Well, it looks like you will get your chance to be in the party after all.

Before we begin, if you haven’t yet gotten to fighting the final boss in Etrian Odyssey IV’s main story, you might want to read something else. I’ll most likely blab about how to beat Heavenbringer easily and spoil the fight for you. You have been warned. Don’t go crying to me or throw a hissy fit if you still read it anyway and spoiled the fight for yourself.

Yeah I know I should have beaten the main story of Etrian Odyssey IV earlier (I did get the game during its release.) but then a game called “Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate” came along and that was what I played for about 2 months straight. (If you are curious, I am already Hunter Rank 5 and doing the 9 Star Village Quests.) I got burned out playing nothing but Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate so yeah, I decided it was the right time to continue Etrian Odyssey IV. The point where I stopped before MH3U distracted me was when I was about to explore the 5th Labyrinth, Forgotten Capital. Kinda disappointed that the Forgotten Capital is just 1 floor which is also connected to the previous labyrinths. Anyway, after mapping the entire floor, finishing some quests, gaining levels, and beating the Cursed Prince, it is time for the showdown with the final boss for the main game, Heavenbringer. I was so prepared for this fight. I was already at max level (Level 70 is the max level for the main game.) and stocked up on curatives. I then go confront it and after beating it I couldn’t help but utter “Huh?” in disbelief on how easy Heavenbringer is to beat. Now I know what some of you are thinking, “Well, you are already at max level. What do you expect?” Well the thing is in every Etrian Odyssey game the final boss for the main game is always challenging even when you are at max level. It is your preparedness that will determine if you will overcome the boss or not. Do you want to know how to make the Heavenbringer fight so yawn inducing easy? Use a bind skill. (Either from an Arcanist or a Sniper class.) Heavenbringer consist of 3 parts: Heavenbringer (head), Destroyer Arm, and Illusion Arm.  I used the Arcanist’s Hood Circle to bind Heavenbringer (head) and when you got the head bound the fight becomes a joke. It can’t do combination moves with both it’s arms and if you destroyed both arms and the head is the only thing remaining it will do absolutely nothing during it’s turn to attack. I am not sure if binding the head affects the regeneration of both hands though I guess it doesn’t matter much because during the duration of the bind I had enough time to throw everything that I got to destroy it’s face and reveal the Bared Essence. Afterwards it’s just a matter of using your strongest attacks at the Bared Essence and Heavenbringer is defeated. (If you did not defeat the Bared Essence fast enough, the face regenerates but with only a sliver of health. Any damage you have done to the Bared Essence is retained though.) So yeah, the fight was a disappointment. Didn’t even break a sweat from the battle. I guess I shouldn’t be to hard on it. Etrian Odyssey IV was supposed to bring in new players to the series. My party consisted of Fortress/Landsknecht, Imperial/Runemaster, Bushi/Nightseeker, Arcanist/Medic, and Runemaster/Imperial.

All that is left now is to do the Post Game stuff. Before I dive in to that though, I’m going to retire my party and make better recruits. I was thinking of replacing my Bushi/Nightseeker with a Nightseeker/Arcanist. I read somewhere that status ailments are more useful in the post game dungeon so I’m willing to give the Nightseeker class a chance. I have also been messing around with a skill simulator to plan ahead on what skills I would want to have. The Mistral Guild’s adventure is far from over. Later then. I still have a party to level up.

As much as I want to use a Nightseeker in my party, I don’t really find the status ailments that useful. Also to maximize their damage output, enemies need to be affected by status ailments. Oh well, I’ll just recruit one and find a use for a Nightseeker later on. There are 30 slots in the guild anyway so no big.

It has been I guess a week and half since I got my own copy of Etrian Odyssey IV and I am having a lot of fun. I have already beaten the boss of the Golden Lair (3rd Maze in the game) and unlocked the Bushi class. (This is the games version of the Ronin/Shogun class.) I have just retired my party and went with a party consisting of Fortress (Subclass is Landsknecht), Landsknecht (Subclass is Bushi),  Bushi (Subclass is Nightseeker), Arcanist (Subclass is Medic), and Runemaster (Subclass is Medic). I am just leveling up my new party before I continue on with the story and proceed to the 4th Land. Oh right, thoughts on the game. In my post about the Etrian Odyssey IV demo, I think I mentioned that the game is rather easy. Well, that is not exactly the case. There is still the usual challenge that you would expect from an Etrian Odyssey game. In fact, that boss in the Golden Lair actually gave me a hard time even when I have the advantage against it. (In the game, you are supposed to break an object in the boss room so that you can reduce the boss’ life in half and weaken it.) Sure, I have played the previous games and I’m already savvy on the tricks that the game might pull on me but it is still challenging. I guess what I’m saying is that Etrian Odyssey IV is less tedious compared to the previous games. In the previous games, starting out is the most tedious part. You will want to make two parties: the first one is your main party (All skill points will be used for skills, not in the harvesting skills.) and the second one is your harvesting party. (All skill points are for harvesting skills, skills to improve your escape rate, and skills that will lessen encounter rate.) Leveling up both parties takes up a lot of time. Money is also a bit of an issue early on because items and equipment aren’t cheap. Etrian Odyssey IV however makes this a lot more simpler. You can now harvest at all harvest points because how much items you can take at a harvest point is a fixed number. The only harvest skill in the game is the ones that increase the chance to get rare items at harvest points by 10% but you really don’t need it. Money isn’t an issue in Etrian Odyssey IV either. Aside from the drops from monsters and items gathered from harvest points you can also get money from exploring. When you explore a Land you can gather vegetables and livestock which you can cook for a temporary stat/resistance boost or sell them when you get back to town. I never found myself hard up on money in the game and I can upgrade my party’s equipment to the best available gear. When you re-spec your character, you only decrease your recruit’s level by 2 instead of 5 in the previous game. (I think it was more in the first game.) The skills of the different classes are better designed now. There are less  “throw away” skills. (What I meant by that is that in the previous games, there are just a lot of crappy skills that you have to put skill points into to gain access to the better skill.) So yeah, saying it is easy is wrong. I probably just felt that way because of my experience with the previous games and you know what, I like what they did here. To make a comparison, when I started out the demo I found that I can’t put the game down. When I start out the previous games, I needed to take breaks just because how tedious it was starting out. The only thing that I can complain about is that I wish that the main dungeon (or as the game calls it, Maze) is a bit longer. The Maze is just 3 floors (compared to the previous games 5 floors.) and it has 3 sub dungeons (or as the game calls it, Cave)  that you can find while exploring the Land. Well, that’s about it. Now if you will excuse me, I need to level up my party more.

So I have been checking out the search terms used to get to this blog and to my surprise it’s about Misao. More on Misao’s endings, getting items, and getting Misao’s body parts. Why that is a surprise is because if anyone has downloaded the English translated game in the same site as I did, there already is a guide there. Oh well, I guess just for fun I’m going to make a detailed guide in playing Misao. This means I will be spoiling a lot of things in the game. If you want to figure it out yourself stop reading now. (I typed the warning in the title in ALL CAPS for a reason.)

This is your last chance to turn back.

The title screen of Misao.

Due to having some free time and with nothing better to do, I turned to one of my favorite ways to waste time: reading stuff on TVTropes. I was reading their page on Freeware Games and recognized some of the titles of games there. (Because I either seen a “Let’s Play” or gameplay footage of the games in YouTube.) I decided to try some of them since hey it’s free and it’s not like I have anything better to do anyway. I first tried out Irisu Syndrome but I can’t get it to work on my computer. I was going to try out Ib or The Witch’s House but since I have seen a “Let’s Play” of both games I decided against it. (I’ll try them out next time.) I don’t really know what compelled me to try out “Misao”. It’s probably because the link provided in its TVTropes page leads to a game download which is already English patched and it’s a small file anyway so I thought, “What the heck? Let’s play this game.”

Misao is a freeware horror adventure game created by Sen who is a part of a group called Miscreant’s Room. This game is made with the WOLF RPG Editor.

The story of Misao pretty much boils down as follows:
Aki’s (your player character) classmate Misao has not shown up in class for 3 months and she isn’t in her home either. No one knows what happened to her that rumors spread that she is probably already dead. As Aki’s classmates joke about Misao haunting the school and cursing them, a sudden earthquake takes out the lights and Aki hears Misao’s voice telling her, “HELP… FIND ME…”. Aki finds herself separated from her class and learns from Onigawara the student council president that the school is sucked into another world and that evil spirits are roaming around due to a curse. She also learns that in order to stop the curse, she must find Misao’s body parts and sacrifice them to put her soul to rest.

