I think what I was most excited about when I first heard about Etrian Odyssey Nexus was the fact that it had a huge roster of 19 playable classes collected from various entries in the series. I thought that sounded like an amazing chance for me to really theorycraft what kind of party I could build. And it's true, I spent probably two hours before I even started playing the game taking the time to consider just how to construct my party. However, I started to get frustrated because I was faced with just so many different options that I wanted to try.
I finally settled on a pretty balanced party that has been working out really well. I'm maybe a little under halfway through the game if my estimation is right and I've hit very few brick walls impeding my progress. It's a tradition in the Etrian Odyssey series, at least for me, that there are at least a couple of cases where I'm forced to stop and maybe restructure my party before I continue. In any of the entries in this series, this can be a pretty time-consuming endeavor. Leveling up takes time and your inactive party members don't gain passive experience.
Etrian Odyssey Nexus thankfully introduced an accessory called the Memory Conch that allows your inactive party members (of which I have 13) to gain experience equal to half what your party members gain. This is nice, but it still makes me feel like I'm really falling behind if I ever decide to swap to a different party composition or even just switch out a member or two. My reserve party members are six to seven levels behind my main party and that kind of gap makes a huge difference in this game. It wouldn't be uncommon for a weaker party member slotted into my primary party to get repeatedly one-shotted in encounters, even the routine ones.
So, roughly 30 hours into this game, I don't feel enthused at the idea of investing more time to level up reserve party members just so I can experiment with different builds. This is disappointing, because it's a big part of why I wanted to play the game in the first place! Of course, it's an Etrian Odyssey title so I'm going to play it no matter what, but it's a shame that one of its big selling points for me isn't something I'm even engaging with. Maybe that will change as I progress even further into the game, but it sort of makes me wish Atlus had elected to introduce mechanics that made keeping multiple different squads of fighters a more rewarding or necessary strategy. It wouldn't break the game to have all guild members share experience by default and I'd find the game tremendously more enjoyable. There's still a lot of strategy in developing your characters' builds in the ways that work best for you and your composition even if you had more classes at your ready disposal.
On the other hand, the sheer number of classes (and different builds for each class) really does do wonders for the game's replayability. I can see how that would be a huge boon for a lot of players, but for me, I tend not to replay games often. I play a lot of games and have a sizable backlog. If I'm trying out a different party composition in a new playthrough, it's probably because I'm playing a different game in the series entirely. I still haven't played the Untold games, after all. We'll have to see as I progress ever further into the game if I decide to switch things up with a new composition or stick with the same core five throughout. I'm starting to get a little fatigued with this group but I am getting closer to level 40 when the classes start to unlock new abilities.
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