Atlus has really milked the Etrian Odyssey series. Since the first game came out in, in 2007, they have released 8 games in the series, depending on how you count them. I am counting both Etrian Mystery Dungeon and the very conceptually close Persona Q. It isn’t a series that has undergone much of an evolution either; it started as a throwback, which left it little space to really grow. There has been consistent incremental improvement in interface and playability. That is enough forward momentum to keep the series in many players’ good graces. The Untold games have seen the biggest changes to the formula, remakes that optionally replace the player generated blank slates with a pre made party and add in a story. Etrian Odyssey Untold 2: The Fafnir Knight follows the same recipe as The Millennium Girl, but manages to improve on it in all ways, save one.

Etrian Odyssey 2 was the one game in the series that felt the most like a cash in. The others all featured improvements and changes of some kind, as small and incremental as they may be, but EO2 was absolutely just more of the same. It had a full new dungeon to explore and a few new classes, but otherwise not much was new. It is the black sheep of the series, not because it does anything wrong but because it lacks the unique traits that make EO3 and EO4 stand out. EOU2 is easily the most polished of the series in a lot of respects and it fixes the biggest problem that EOU1 had: Grimoire Stones. Grimoire Stones were an interesting idea, if inferior in every way to sub-classing, that just didn’t work in the first game. Getting them and managing them was always a hassle. The systems just didn’t make sense and in the end I simply ignored them and used the skills that my characters naturally possessed. In this game they have been altered enough that became useful, vital parts of my strategy. You can get stones for skills that you already have, making them even stronger, or like general sub-classing to get extra skills. It took a completely worthless and cumbersome system and turned it into something actually useful.

As much as I’ll tell you that I prefer default Etrian Odyssey, with its absence of story and free party creation, when given the choice in these last two games I have chosen story mode both times. While I enjoy the old school vibe of this series, I am a player that grew up on SNES Final Fantasy and Lunar games. I love goofy RPG stories. The ones in these two games haven’t been great, but other than a tendency to slow the pace of the game to a crawl for stretches I have actually enjoyed them. I liked the cast and tenor of this game more than the previous one, though not by a wide margin. Each games male and female leads are a wash, but while I really liked Raquna, but Flavio and Betrand are both really interesting characters. Betrand’s big secret actually gives a reason for his presence that previous game’s party seemed to lack. My biggest problem with EOU1’s story was that it spoiled the big twist at the end early on, but there is no such twist in this game.

My problem with EOU2’s story mode in its party set up. I hate that party. Not the characters, the classes. I don’t tend to use Protectors and while I might use one character for buff or debuffs, I wouldn’t have two devoted to that. Also, as great as the main character’s Fafnir class is, I really don’t like having all of my elemental attacks on my primary physical attacker. I know there are ways to get those classes to work, but it was not any party that I would have ever put together and trying to make a group I didn’t like work caused me a lot of frustration.

The frequency of these games have not lessened my enjoyment of them. I still really enjoyed Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 despite fighting through Etrian Mystery Dungeon earlier this year and Persona Q last year. This series has found a niche that it can effectively exploit. There are others that try to hit this same niche, but none do it better than EO, and EOU2 is the best so far. It is just a little better than what came before it, but that is enough to keep me coming back every time. With Etrian Odyssey V on the horizon, I couldn’t be happier that this series keeps chugging along.

2005 was a big year for video games. It was the zenith of the PS2, and it competitors, generation and handhelds were on the rise. The great games that hit during that year include Resident Evil 4, Shadow of the Colossus and Psychonauts. Or Call of Duty 2, FEAR and God of War. The Nintendo DS was coming into its own, with games like Nintendogs, Animal Crossing Wild World and Mario Kart DS. The game from that year that had the biggest impact on me, though, was Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. In fact, it is the game that kept me from drifting away from playing video games.

I didn’t actually play Phoenix Wright in 2005, though. While that was a great year for games, it was also a year that I starting giving up on the hobby. It sounds silly to say now in light of how completely its successor dominates my playtime, but the DS didn’t interest me. I had liked the Gameboy Advance, but most of what it offered was watered down SNES ports. The PSP didn’t seem like it was for me, either. I didn’t even have a PS2, all I had a Gamecube. A Gamecube that got a lot of use playing RE4 and Fire Emblem: Paths of Radiance. In late 2005, I did get a PS2, and glutted myself on its wide pool of JRPGs. While the next year did account for a lot of time spent playing games, outside of a few standout titles (Dragon Quest 8, Final Fantasy X) glutting myself on mediocre RPGs really didn’t turn things around for me. I was just killing time. It wasn’t until the fall of 2006, with the release of Pokemon Pearl, that I turned around on the DS. I had been out of the Pokemon game since really early in Silver/Gold days, and the new one looked sure to reignite my interest.

I still remember that first DS. It was a black DS lite, and I bought it with Trauma Center and Star Fox Command. I thought Star Fox was okay, but it didn’t light me on fire, and Trauma Center, despite its wonderful concept, was simply too hard. I couldn’t make it past the midway point of the game. I ended up spending most of my time with Pokemon Pearl and finding cheap GBA games.

One of the things that drew me to the DS was that it seemed to have new kinds of games, experiences I’ve never had before. Trauma Center fit that mold, even if I eventually sold it back to Gamestop for Lunar Knights. Another one that really intrigued me was Ace Attorney, but it was really hard to find for a while. It did get a reprint sometime in 2006; I found it while out Christmas shopping. Buying something for myself while Christmas shopping is a big no-no, but I couldn’t pass on it. It was a revelation. Sure, it was essentially a simplified version of the adventure games that had repeatedly failed to catch my interest, but something about it just clicked with me.

The game is ridiculous, bearing little resemblance to an American courtroom and hopefully just as little to a Japanese one, with larger than life characters and a delightful anything goes mentality. This is a game where spirit mediums are called to the stand to have ghosts testify or where in the middle of the climactic struggle to save Phoenix’s friend turned rival Edgeworth from being found guilty of murder you cross-examine a parrot. Still, the logic of the puzzles was always solid and the characters stood out as being incredibly well-written. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

Of course, I know now that it really isn’t anything new, just a sterling example of a type of visual novel-esque adventure game that has been popular in Japan since the days of the Famicom, but for me it was all new. Before, the games I played were all RPGs of some kind or action games. I moved from Mega Man 3 and Final Fantasy to Mega Man X and Final Fantasy III to Mega Man Legends and Final Fantasy IX. To me, that is what video games were. Sure, I dabbled in RTSes and sports games, but my gaming diet consisted mostly just those two types of games. With the DS and Phoenix Wright, I found something different.

With Ace Attorney 6 announced and more importantly announced for a Western release, I felt an urge to go back to the game that started it all. Playing the version of the AA Trilogy game for 3DS is it just as good as ever. Enough time has passed that while I recall the gist of the game, I don’t remember each beat of the story and every puzzle. It is almost like playing the game for the first time. Not quite, though. It is hard to find that magic of the first time, when the player has no idea what to expect. The boundless creativity and wild west anything goes approach of the DS and Wii has faded again, being replaced by an endless parade of sequels that play just like you remember. Games like Ace Attorney struggle to sell up to expectations.  Video games are still enjoyable, sometimes comforting, but despite a burgeoning and diversifying indie scene, I look back with more than a little sorrow for that brief window when it seemed like games could be anything.

As soon as I decided that playing through Bioware’s catalogue of games was a goal and not a happy coincidence, my failure became inevitable. I was never going to be able to keep it up and honestly, I never really intended to. I had wanted to beat Baldur’s Gate for a long time. I had played it in the past, but spent more time trying out new characters than actually trying to beat the game. Seeing it through to the end was a long time goal. I had also wanted to play Mass Effect. Once I was really starting to dig into my PS3 (or more specifically my brothers’ PS3) library, running into some of Bioware’s fairly prodigious output on the system was inevitable. I didn’t try to fight it; I just played them as they came up in my queue. However, the combination of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age Origins, along with some personal problems, has ground away my desire to play anymore Bioware games at the moment.

