Quick overview of Entaku no Seito

entaku no seito psp coverI’m so busy playing three games at the same time + real life that I haven’t posted in a few days, but I’m alive and well. And hungry, so let’s make this quick.

Entaku no Seito (lit. Students of the Round Table) is a Japanese first-person dungeon crawler developed and published by Experience Inc. Experience has made a number of Wizardry-inspired crawlers, mainly on the PC, but none of them had been localized until Demon Gaze came out in 2011. It doesn’t seem like Entaku no Seito will ever make it West, but NISA is publishing Operation Abyss in April and we might get the PSVITA port of Stranger of Sword City if we’re lucky. I really should start saving for a VITA.

Story

“We have to stop the Last Boss or the whole world is doomed!” cries the hero of every RPG ever. But would happen if the heroes failed? What happens after the Game Over screen? Entaku no Seito is set 100 years after the good guys got wiped out by super evil demon Ol=Ohma. The world has indeed gone to hell, except for a few tiny pockets of resistance. But there’s hope. The hero has been resurrected in a new body and now he’s busy gathering a new crew to take Ol=Ohma down once and for all. Will he have better luck the second time round?

System

I’m going to assume we’re all familiar with the basics of first person dungeon crawlers. It’ll be faster to talk about what changes/additions Entaku no Seito has made to the formula, with the disclaimer that I haven’t played too many games in the genre so what is new to me might be old hat to veterans.

First, battles. A typical screen looks like this:

entaku no seito battleWhere to start, where to start. Okay, bottom up. It’s hard to show without a GIF, but this game has the same scrolling HP system as Earthound, meaning if you can heal your party member really quickly after a fatal hit, s/he will probably survive. But HP scrolls really fast and my healer tends to die first much of the time, so in practice I’ve only been able to pull it off twice.

The murky purple fog behind the enemies hides a cursed chest, a dungeon crawler standard. Cursed chests are a good source of equipment since everything costs an arm and a leg. However the chest is guarded by a ‘leader’ who will run away if you take too long to defeat him. There was a similar system in Ore no Shikabane, so maybe that’s a dungeon crawler staple as well? Anyway, the red triangles under “Lost” show long long you have before the enemy runs.

The round wheel on the left contains all your standard RPG actions – attack, defend, item, escape. The only item of interest is the pointy one left of the sword. That contains your Union Skills, used with the Union gauge that reads 17 on the top right. Union Skills are joint skills that everyone gets together to use, e.g. Magic Veil that reduces damage from an enemy for a turn, Magic Burst that strengthens all magic attacks that turn, Knight’s Bond that prevents charm (very dangerous and incurable), etc.

Union Skills are useful and also important because they’re a good way to raise your character’s Soul Gauge. Soul Gauge and Soul Ranks are super-important both in the story and in battle. The characters theorize that the Knights lost last time because their bonds weren’t strong enough (you know Japan and their Power of Friendship fetish) so forming those bonds (i.e. raising your Soul Ranks) by using Union Skills, fighting together and eating together is your main job as hero.

entaku no seito soul gaugeSee the number that reads 3%? When it reaches 100% I can to take Saul to my bedroom for a little heart-to-heart chat and then his Soul Rank will go up by one. A higher Soul Rank means more Union Points because your max UPoints = the total Soul Rank of all your party members. Even better, a higher soul rank means more EXP both for the MC and her troops. That 20% under her name is the EXP bonus she’s getting, as against 10% for Saul. That was an early screenshot. Right now she’s up to an 80% bonus and my rank 6 characters are getting a 50% EXP bonus.

Here’s my love shack bedroom where all the loving conversation takes place.

entaku no seito bedroomThe exclamation mark on Lolon’s head means she has something she wants to talk about. The premise is that you’re the teacher and they’re your students (hence the title Students of the Round), so whenever anything happens in the story that bothers them you can call them in for a chat to help them work through their issues. You can also cook and share your meals with them but since the game was too cheap to show actual images of the food, we’ll skip that part.

I forgot to mention, you can choose either a male or a female character as your player character. I think the game really wants you to choose a guy, though. I say this because the female students get all blushy around you and even get ‘seductive’ closeups when their rank is high enough, but the guys are just like meh, whatever, no matter what you do for them. Btw the cutesy character portrait is an option you can enable/disable in the menu.

entaku no seito menuI usually keep it disabled because it looks really out of place given the rather dark mood of the game. See my stats above? Apart from your starting stats, everything else is self-distributed, and you get one (1) measly point every time you level up, even though at level 41 it’s going to take MC around 42,000 EXP to level up… in a game where you’re lucky if an encounter gives you 1,000 EXP. Even stats like Luck are important, so you can’t just focus everything on one master stat. Otherwise you might be a tank with 500 HP, but you’ll be hitting for 1 damage. Or you might hit for 200, but you can’t connect ‘cos your Dexterity stat is too low. Sure you can ignore Strength for a Magic character or Magic for a melee character, but that’s still 3 to 4 stats you need to distribute stuff to on a regular basis. I rather like games like this where every level up is extremely important.

