Okay - someone sell me on this game. It seems...complicated.
Etrian Odyssey IV: Party Planning Preview
A great party never just happens.
INITIAL PARTY
Fortress Dancer
Nightseeker Runemaster Medic
Initially, I wasn’t too certain which direction I wanted to take besides picking the character silhouettes that were least likely to get me arrested at a border crossing. I also knew that I wanted a Fortress character - your typical tank who takes abuse on the front line - and wanted to leverage their skills a bit better than I did with the equivalent character in the previous game. I placed my modestly clothed Fortress in the front row to absorb blows and decided a Dancer would be a good partner for her. The Dancer’s Counter Samba and Chase Samba skills squeak in extra attacks when members on the same line get hit or land their own attacks. This looked to be a powerful combo with some taunting from the Fortress leading to doubled-up (and no doubt well-choreographed) strikes from my Dancer.
On my back row, I went with the Nightseeker who has ranged attacks and skills that inflict status ailments like blind and paralyze. The rest of my rear contingent was filled with a dark-haired Runemaster, a pretty standard magician character, and a Medic who does just what you think they would do. I debated about even including a Medic since he won’t be of much help during most battles and the Dancer has some healing capabilities that might cover me. I basically wimped out, threw the Medic in and kept my experimentation to the Nightseeker and Dancer while leaving the rest fairly pedestrian. If nothing else, the Goth aesthetic of the Nightseeker and Runemaster avatars are reined in a bit by the Medic’s colorful garb.
This combination worked out fairly well, but I quickly realized I would be better off with one adjustment. Even though the Nightseeker has ranged attacks, she also has the ability to perform melee attacks with two weapons. This capability was impeded pretty significantly by keeping her in the back row where her melee slashes lost a lot of bite. I slipped her up to the front, increased her armor a bit, and that seemed to be a nice sweet spot. She can still inflict status ailments from the front row, but now ends up causing even more damage once those skills have been used. Having her up front led me to a typical order of operations involving inflicting blindness (Sand Throw) from my Nightseeker, Taunt from my Fortress, and Counter Samba from my Dancer. This helped impede enemies when possible and focus any successful onslaughts on the Fortress, which led to the Counter Samba activating some vengeful swipes.
INITIAL PARTY 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
Nightseeker Fortress Dancer
Runemaster Medic
The back row felt a bit dull at this point with the Runemaster and Medic just chipping away at low-level enemies and only really becoming useful in the tougher fights. This is probably pretty important in the long run, but just like in the previous game, you can’t spam spells against the weaklings or you’ll soon be out of TP and heading back to the Inn. One notable benefit to the Runemaster is the splash damage effect of the Fireball Rune skill I decided to upgrade. After dumping a few skill points into it, it became pretty helpful for wiping out entire rows of enemies. The Medic is still fairly boring and was there out of necessity alone. To remedy this, I decided to try one more iteration with the classes available in the demo to make sure I had what I really wanted.
I decided to toy with sticking a Sniper in the Medic’s spot and using the Runemaster as a dumping ground for healing items and have him do split duty. Surely all of that new age spell casting stuff can be handled by one dude. In order to get a Sniper up to similar levels as the rest of the crew, though, I would need to do some grinding with an all new party which led me to a team of scrubs that would also let me toy with some variations on other characters.
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