I'm now on the third dungeon, so I feel like I have enough of a grasp than just early impressions.
It's not a bad game at all. I don't think I'd call it great, but the response of most people that has played it seems to be positive. But I play a lot of dungeon crawlers, so...
The good:
- Graphics are good. This is like what you would expect for current gen visual novel format. Probably a slight edge better than Persona 5's.
- It has a lot of quality-of-life upgrades from other dungeon crawlers. Holding X moves you forward through barriers and doors, without making you stop. You can select an action on any number of units and auto-battle on everyone else. You can (sort of) exit the dungeon at any time through multiple mechanics. The game isn't over if your party wipes. And probably a lot of other things I'm forgetting.
- The dungeons have character. The first dungeon is fairly generic, but the second one is definitely not something you'd normally see. You're essentially a giant, and can go over short walls, while enemies can't. It's a fun idea.
- There are multiple solutions. There's like 3-4 different ways to reach the boss in the second dungeon, for example, e.g. you can be nice to the citizens of the second dungeon and avoid one path, or plow through them. It's up to you.
- There's a lot of soul to the story, but nothing ground breaking.
- Monsters on maps are (mostly) visible.
- Critical gore. It's a neat mechanic. Some critical hits can cause you or the enemy to lose appendages. Some's permanent until you leave the dungeon. Like, if you lose your head, they're incapacitated til they're repaired. They also lose parts if your party wipes, which is the small(ish) punishment versus a traditional game-over.
- The charisma stat. Low charisma = more likely to be targetted. Although some enemies target high charisma instead. It mostly works very well.
- Party formation. Doesn't have to be 3 up front / 3 behind, like most games. You can have 1 up front, 4 behind, or all in front, if you want it. Specific formations do give bonuses though.
The middle:
- Breakable walls. Both a good and a bad. Good, because it lets you through rooms you don't have keys for (sometimes), or to make shortcuts. Bad, because it makes the dungeon layout kinda contrived.
- The number of party members. Having more characters means more attacks, means longer battle animations.
- Getting bonuses based on your party formation.
The bad:
- Each class only has 3 male and 3 female portraits at start. You can unlock at least 1 more, but it still means you'll probably have identical portraits if you get like 30 party members.
- Each character slot is actually a group of 1-6 members. The item to create groups determines what skills the group uses. If you want to use a specific character's skill, you have to use limited resources to do so. It limits your party a lot more than you're led to believe. E.g. you have to have a item to create a group to cast magic or heals. So having a "healer" or even a party of healers depends more on the item that pre-determines your group than the character make up.
- There a very complicated system for a lot of things, but you don't need to actually understand them that well. You'll 95% of the time just auto-attack. You don't have a choice not to, because you have limited resources to do anything else.
- The game is very anti-exploring. Even though you can break walls, stepping out of where you should be will cause you to meet stuff that's like 50 levels too high. And you won't know this til you wipe. After doing that 2-3 times, you just don't bother exploring so much.
- Another anti-exploring is that once you gather mana past the cap of the dungeon, really strong enemies spawn, and you pretty much have to leave. Which is a very artificial way of making you have to go back to town.
- There's also a lot of locked chests, a lot of different keys, and no easy way to tell from the map if it's something you have a key for.
- The dungeon and the outside story doesn't always connect. It's like key points in the dungeon triggers the outside story to advance, but then they're not connected half the time. Sometimes they do, and those are charming.
- The alchemy system unlocks pretty deep into the game. There's no indication of when, and it doesn't explain the details really well. And it's not til you unlock the last part of the alchemy system, that it tells you the mechanic of the downside of an ability you've had since the start of a game. So you kinda screw yourself because the game never told you.
- There's a lot of seemingly useless mechanics. Surprise attacks don't seem to do anything special most of the time. It stuns them from acting, some times? They usually still move before you, with no noticeable difference for the most part.
All in all, if you don't play a lot of Etrian Odyssey because it's too hard, or it doesn't have enough of a story, or it's too retro, but want to play a dungeon crawler, probably try this one. If you're me (or probably Draekon and nitro), who plays a lot of other dungeon crawlers, it probably doesn't offer anything superior.