It isn’t anything against the games, neither those two games specifically nor the company’s oeuvre. I like Bioware’s games, even with some of their idiosyncrasies. But there is no denying that for the most part they all play similarly. It is pretty easy to trace the gameplay traits all the way from Baldur’s Gate to Dragon Age Inquisition. One thing they all have in common is that they aren’t short games. Even Jade Empire, likely the briefest of their games, takes a good 25 hours. Playing the same sort of game, over and over, is a great way to kill any enthusiasm for them. I like Kotor, but I played through the first two thirds of years ago, doing it again, after doing something similar six times already this year, held little appeal to me. It didn’t help that my laptop has recently come up lame, with choking and wheezing itself into needing to be replaced before too much longer. I don’t really feel comfortable playing games on it right now.

As for Dragon Age Origins, it is just too much. Having played roughly half of it, I can now see why DA2 got the reception it did. The two games are as different as night and day. DA2 is concise and focused, Origins is epic and sprawling. I can see why coming from the big game to a much smaller one would turn off fans, but personally I appreciated DA2’s intimacy. It also hurt that my time has recently become much more strained. I don’t have the time to play Dragon Age Origins for 80 hours. Especially not in a month.

Trying to beat every Bioware game in a year was obviously a case of too much of a good thing. The only reason I decided to make it a thing is that I was almost halfway done on accident. I played through 5 just as a matter of course, doing another 7 didn’t seem like a big deal. As soon as I made it a goal, though, my work schedule changed and my desire to play evaporated. Instead of continuing to try to play the games and making myself hate them, I am giving up. I’ll get back to them eventually. Neverwinter Nights, KotOR, DA Inquisition, all of them. But not now, and probably not this year. I would rather play Etrian Odyssey Untold 2, or Super Mario Maker, Yakuza 4 or Metal Gear Solid V. Maybe late this year, or early next year, I’ll get back to them But for now there is no rush.

A new job and some trouble with my laptop really hampered me doing much video game playing last month. Still, I managed to beat a couple of short games and make some good progress in a couple of Bioware games. I know I’ve fallen behind in my attempt to beat a Bioware game each month, but I think I have a good chance to catch up in August.

Beaten

The Cave – 

I beat this just after it was released, but never went back like I wanted to see all of the endings and beat it with every character. I am doing so now. It gets a little tedious, what with having to beat it with each character twice and three parts of the game being the same every time, but each story is enjoyable the first time and the narrator is a hoot.  I can get a run done in under and hour now.  I really like it style of being an adventure game with platforming mechanics.  It is just a really good time, I hope we get something like it again.

Back to the Future – I picked up all five episodes of this Telltale adventure game for a buck during a sale and recently plowed through the first episode.  It is pretty great.  There are some fun puzzles and it perfectly captures the feel of the movies.  There really isn’t much more to say.  It is an adventure game and it plays like an adventure game.  I’m eager to get the other episodes downloaded and to see if they are as enjoyable as this first one is.

Ongoing

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire – This is the one generation of Pokemon game I have never beaten.  I’ve pushed about halfway through Emerald years ago, but I found the game tedious. I know a lot of people who hold this game and its twin in high esteem, but I’ve always found them to be the least engaging Pokemon games.  The remade version is in many ways the best Pokemon game, with improvements and conveniences all around, but I am still finding it slow going. A big part of that is that I shoved my 3DS in my pocket and managed to eject the cart, costing me a couple hours worth of play. Still, I was humming along and mostly enjoying it, even though I wasn’t taking to it with the gusto I have with many other games in the series.  I will likely put it aside for Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 next month, but I’ll have this finished sooner rather than later.

Dragon Age Origins – I didn’t manage to finish a Bioware game last month, but I did make significant progress on two of them.  In DA:O, I’ve cleared the town of Lothering and am ready to get the quest started in earnest.  I’m not sure how much I actually like this game so far, and I can’t tell if my gripes are about the game or due to me overloading on playing Bioware games.

KotOR – Steady progress.  I’m not sure if I’ll finish this game before Dragon Age or not, since lately I’ve been having some computer troubles.  I’d hate to lose another playthrough of this about the halfway point.