Last thing I should mention, the trap system. Look at this map.

entaku no seito mapAh, self-drawing maps. Every time I look at one I am reminded anew that I could never play a game like Etrian Odyssey or anything that requires me to draw my own map. Lazy developers. But I digress. I wanted to talk about the blue T mark, which is a Trap Point for monsters. You bait one with tasty food and drink, go away for a bit, come back and Aha! Gotcha! Unused traps are Red, used ones are Blue. And you can use them over and over again as long as you’ve got bait.

Advantages of trap points: actually it’s not really an option. Most dungeons have at least one stage where you’re required to clear all traps around in order for some boss or other event monster to appear. But even where traps are optional, they’re the only way to get cursed chests and thus free equipment, so I’ve been doing all of them at least once. Chest encounters are also fairly strong in case you want to level up weaker members or you’re just a few points away from a level up. Lastly you do get rewards, some of them very good, for clearing all traps in a section of the map.

Phew! That Quick overview wasn’t so quick after all. I’m starving! I’m up to 27 hours and 11 minutes in Entaku no Seito and I feel like I’m quite close to the end, maybe one or two more dungeons to go. Now that I’ve gotten all the descriptive stuff out of the way, next time I’ll talk about my impressions of the game itself (assuming I’ve finished the game by then).

15 thoughts on “Quick overview of Entaku no Seito

  1. Isleif says:

    Oh my, a first-person dungeon crawler! *twitch* Okay, that’s another entry on my wish list.^^

    I’m eagerly waiting for your final article(s) about Entaku no Seito! One purely technical question for the road: is it possible to solo that game, or is the party mandatory?

    • ogopogo says:

      It’s quite mandatory. I guess you can try to get your party killed and do a self-imposed challenge, but I’m not certain how viable that is. The classes in this game are VERY specialized and unless you have a tank, the bosses can literally kill your whole party in 1 round. Buffing and debuffing are also extremely important in this game which you likely won’t be able to do with only a single party member.

      • Kina says:

        Nope, you’re wrong on this one. Maybe it’s a new addition for the PSP version, but I’m allowed to pick the number of adventurers I want. I’m in the dwarf mines and using just MC, Rumi and Lolon right now and I get all the EXP that would have gone to other party members. Using a small party is the best way to grind without actually grinding.

        But as you said I wouldn’t even dream of tackling a boss without a full contingent. Definitely Lolon for the healing and buffs, definitely Elsa as a magic nuke and then two “fillers” to help me hurt the boss and keep the two girls firmly in the back row.

        • ogopogo says:

          Ah yes, you’re right. I’ve played so many dungeon crawlers they all kinda meld together in my head now XD

        • Isleif says:

          Leave it to me! If a solo run is indeed feasible in Entaku no Seito, then I’ll pull it off no matter what. 😀 Wait, I have to purchase the game first… Oh well, this part shouldn’t be too hard, he he.^^

          • Kina says:

            It… might not be impossible. Without your 5 party members, your main character will be getting huge amounts of EXP, so with the right build s/he might do pretty well. But some of the bosses are such huge cheats it’s going to be a real challenge.

          • Kina says:

            Whoops, just tried it for myself and you have to have at least one other party member, you can’t solo the game. Sorry! (wait, why am I apologizing?)

    • Kina says:

      You can use as many or as few party members as you want.

  2. ogopogo says:

    Ah, looks like you’re a fair bit into the game, hope you’re enjoying it. And you’re right, sadly, there definitely is way more fan service for playing as a male MC compared to playing as female. The game might last slightly longer than you expect because the epilogue is actually quite long and you can treat it more as post-game content than just an epilogue. Also, there’s the Master Mode which adds an extra quest with a boss-fight gauntlet on top of the usual New Game+ fluff, while I personally did went through with it, it’s probably not worth the effort. Anyway, looking forward to your next article.

    • Kina says:

      I hear the epilogue is pretty long, dunno if I’ll have the stamina for that. Master Mode is definitely out. I’m already playing the game on Normal, not Veteran, so why would I go out of my way to make the game harder for myself?

  3. Davzz says:

    I think I’ve tried this for a short while but the character customization didn’t quite stick out to me which I think is kind of important in the genre.

    Or maybe it gets more customizable later?

    • ogopogo says:

      sub-classes opens up later on but this game definitely is still lighter on customization than the usual make-your-own-party type of dungeon crawler. Basically, they went with more focus on characters, story and fan service to try and push into mainstream.

    • Kina says:

      It doesn’t bother me how much or how little freedom you get, but if anything I err towards the side of little customization, e.g. sub classes opened up for me ages ago, but I’m having my characters stick to their own classes regardless.

  4. TOMTOM says:

    Is there any difference between this and PC and XBOX 360 versions?

    • Kina says:

      The PSP version used to have some bonus dungeons and bosses that the PC/XBOX versions didn’t, IIRC. However these were later added to the other versions via a patch, so they all have the same content now. The XBOX 360 version has achievements, which the other 2 systems don’t. The PC/XBOX versions also have better graphics. That’s about it AFAIK.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *