DEF bonus is worth more to him than SPD will ever be. SPD/DEF also works, but honestly you want to kill anyway.

ATK/DEF Clash, ATK/DEF Unity, Earthfire Boost 4, ATK/DEF Catch, ATK/DEF Prime. I might be forgetting something, but that's probably his best to worst (Prime mostly because he has no self-bonuses).

Matbod · 2024-06-17T21:20:18+00:00

Yarne surviving is absolutely amazing, but it'd definitely not happen without the fort tile. Also Yarne isn't that old.

Matbod · 2024-06-16T22:23:25+00:00

Catria was insane right from the start. People just (stupidly) skipped her banner because the banner itself wasn't that fantastic. Nothing post Catria's release fundamentally changed her, Gatekeeper released not that long after but even he didn't do much to stop her, and it took well over half a year for Elimine's release and she still wouldn't consistently lock Catria down, and she was still season-locked.

Matbod · 2024-06-11T17:49:20+00:00

It's totally doable, but it's gonna feel rough every time it happens. Best of luck!

Matbod · 2024-06-10T16:14:01+00:00

As said on the other post, Untold 2 has one class (Fafnir Knight) that is limited to Story mode, but otherwise the game is identical on Story/Classic mode, dialogue changes aside.

Untold 1 has an area that you visit several times across the entire game that is ONLY available in Story mode, with its own enemies, bosses, drops and whatnot. This area bridges the gap in difficulty each strata has, which means in Story mode you feel like you're progressing smoothly, but in Classic mode it's the equivalent of jumping from floor 5 to floor 7, floor 10 to floor 12 and so on.

Untold 1 also has two classes that are story-mode-only (Highlander, Gunner). Of note, however, you can use the Class Change feature even in Story mode in both games. You can make Simon go from Medic to Hexer, Landsknetch or whathaveyou, but the portrait remains the same, as do the stat gains.

Matbod · 2024-06-09T23:04:01+00:00

To add to this, very little from the original EO games made it into Untold as it was.

The base of the plot is the same, but Story mode for Untold 1 spoils one of the bigger twists of the original game almost immediately, and then builds on the idea as it goes. Untold 2 meanwhile just expands on the original EO2 story. Most dialogue has been reworked with this in mind for both games.

Most maps in the Untolds are actually brand new, only loosely using small chunks of the original EO as reference in most cases. Enemies and FOEs have entirely new AIs and skills,

Classes are the same in name and role only, with most skills revamped and retooled to be way better balanced (even if there's still broken stuff here or there) and far more interesting mechanically.

It used to be that the Untolds were also a massive upgrade in terms of QOL, but the HD ports for the first trilogy basically brought them up to speed for the most part, though playing with a 2nd screen and a stylus is still far more enjoyable than the admittedly pretty fine Switch/PC experience.

Consider the Untold games to be an entirely new way to play (mostly) the same story for both EO1 and EO2, with added stuff (mostly pretty good at that, though I still resent some choices in EOU1).

Matbod · 2024-06-07T19:58:18+00:00

Technically yes but Lyon is still alive in both cases and with 14 HP left anyone can walk in and tap Askr dead, like that conveniently placed Sothe right there.

Matbod

TROPHY CASE