Elliot Quest – 

 Another game I’ve only just begun. This is some kind of unholy mix of Cave Story, Link’s Awakening and Kid Icarus. So far it a greatly enjoyable.  My only problem is that it went on sale a couple of days after I paid full price.

A Boy and His Blob – this game is unbelievably adorable. I’ve only just begun and I’ve already fallen in love with the aesthetics of the game. I am enjoying the gameplay as well, but that hasn’t been quite as initially gripping. This is a gem I am sorry I missed originally.

Upcoming

Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 – This is all I’m looking forward to in August, unless I manage to get back to one of the numerous games I’ve abandoned over the last year or so.  Etrian Odyssey is my drug, and Atlus is a dealer more than happy to keep the hits the coming.  I hope they never stop.

I haven’t really had the time for writing due to a change in my employment.  It is a good change in many ways, but it does leave me with a lot less time.  I hope that soon things even out and I am able to get back to writing at least somewhat regularly

Another big thing that is the death of Nintendo President Satoru Iwata.  I don’t have much to add to the outpouring upon news of his loss.  It is a terrible loss.  His personality is a big part of what made NIntendo seem so friendly during this last decade.  Between the Nintendo Directs and Iwata Asks, he made it clear that Nintendo cared about both the games they made and their audience.  Iwata will be missed.

Beaten

Etrian Mystery Dungeon – wrote about it here.

Shinobi 3DS – This is a well made game, but it is also a very difficult one.  I was as frustrated by it as I was entertained.  Shinobi really captures the classic action game appeal of the Genesis entries in this series, but it also captures some of those game’s warts.  I am hesitant to call this game’s difficulty a wart, though. It is a clearly intentional choice; this is supposed to be a hard game.  But that didn’t stop it from hampering my enjoyment of Shinobi.  Still, for the price it was definitely worth a try.

Jade Empire – wrote about it here.

Ongoing

Knights of the Old Republic – I’ve played through about a quarter of this before and after I played Jade Empire.  There is a clearly visible evolution of Bioware’s output from Baldur’s Gate to Kotor to Jade Empire to Mass Effect.  They all work along some of the same lines, but there are clear changes to the gameplay. I am really enjoying this one.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire – It just started playing this.  I didn’t quite feel like a new Pokemon game when this came out last year, but I picked it up when I saw it on sale and the mood struck me for some Pokemon so I started it up.  I’ve actually never gotten through this generation of Pokemon at all.  I played about halfway through Emerald back in the day, but I lost interest.  I don’t think I’ll have a problem finishing this one, even if I am not a huge fan of the Pokemon available early on.

Splatoon – I was greatly enjoying this game for a few weeks.  It is the most fun I’ve ever had with any sort of multiplayer shooter.  It is a decidedly Nintendo take on the genre, but it is also a thoughtfully designed game.  It avoids a lot of the pitfalls that make most shooters very “adult” like taking away the bullets and giving the player’s squirt guns.  The lack of voice chat is not an oversight by Nintendo, but a determined attempt to make the game playable by everyone.  I stopped enjoying it when I destroyed my save data.  As in the flash drive that held my save data was physically destroyed.  I was up around rank 12 and had unlocked several interesting weapons and I just don’t have it in my right now to start over. Hopefully I will soon.

Olli Olli – I got this out of the Nintendo Humble Bundle.  It is kind of fun to mess around with, though it didn’t really do anything to stick with me for long.  I’ll probably keep fiddling with this for a little while.

Moon Chronicles – Another Humble Bundle game.  This is just the first chapter and I’m not a huge fan of FPSes, but this has been fairly enjoyable.  I’m not in a hurry to keep playing it, but I’ll finish it up sooner or later.

Paper Mario – I kind of got distracted and didn’t make a lot of progress on this.  I really like it, but some work troubles haven’t really left me with a lot of video game time and this game just sort of got lost in the shuffle.

Persona 2 Eternal Punishment – Very slow progress, but progress is happening.  Sooner or later I am going to get really sucked into this and burn through the rest of it.

