Played this on stream with a low-end laptop for several hours and now whenever I hear one of the 00s pop songs from its soundtrack playing on the radio at a drug store I gradually put it together that this is the standard speed version of the song I'd heard playing at x.67 speed during this experience. I was briefly thrilled to learn that this is first and foremost a yuri dating sim where you court other volleyball players before realizing that there are no interactions between the characters beyond the basic gift-giving minigame.

I'm in love with the way EO leverages the DS to digitize manual mapping. absolutely wonderful, beautiful stuff that captures the spirit of the genre a billion million zillion times better than any automap ever could. in a perfect world this would've heralded imitative ports of every drpg under the sun, and all of them would've been strong contenders for the best versions by default. unfortunately we live in the eternal piss and shit dimension so I'm doomed to pout about the missed opportunity for the rest of my life

as for the rest: game's like one of those images where either you see the old crone or the smokin hot babe; the lamp or the smoking hot babe; the white and gold dress or the smokin hot babe. you know?

from what I gather if you're coming at it from an EO perspective this thing feels like it was coded straight into zhoukoudian limestone by the peking man. folks act like it's the dustiest, crustiest, most satanic verses ass antipathetic crawler ever made. they're out here throwing blankets over their ds at night like a furby to stop it from talking backwards and shit

but if you're coming at it from a broader drpg ("blobbers" if ya nasty) perspective it's almost the complete opposite: decidedly modern, breezy, and accommodating; its push toward transparency, telegraphs, and convenience at odds with the core tension loop pre-bradley wizardry clones fundamentally rely on

I fall into the second category and found most of this to be pretty dry. by the time I hit the 5th Stratum I was approaching vegetative status, zoning out and mashing A with one hand while reading scandalous celebrity gossip on my phone in the other. hovering out of body, well above the dungeon rather than being subsumed by it; existing outside of stress, anxiety, and uneasy decision making. EO just doesn't got the stomach to wrench your guts around, put you on the perpetual backstep, or fill the role of derelict steward the way the most successful clones do

which is fine! I like most of the experimentation here in isolation; there's a dialogue happening that's a lot more interesting than reheating 1980-1988 endlessly. the deterministic angle opens up a lot of unique design avenues; character building could easily swerve toward embracing shortform tactics over longform attrition, and moments like B20F show that FOEs can be more than softball fodder goin woop woop woop in a 3x3 grid. there's a lot to be excited about, it just needs to be contextualized in ways that flatter rather than compromise

more than anything EO needs to stop being uncomfortable in borrowed skin and start being comfortable in its own. no reason to be another mediocre wizardry when it could be a great etrian odyssey 🌈 ⭐❤️

Compared to my last review I’ve spent a decent amount of hours at one of the arcades in my area playing this game, I genuinely wanted to in a sense defeat how blunt I was in that but even just meeting the game on its terms and practicing I just get frustration more than anything.

While I can squint and see the outline of games like Tekken existing because of this if you think about this existing a year after Street Fighter II dropped and this was developed by the second biggest video game company at the time you add up something that feels gimmicky rather than what it is, innovative.

For starters, there is no cohesion between 2d fighting and the 3D space fundamentally. When you’re off the axis your opponent is on you are essentially caught in the stream of wherever you can move until the game eventually corrects itself. This one fundamental piece crumbles the house of cards this game is built off of, if I can die because my opponent can be in a space I cannot reasonably counter (or because the resources this game provide me do not teach me these mechanics), what good is the 3D space if I can’t utilize it besides being a way to sidestep the entire genre I’m playing?

It’s one thing to develop technology that changes everything (I imagine it was incredibly hard for them to even make the hit boxes as decent as they are here which rival even most 2D fighting games at the time), but it’s another thing if the game you’ve made just doesn’t feel good and the art of game design is making the compromise between fun and technical.

Summary: I wanna see how the other games improve upon this

Es stands for "Embryo Storage". She's two years old in the game.

Originally, I was going to say that this game feels like the visual novel you'd get out of a happy meal, but there's too many scenes of nude underaged girls for that. Even if you give a shit about the story (aka should be put on a list), the news snippets you have to constantly be on the lookout for destroy and flow to reading that you could possibly have.

I've played Es in every game Arcsys has thrown her in, and even I'm like "yeah, they gotta take this game out back and put it down like ol yeller". Even for people who don't think Mori is a Shouzou Kaga-tier creep, you're gonna have a better time reading the wiki.

Quake 2's base mechanics served as a scaffolding for this - a set of fun, smart, modern levels with themes, escalating tension, incredible level design, and great environment art. Something of this scope can only be achieved in the modern era by looking backwards to what made games like Half-Life 2 and the modern Dooms great. The only thing holding it back is Quake 2's gunplay and spongy enemies, but Call of the Machine easily earns a place at the top of the great modern boomer shooter campaigns. Easy to recommend over the base Quake 2 campaign.