Update 37: Sins of the Forebearers (Etreant)



...I think it's time for us to group up and get going.
Alright. You'd better come back safe, alright, Siggy?
I promise.
Kick Visil right between the legs for me, ahehe.
You say that as if I wasn't going to anyway.
...I love you, Sigrid.
I love you too, Momoe. See you tonight.









...Alright, we should be headed out, dear.
Let me just make sure my strings are taut... Aaaaand I'm ready.
I'm surprised you're so calm, after what Visil told us.
Oh, I'm an absolute wreck inside. But, well, a bard must keep the party's morale up, no?
...You're an absolute joy, dear. I love you so much.









You sure you don't want me to go in your place, Carter?
I appreciate your concern, Katya, but... If what I've been told is true, Visil deliberately led explorers to their deaths to keep this town alive. I must teach him TRUE FEAR-- Ahem. I must take revenge for Sancho, and the explorers he banded together with, and everyone who has perished in the Labyrinth.
Right.
And, of course... Revenge for Seth.
...Get him good. Make him understand how many people've died because of him.
That I will.
And make sure the others kick his ass hard enough before he dies, too.
Oh, believe me, I will.









...
...Hey. Vincenzo.
Eh?
Don't die.
...Huh?
Hey, I'm trying my best here, I don't normally give a shit about stuff like this, so... Don't die. That's it.
...Got it. Thanks, Ladette.









[Those five'd better come back alive, or I'm going to give them all such a talking to when I pass on.]
...Gahah! Ahahahahahahaha!
[A-Afon?]
Ah-ahahaha! [Sorry, you two, just... Man, Judith, that's the most you thing I've heard these past two years!]
[...It is apropos for me, I'll admit. Anyway, Elowen, what are we hunting for the feast tonight?]
[I heard there was a herd of War Bison moving through the upper strata, so...]






Let's finish the main story today.

Everyone has their endgame Super Grimoires on now.

Sigrid's specced out for whips now, and has the ultimate whip equipped.
she's all grown up


As you bring it near the door, the noise of a lock lifting sounds through the passage.
Let's go.


Visil. Show yourself.
In the interest of liking EO1's version of this more, I'm going to use different music for this opening monologue.


Its people had solved all the world's mysteries and had power to rival the gods. This power was called science.
A different science from ours, surely.
Mankind gained dominion over nature and life itself. But humanity's technology also cast a dark shadow over its future. Their forecasts and projections increasingly showed their own imminent demise.
And in response to news of their imminent demise, the old blood viciously fought against any inconveniences to their lives that would ensure a future for the world.
They doomed everyone else.


The danger was realized too late, and billions died in the resulting climate change.
...Billions...
Mankind faced extinction, but there were those who refused to give up, and kept fighting. By integrating their own technology with the laws of nature, man attempted to restore the lost balance. This was the Yggdrasil Project.
Wait. Yggdrasil?
Named for the mythological tree of life, the project hoped to purify the contaminated earth. Its lead researcher worked tirelessly, collecting data to contribute to the project. But all the while, the deaths mounted. The researcher lost his teammates, and soon after that, his wife and child... But he never gave up. He continued his research.
A brave person, to be sure.
At long last, he was able to synthesize a compound that would heal the land. But his experiments showed that a full recovery would still take thousands of years. To see the Yggdrasil Project through would take more time than mankind had left. The despairing researcher considered his options. As the last researcher alive, he felt an obligation to see the culmination of their work. In order to finish the job, the researcher took Yggdrasil's power into himself... He relinquished his humanity to be forever fused with the great World Tree.
You're...


I am Yggdrasil's guardian; the only survivor of my era.
You're wrong. The accounts of those who lived beside you persist. But go on.
I led the project to revive the earth, and I now serve as the gods' executor. Adventurers, you know now the secrets of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth. However... Yggdrasil's Labyrinth... Its mysteries must remain unsolved.
We refuse that notion.
The story of how our ancestors died, long ago... Keeping it buried won't do us any good.
Eventually, we're gonna rebuild what the people who lived a thousand years ago had. That's just how people work. If they don't know about what happened last time we did... You're just gonna make more people suffer. All'a this is just gonna happen again if you kill anyone who finds out.
I bear you no malice, but I cannot allow you to leave the Labyrinth alive. In dying, let your blood fertilize the land!
...I've spent my entire life fighting. Fighting to keep myself alive, after having to flee my parents. I've finally made my life feel like it's worth living. It's taken so much work, and so much pain, but I have something to hold onto. And I'm not about to lose it any time soon.