Smash Bros 4 – I got the new characters (Roy, Ryu and Lucas) but at the same time there was an accident that destroyed the flashdrive that I had my digital copy of this game saved on.  It takes a long time for me to download a 13 gb game, so by the time it was done I was   not really in the mood to play anymore.

Upcoming

Mario and Luigi Partners in Time – I’ve never played this one, but it recently became available on VC, so I’ll pick it up.

Dragon Age Origins – This is what is up next after I finish with Kotor.

I started playing Knights of the Old Republic, but for some reason I felt the need to switch over to Jade Empire, which I ploughed through very quickly. It is not Bioware’s best game, but it is a really interesting one. It is also the first Bioware game that takes place in a world of their creation; all of their previous games were set in established universes, Star Wars and D&D’s Forgotten Realms. They did a lot right with this game, but it doesn’t quite feel like the vision for this game was fully realized.

It kind of pains me to point out the flaws in this game, because I really liked Jade Empire. That, however, doesn’t really mitigate the games problems, chief of which is that the game simply doesn’t feel finished. It starts out with a solid ten or so hours of RPG then ends with a mediocre 5 hour action game. Characters join you in your travels then all but disappear. It feels like all the time spent creating the marvelous world of Jade Empire cut a lot of time that could have been spent creating content for that world. There are a lot of interesting ways to deal with obstacles, but not nearly enough obstacles to deal with. I really enjoyed having a handful of different martial art styles and weapons to use, but by the time your options really open up the game is nearly over. You are joined by a lot of interesting characters, but there isn’t a lot for most of them to do and since you can only bring one along at a time there are not many opportunities to bring them with. The game just ends up feeling slight or incomplete. Especially past the midway point, when all the RPG stuff and sidequests disappear and it just becomes an action game with a leveling system.

That doesn’t even to go into how big of a piece of crap PC port of this game is. It simply doesn’t work a good portion of the time. There are points when the enemies don’t turn hostile and block passages. After I reached the capitol city the game started loading up with the camera pointing straight at the ground about half the time. I just had to quick save and reload to fix it, but it was plenty annoying. I still enjoyed the game, but it did its best to keep from doing so.

While the game doesn’t have quite enough content, what is there is pretty good. It has something of a middle ground between the good and evil of the morality system in Star Wars and the Paragon/Renegade dichotomy. The Way of the Open Palm versus the Way of the Closed Fist tries to not be good and evil, but the game doesn’t really let there be many good actions for Closed Fist. It is kind of a selfless/selfish split. Open Palm players help others out, Closed Fist players tell people to help themselves. The only real problem I have with this system is that it doesn’t really affect anything. There are some accessories that can only be equipped by players of one path or the other, but few of them have effects that aren’t duplicated. The big moral choice that inevitably comes doesn’t rely in any way on the choices the player made before. In some ways that is not a problem, it makes sense that the player could choose either option there, but it makes the morality system somewhat superfluous.

I did enjoy the plot and characters, though it never really rises past the level of cliché. The overall quest, first to find your lost master and then to right a great wrong, is nothing groundbreaking but it is enjoyable and well executed. Your party members can’t help but feel like failures because while most of them are interesting, there is just so little for them to do. Henpecked Hou is kind of hilarious, but he joins in the woods and just sticks around to avoid his wife. Funny, but there isn’t a lot there. Likewise Sky is just sort of there. The only ones with any real plot importance are Silk Fox, who really pushes the player along near the middle of the game and childhood friend and game long companion Dawn Star. Otherwise, they are just slightly amusing character outlines along for the ride.

In many ways Jade Empire feels a lot like the first Mass Effect. The world is cool and it is clear that a lot of time was put into creating it, but it is only explored through a somewhat rough game. Mass Effect got a couple games to fix its problems, and become something else entirely; Jade Empire is only one game. This is all there its. I liked Jade Empire a lot, though I can’t help but be left wanting more in a bad way. What Jade Empire does it does well, it just doesn’t do enough.

So E3 was this last week and I spent too much time streaming it. It is always a good time. Now it is time for me to share my thoughts about everything I saw, since I am sure that everyone is waiting with baited breath to hear what I think. Last year I was blown away by Nintendo’s excellent Direct while Sony and Microsoft bumbled through awkward and disappointing presentations. This year there was not such a clear cut winner, but there was still a lot of good stuff to see.