Now to the game proper. For most of the game, your task is to find Misao’s body parts. ( There are 6 of them in total.) To do that, you will be picking up items that you can use to bypass obstacles or unlock certain things. Here is the thing though: You don’t have any means to defend yourself. If it isn’t the evil spirits (Which surprisingly is few in the game) that will kill you, it’s some of the objects you interact with that will. You read that right, some of the objects in the game are just traps  so you must be wary when interacting with objects. The controls are simple enough: arrow keys for movement, Z key to confirm command/interact with objects, X key to open the menu/cancel command, and C key/Shift key to quick save. The Menu I mentioned shows you 3 options: Items (Shows you the items you collected and lets you equip one item.), Parts (Shows you the body parts you have.), and Warp (You gain this ability when you visit the Library for the first time. Lets you warp to the Library and the Student Council Office.). The Quick Save function is very important in the game. You see, when you die in the game you have 2 options: “Keep Going” or “Give Up”. Choosing “Keep Going” starts you off where you last quick saved and choosing “Give Up” just sends you back to the title screen. So it is more practical to quick save than to warp back to the Student Council Office to save each time you progress. (You should only save at the Student Council Office if you intend to quit the game to play later. Loading the game from the title screen uses your save data, not the quick save data.) Okay, so warping to the Student Council Office is for saving and loading data. What is the library for then? Well, there in lies the most useful thing in the game. (Well, for first time players. Not so much afterwards.) Talking to Miss Library (or whatever name you give her) will give you hints in how to progress through the game. While you may discover some items and body parts for yourself, there will be parts that will stump you especially if it’s your first time playing. Having hints is actually a godsend here. Oh and you may find some of what Miss Library says rather interesting especially if you have played Mad Father. (The second game they made.)

As I said before, your main task is to collect Misao’s body parts and sacrifice them. After that, an important choice will determine what ending you are gonna get. If you beat the game, (Bad End does not count.) you will unlock “Truth” in the title screen. “Truth” is another story which is short and linear compared to the main game. This will give you some insight on certain characters (Can’t say more because it will be spoilers.) and beating it will get you the True Ending. Are there any extras after this? Well, you can choose the male version of Aki for your second playthrough. The male Aki has a slightly different personality to the female Aki and reacts to things differently. For instance the male Aki gets creeped out finding Misao’s head compared to the female Aki finding Misao’s brain. She does not react to it like any normal person would. It’s as if seeing it is an everyday occurrence for her. She even says “Fooounnnd Yoooouuuu!” which I read with a singsong tone when she gets it. The female Aki is the main character of the game though as stated by the creator in the Recreation Room and the fact that you cannot choose the male Aki in “Truth”. The other thing is the Recreation Room. After seeing the end credits in “Truth”, the game will ask you for a password. If you have found the password in the main game and typed it in, you will be taken to the Recreation Room where you will find out about how the game and the characters came about. I always found extras like this really cool. That’s pretty much it. The game has 3 endings. (Bad, Good, and True) It is a rather short game but it is pretty good. My blind run through the game took me around an hour and a half to beat it. It would probably would have only took me an hour if one of the puzzles hasn’t stumped me so bad. I actually caved in and looked at a guide just to solve it. To be fair though, I know what item to use and that I have to use it somewhere. I just don’t know where the place is. A second playthrough only took me 30 minutes to finish.

If you want to give the game a shot, you can download the translated game here. A fair warning though, the game depicts violence, murder, bullying, and sexual assault. (Nothing graphic shown but the dialogue heavily implies it.) If you aren’t comfortable with those topics, you might want to skip out on this one.