No. What happened long ago will not be left untold. We will leave here alive!





Pretty straightforward but violent here. Having a Protector will help immensely.

Vince is basically gonna use Front Guard all fight.

Sigrid's basically going to just follow this loop: Charge, then Ecstasy.

Thierry uses CPR, in case I get unlucky and Tempest really ruins me.

Emmett prepares for Sigrid starting to deal real damage.

And Quixote's going to try to shut down Root Cyclone.

You have time to back out of this, you know.


Strike!


What, poking me with a stick? Try harder than--
...
Actually, don't try harder than that. Keep doing that.
This is basically the best outcome for a turn. Attack is pretty much a love tap.

Expect the worst, hope for the best.


Hold still, thank you.


Damage time.

Quixote's got reasonable odds of binding Etreant's head, which will power up Ecstasy.

Take this!


Dammit.

You will not rob me of what's rightfully mine!


Nice job, brain genius.
Blessed image. This would have thrown the party into a proverbial food processor; it hits like a damn truck made of smaller trucks.

Barbaric March is my primary form of defense in this fight.
For all their drawbacks, Barbaric March and other equivalents (e.g. Rally Order) are always incredibly good at helping the party take hits. I love them, honestly.

Rather than have him go for a head bind again, I'm gonna instead have Quixote throw Frailty Curse on Etreant.

Fear of your own death should soften your bark.


Be prepared.


I'm...alright...


Thierry's gonna work on getting everyone up to their new max HP.

Quixote goes back to binding.

Quite the effective song you've written, dear.
Ahehe, thank you.


It doesn't have to be this way, Visil.


I barely felt that.
I don't know what's going on, but Etreant is really in love with normal attacks right now.

Barbaric March is really good, you guys.

Second verse, same as the first!
Taboo Rondo is also really good. Probably one of the most turn-efficient skills in the game.

Are you even trying?
Some seriously good luck on this run in general.

Oh, shut up, you old stodger.
The irony's killing me.
I mean, someone has to. Visil's certainly not going to.

Arm binds'll be harder to inflict, but oh well.

...'Kay then. Sure.

Time's running out, Visil.


...What did you call him again, Vince?
Brain genius.


I'm going to echo Vince calling you a "brain genius."
What the fuck?

Also, hello, Bloodlust.

For having only one (1) major damage dealer, we're making good time, I feel.

See how much HP we still have relative to our total bars after Root Cyclone? Barbaric March is great.
Yeah, in my own run this pretty much sent me into triage mode after everyone was knocked down low and my Hexer got oneshot (they were roughly 15 levels behind or so).

Oh no, our buffs are about to run out, whatever shall I do?

I love Taboo Rondo.

Agh!
My ears!
What on earth was that noise?!
Oh, curses, where was I in the song...?
Fuck.

At least I can apply a boosted CPR now.

And a boosted Warrior Song.

The reaper calls, Visil.
And it's over.

Thrash...all you like... He will not leave empty-handed...
...You really don't need your alter ego to be scary.
I'm not sure...if that's a compliment...or not...


Well, I don't have any Theriaca As, but at least Visil's about to get fear-locked.

Don't make our jobs harder than it needs to be, please.


Sigrid, Dr. Hannighan. If you would.


Hragh! ...He's all yours, Sigrid!


Leave the world to the future, please.



We're capable of handling it.
And so, the main story concludes.
Muting Word, motherfucker.




Goodbye, Visil.
Your lifetime of leading others to their deaths in service of a foolish goal is over.


Did he never notice the irony of killing others to keep the past near-annihilation of humanity a secret?
Doubt it. I'unno what was going through his head.


...So, what happens now?
Huh?
Well, you heard him...


All we can do is tell the world of the past that was kept from it, so that we can fix the sins of our forebearers.


...Yeah. You're right.




...



For now... Let's just go home and rest. Everyone's waiting for us.
Agreed.
Indeed.
And so, we come to the end of the EOU main story.

There's, uh... Well, for those of you coming from any EO games from EO3 onward, this might seem odd, but there's no dialogue during the credits. It's just an EO1-style staff roll, with the left side of the screen showing various strata splash art.

So. Etrian Odyssey Untold. Now that we're at the end of the bulk of it, what do I think?

It's... Well, it's a complicated game for me to talk about. Ignoring the Story mode...

EOU is a weird mixture of the series' past and, at the time, its present. The selection of skills any given class has, as well as the general difficulty, are reminiscent of the DS era--before the spiking difficulties were leveled out and class skillsets largely had the fat trimmed off them. There's odd remnants of old design, like the atrocious enemy item drop rates, certain enemies having Amber Lumps as their very rare drop. It can be...frankly, annoying to play at times. The 3rd Stratum in particular seriously tested my patience going through it again.

But, at the same time, sometimes the new parts of the design shine through, and there's glimpses of a beautiful experience in there. By and large, I like how a lot of the EO1 classes were redesigned, even if some of their skills are vestigal leftovers. They're basically what would happen if EO1 didn't relegate some parts of its design to afterthoughts. Ronin and Hexer being unlocked at the start, again, is a good move, and makes the fact that they aren't balanced for being unlockable classes bearable.

The new Labyrinth floor designs are also, by and large, really good. Like earlier, they're as if certain EO1 floor gimmicks had a lot more thought put into them, and they're (often) very engaging to navigate. The Iwaoropenelep room is basically the best example of this, taking a concept (navigate through FOEs to reach Iwaoropenelep itself) and making it not utterly miserable to play around.

Sometimes, though, the new...isn't great. And by that, I mean the myriad of internal formulas that can cause the game balance to be skewed way out of whack at times. The most glaring offender of this is how defense works--namely, how armor DEF is basically irrelevant, and the best way to build defensively is just stacking HP, especially against TEC-based damage. It's a complaint directed at a small part of the game, but it has wide-reaching implications on the general difficulty, especially for players who aren't keenly aware of the game's internal mechanics.

It's hard for me to pass decisive judgment on EOU. While I, personally, just shy of adore the game, I do also have to admit that it is an atrocious way to be introduced to the series. EO4 has similar formula-based problems, but at least in that game, class skillsets aren't filled with vestiges that can cause confusion in how to invest skill points at times.

Oh well, hopefully you don't need, like, a numeric score to figure out what I think of EOU.

With my thoughts out of the way, it's time for special thanks.

Firstly, thank you to all of the people that created characters for EOU. In class order:


Secondly, thank you to Reco and Angel, my co-commentators (even if Angel only joined very recently). The LP is infinitely better with their thoughts alongside mine, and I'm blessed to know them and be able to work with them.

Thirdly, thank you to violentlycar, my romantic partner, and ardent supporter in everything I do.

Fourthly, thank you to the EO LP Discord server, for being a lovely community of people who are consistently fun to talk to, and consistently give me encouragement that makes doing sometimes-menial work much easier.

Fifthly, thank you to Dr. Fetus / Araxxor, for running the Story mode LP.

Sixthly, thanks to all of my friends that I communicate with regularly, for making my life much more bearable, even in the face of great challenges. In no particular order:


And, lastly... I do need to thank alcharagia / Kinu. While she wasn't able to stay and finish this journey with us, the time and work she contributed to the LPs opened my eyes to how I could make the LP narratives more interesting and fleshed out--in particular, expressing LGBT+ themes in them, and writing a lot of LGBT+ characters. Were it not for her influence helping me overcome my fears regarding that, as (not) shown in EO2U, the LPs wouldn't be what they are today, and, frankly, my life would be significantly worse. So... Thank you.

Thank you all.

...I've run out of things to say.

Wait, no, one more thing. I'm including all of the Atlus USA credits here, because they consistently do a great job as a localization outfit bringing games that might not necessarily have the widest audience to North America.

Admittedly, while these credits are years out of date (John Hardin left Atlus USA before EO5 came out, for example), my point still stands.

Peep the EO puns in the credits, by the way.

We're home!
Welcome back, everyone.
And so, the main story ends.

Now, onto the real challenge: the postgame. Get ready, because if you thought the game was mean now, wow are you gonna be in for a fun surprise.

Until then, though...

Thank you for reading, and good night.
































































































Oh, by the way, I did two non-canon fights against Etreant with different party members, so everyone got a shot at him.




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