If I had to pick a “winner” of the show, it would be Sony. They had the most exciting stuff to show, though most of it won’t be anywhere near store shelves until next year at the earliest. Still, the announcement of a remake of FFVII is plenty exciting. FFVII is not the best game in the series, and it has a lot of moments that won’t really translated into HD all that well, but it is still an intriguing prospect, even if just to see how modern Square Enix deals with the work of the old Squaresoft. They also finally showed more of the long delayed The Last Guardian. That game has me very close to wanting to get a PS4, though like many people who bought a PS3 to play that same game I will wait until it is out to make the jump. Unless, of course, something else pushes me over the edge first. Sony also announced a Kickstarter for Shenmue 3. I have no attachment to that series, but the overwhelming success of the campaign is amazing. I’m not sure how much I like a company the size of Sony using Kickstarter to fund a game, but if that is the only way the game can get made no big deal. Horizon: Zero Dawn also looked very good. I want to know more about how the game will work, but what they showed was impressive. Too much of Sony’s stuff was really far off, but I definitely want to play a lot of it.

Microsoft actually showed some good stuff this year. Backwards compatibility is a nice addition, though it is both very late and seemingly not very well supported. Still, it is a smart move. They also announced a Rare compilation. Sure, they haven’t made a good game in about a decade, but they have some really great stuff from the 80’s and 90’s. I am disappointed to see that it won’t have any Wizards and Warriors games, but a lot of their N64 games were good and some of their NES games were excellent. I always really liked Solar Jetman. Their indie exclusive Cuphead was one of the best looking games of the show, with amazing looking 30’s style animation. There was also ReCore, from Keiji Inafune, which looks promising, if far off. Most of the rest of Mircosoft’s offerings continued to not interest me much, but at least this was a positive showing.

Nintendo’s E3 has been met with considerable cries disappointment, but I can’t say I agree with the people who found it so. No, they didn’t match last year’s show. Last year had them firing desperately on all cylinders, showing off some new games, like Splatoon and Codename STEAM, as well as new games from favorite series, like Kirby, Star Fox and Legend of Zelda. This year they didn’t have all that, Nintendo stuck to mostly what they have coming out the rest of this year. Unfortunately, a lot of that stuff was shown last year. They had some intriguing new 3DS games, but the only new WiiU offering they had was a new Mario Tennis, likely fun but certainly not exciting. Still, Nintendo definitely had the most stuff that I will play before next year’s E3. If you include the Smash Bros stuff and the Nintendo World Championship, Nintendo had a more than good show.

The WiiU might be heading for a premature grave, but Nintendo has got a solid slate coming out this fall. Fatal Frame 5 is supposedly coming this fall, as is Devil’s Third. Neither of those are really up my alley, but they both could be solid games. They also have the much anticipated Xenoblade X and Yoshi’s Wooly World. Those were both focuses of last year’s show and they still look great this year. They blew the lid off the new Star Fox game, now named Star Fox Zero, also due late this year and it looks excellent. The most exciting thing they showed for the system was Super Mario Maker, which just keeps adding interesting features. The crazy stuff they made for the NWC was mind blowing. The sheer wealth of options in that game is promising, even if I don’t expect most people to create anything truly fun with it. Still, the cream of that crop is sure to be magical. The most baffling showing they had for the system was for Genei Ibunroku #FE, formerly known as SMT vs FE. It is not at all what I expected from a combination of those two series. It looks like it will play like the recent Persona games, which I love, but with the mythical persona’s replaced with Fire Emblem characters. The story stuff looks dumb, but it might be still be highly entertaining. Other than that game, I think everything else they showed for the WiiU is due out in 2015. Does that mean that Nintendo doesn’t have anything else in the pipeline for the WiiU after this year, other than Zelda? I hope not, but it seems possible. The continued sales failure of the WiiU is disappointing, since the system has about the best array of exclusives this side of the Dreamcast.

Most of Nintendo’s big announcements were for 3DS, which before this was looking to have slim offerings coming this fall. The addition of Zelda Triforce Heroes, an updated take on Four Swords, is something I’ve really wanted. The Four Swords games were hampered by the technology for playing them (really, who had 4 GBAs and link cable to play the Gamecube one?) but were sublime experiences in the right circumstances. They also announced Mario & Luigi Paper Jam, a combination of the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi series. The concept is just great, even if the last games in each series were a little disappointing. The third new game, Metroid Prime Federation Force, has generated a lot of complaints from whiny pissbabies. It is not a “true” Metroid game, instead being a co-op shooter starring generic space marines. It is not necessarily what I wanted from a new Metroid game, but reaction it has gotten is comical.

In all, it was a really good show this year. No one really blew me away, but neither did any one crap the bed. I am still not completely sold on the idea of getting a PS4 or XBOne, though I am leaning somewhat closer to picking up a PS4. Honestly, I am still more than happy with my Nintendo systems and PS3. With the big N’s second half offerings and Yakuza 5 and Persona 5 on PS3, I see no need to rush to upgrade.

Top 5 Games of E3 2015:

1. Super Mario Maker
2. Cuphead
3. The Last Guardian
4. Horizon: Zero Dawn
5. Star Fox Zero

It has taken me the better part of two months, but I have finally hacked my way through the main game of Etrian Mystery Dungeon. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but near the end I really had to force myself to keep playing it. I am tempted to call it two great tastes that taste great together, but I’m not sure I believe that. I love Etrian Odyssey’s brand of first person dungeon crawling, slowly and painstakingly building a team as I map out a dungeon. That is exactly my thing. But I am not a fan of the Mystery Dungeon part of the equation. Etrian Mystery Dungeon is enjoyable in spite of its roguelike elements, not because of a fusion of them and Etrian’s dungeon hack. Despite how good the game turned out, its two parent series never really stop warring.

I really just don’t like Mystery Dungeons or roguelikes. I don’t have a moronic, early 00’s hate for them like the ‘esteemed’ magazine Game Informer, which relished dropping low scores on Mystery Dungeon games for the crime of being Mystery Dungeon games and not just JRPGs. I’ve given the genre several chances to win me over and I am able to see what draws people to them. I’ve read Retronauts’ Jeremy Parish wax on about Shiren the Wanderer all over the place and I see where he’s coming from. That doesn’t change the fact that each of my attempts to enjoy the genre have failed utterly. I didn’t much like Shiren or Izuna the Unemployed Ninja or Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon. I was forced to the conclusion that I just do not like those sorts of games.

My indifference to roguelikes is why I was initially going to skip Etrian Mystery Dungeon, but strong reviews that highlighted the class building side of the game won me over. I am glad it did. It does the Etrian Odyssey character building very well. It may look like Shiren, but the team building is just like EO. It has a pretty standard array of classes, with the addition of a Wanderer class straight from the Shiren games. Building up a wide stable of characters while exploring the various dungeons is as engrossing as ever and it is easier to spread the love around thanks to the characters getting plenty of experience sitting on the bench or in forts. It makes for an addictive game, taunting the player to go down one more floor or to get one more level and keep building those characters.

The forts are where the two different branches of games fight with each other. While exploring the randomly generated dungeons, players can build a fort. Those forts lock in the surrounding floors of the dungeon. It is the static nature of the EO games clashing with the randomness of the roguelike. Periodically, super-powerful monsters, called DOEs, from deep in the dungeon will rise up and make for the town. The player can confront them with a party or by simply manning the forts with back up party members. If they lose, then the monster will destroy the fort. If there is no fort to block them, then they can rampage into the town.

Those monsters are a big reason why I didn’t want to play the game after a certain point. Those monsters don’t really play fair and the constant drain on resources it takes to battle them can be frustrating. The permanence of the gains made by an Etrian party doesn’t mix well with the frequent loss of everything that happens with Mystery Dungeons games.The DOEs are constantly coming to destroy the player’s hard earned progress. They really aren’t that big of a deterrent, most dungeons are cleared before more than a couple of them can make their way up from the depths.