Aki and Miss Library. Miss Library looks pretty familiar though. Hmm…

For those who didn’t know, a demo for Etrian Odyssey IV has been released last week. (Last Thursday, February 7, to be exact.) I pretty much have done what can be done in the demo. I made a character for each class and they are all at Level 10. (Level 10 is the level cap for the demo.) I have mapped the first floor of Maze I: Cerulean Woodlands and the sub-dungeon Old Mine. That is one of the new things in Etrian Odyssey IV. Aside from the main dungeon, there are also some sub-dungeons that you can explore. (You can’t access them in the demo though.) If you have been looking at the game trailers, you may have seen that there is a part there where you control a hot air balloon. Well, this is basically like the ship exploration in Etrian Odyssey III except your movements are no longer limited. This is also how you get to the dungeons. (For the main dungeon though, if you have already accessed the Geomagnetic Pole you can just teleport there.) While exploring, you can pick up food like vegetables or fish on the field. You can sell those when you get back to town or cook it for a stat boost. Oh yeah, there are also FOEs on the field. (FOE – “Field-On Enemy” in the Japanese version while strangely enough in the localization it’s “Formido Oppugnatura Exsequen”. They are really powerful monsters that can wipe your party out when you first encounter them.) Speaking of FOE, if you have played the previous games you will know to steer clear from FOE that you see. Now you can tell if you have a chance against it. You see, in the map you can see the icon of the FOE in the dungeon. The FOE icon will have an aura around it signifying your chances against it. If the aura is red, this means the FOE is stronger than your party so you better avoid it. If the aura is yellow, it means that you could beat it with a good strategy and being well prepared but still it might be wise if you just avoided it. The third one I forgot, I think it was no aura, it simply means that you could beat the FOE. Battles are pretty much the same but I do like that there is now a command “Reference”. If you have beaten a monster once and encountered it again, if you use this command you can see the stats of the monster and its weakness. This is great because if you go by the previous games, some monsters drop rare loot if you have killed them with their weakness. I liked what they did for learning skills. Instead of just showing you a list of skills a character has and the prerequisites needed to unlock the skill on the side, they made it into a flow chart. It is much easier to follow compared to the old games. Pretty much you won’t end up wasting skill points because it is well outlined. Hmm… what else? Oh right, harvesting points. Remember in the old games where you have to dump some skill points to the harvesting skills (Chop, Mine, Take) to be able to gather items from harvesting points? Now you can harvest at all points but how many times you can get an item from a harvesting point is a fixed number of times. (Unless you have the appropriate skill to raise the chance of getting more.) There are actually more stuff to talk about like Subclass (a feature introduced in Etrian Odyssey III) and Burst (this is a battle command) but since they are not available in the demo I can’t talk about them. My only complaint is that starting off seems much easier compared to the previous games. Do note that I am playing at the game’s default setting and this game also has Casual Mode, basically easy mode for those who have no experience with the previous games or if you found the previous games too difficult. That aside, I am pretty much hyped for this game. Will definitely get this when it comes out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go listen to some Etrian Odyssey music in YouTube.

Okay, second run done. You know it’s actually ridiculously easy to gain reputation if you have money to burn in game. It actually took me around a year and a half to get 100% Trust that I have to do other things so that it will not become boring.  What I did mainly was go adventuring,  gather materials and use them for alchemy, take in some jobs for more money, and beat the bosses in the game. For my next run, I’m planning on doing Cordelia’s Ending and make another save to get Adventuring Ending. (Adventuring Ending requires Cordelia’s Ending triggered, True Ending triggered, Rorona and Cordelia at Level 50, and to beat “Demon” at Night’s Domain and “Iron Giant” at Orthogalaxen.) With how fast I can gain reputation and how much time I have now that I have money to buy the items needed in jobs early on,  it wouldn’t really matter much if I take a hit on reputation. (Yeah, taking in Cordelia’s job at the front desk will reduce your reputation by 5% each time you do it.)

Some stuff I learned during this playthrough:

• During the first month of the second year, your assignment is to make tonics. If you go to R&T Sundries there will be an event where in Tiffani will tell you that someone keeps on buying Magic Grass and asks you if you have extras to give her some and she will pay you for a high price than normal. Don’t bother hoarding any Magic Grass and selling it. It is one of those events that aren’t followed up on like with Iksel where in he asks you to make a dessert.
• It is much faster to level up Hom’s alchemy level by making him/her gather ingredients rather than synthesizing. It is also in your best interest to get Hom at alchemy level 45 as soon as possible so that he/she could start gathering Dragon Tusks and Dragon Scales in Orthogalaxen. Dragon Tusks and Dragon Scales sell for a lot and they are also used to make the best Cloth and Ingot.
• Dunkelheit can be gathered in Dark Woods at month 11 in the Miracle Forest area. Dunkelheit is used in higher level alchemy items and is also used to make good cloth.
• As soon as you get the recipes for Windrider and Secret Bag, make them at once. (Wholesale Windrider. You only need one Secret Bag.) Windrider will return you to the workshop instantly meaning it will save you days instead of when you return to town normally. Secret Bag is for putting items from your basket to the container or the other way around. It’s a really handy item.
• So I am assuming the highest level item you can make are Ruby Prism and Gold. So in order to reach alchemy level 50 with Rorona, I need to make a few of these. (Which means I need a bunch of Dragon Tusks, Dragon Scales, and Dunkelheit.) I also have to take into consideration that making these items take 5 days per item. Well, it’s not like there is an ending for reaching alchemy level 50 and it only nets you a trophy for achieving it so I’ll try doing it if there is enough time.

Trophies I got through this playthrough:

• True Ending
• To The Lake
• Trust 100%
• Hom Level 50
• Adventure Level 50
• Drunk Tiffani
• Demon Hunter

I’m not really that obsessed in getting all the trophies. Just thought of listing the ones that I got for this playthrough.