I don’t know that this game actually managed to meld these two very different kinds of dungeon crawlers into a cohesive experience. However, Etrian Mystery Dungeon is still a really good game. I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I do regular Etrain Odyssey games, but I still liked it. The forts that help keep benched party members leveled up is a good system that I hope makes it into latter EO games. If you happen to enjoy Mystery Dungeon style games more than I do this game should be an absolute blast. Even if you only like one of the two ingredients of this it is still a good time.

Other than the games I beat, I didn’t play any games for all that long this month. I put a little time in on several, but most of my time was spent with the four I finished. I don’t expect next month to be all that different. I have a Bioware or two on deck and I want to finish Paper Mario, but I don’t see how I’m going to have time for much else. I did just buy Splatoon, but I doubt I will be buying many more games next month. I might, really should, get back into Monster Hunter 4, but I don’t know if I will.

Finished

Yoshi’s New Island – see here.

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team – see here.

Mass Effect 3 – see here.

Trine Enchanted Edition –

I already owned the original version of this through a Humble Bundle, but it is likely I would never have played it if it hadn’t come to WiiU. Trine 2 was one of the first games I played on the machine and I loved it. This first one is more of the same, but it isn’t quite as good. The sequel takes the same concept but it feels more refined, as a sequel should. Trine 1 requires less combining of the three heroes’ skills and more sections that any character can get through with just their own skills. The core gameplay is just as fun, but the second game is just a tighter experience. Still, this is a very good game and I am glad to have played it.

Ongoing

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – I haven’t made a ton of progress in this, but I did get started. It is very much a Bioware game; it feels like a step between Baldur’s Gate and Mass Effect. The biggest problem with playing it is that it just doesn’t play as smoothly as Baldur’s Gate or Mass Effect. It doesn’t just work as well as BG with a mouse and I can’t play it easily with a controller. Still, I really like it.

Wooden Sen’Sey – I’ve only played one stage and it really didn’t grab me. I picked it up on the cheap, so I’m not out much, but it just isn’t grabbing me. It is not a badly made game, but it lacks something compelling to make me want to play it. It isn’t that the game doesn’t work right; the controls and mechanics are fine. It just doesn’t feel fluid, the game has no rhythm; it just sorts of plods along. Maybe, hopefully, it gets better. I will certainly give it more of a chance to prove itself.

Fluidity Spin Cycle – The concept of this game is so good, too bad the stages get so ungodly finicky and intricate by midway point, let alone the end. The idea of controlling a puddle of water instead of a solid character is great; trying to jumping platforming with that puddle is less great. The difficulty is not so much from figuring out what to do or how to do it, but in wrangling the puddle into doing it. It becomes more frustrating than enjoyable. So while I put this in ongoing, I am likely done with it, having beaten about two thirds of the characters.

Paper Mario –

I didn’t make the progress I wanted to in this. In fact, I made it exactly as far as I did when I first tried to play it years ago: just past the first chapter. It still really like it and this time I plan on sticking with it. I just didn’t end up with the WiiU time I was expecting, and much of what I had was spent with Trine. It isn’t as ungodly frustrating with pointless jabbering; it actually hits much closer to the mark of enjoyable banter. Having played later Mario RPGs, it feels a little basic, but I know it gets more complex as it goes. This is a game I am crossing off my backlog this year, no question.

Etrian Mystery Dungeon – My progress on this has stalled. I like it, but I am having trouble mustering up the enthusiasm to turn it on. I hope to get it finished next month.

Persona 2 Eternal Punishment – I have been making really slow progress through this. The game is good, but there are some barriers between playing and enjoying it. I am enjoying it.

Upcoming

Splatoon – I’ve got it coming in the mail. I was on the fence, but reviews comparing the single player game to Mario Galaxy, in tone if not in consistent quality, pushed me over.

Jade Empire – When I’m done with KotOR, this is the Bioware game I have up next.

Yakuza 4 – Either this or Ratchet and Clank Into the Nexus is what I’m playing next on my PS3. Both have been near the top of my playlist for months, but I keep pushing them back.

Inazuma Eleven – I downloaded this a long time ago, but I kind of got distracted. I plan on getting back to it.