Etrian Odyssey III couldn't have arrived at a better time; I wasn't able to get out of bed, but my thumbs were in top form. The third entry in a series with callbacks to the PC dungeon crawlers of yore, it marries incredible art (no, really) with a heap of interlocking systems and then tells you to fuck yourself. Not everyone wants that - not everyone wants a game to continually reinforce their unworthiness. But this is all I want now, these mean as hell, spit-in-your-mouth grudgefucker games, and this is certainly that.
In the rounds of Civ V I've played (and enjoyed, to be sure) I've got a good "feeling" by turn ten how this shit is going to shake out. Real quick, just for the curious among you, it's going to shake out with me atop a mountain of of bones, crown wobbling dangerously to one side as I really go nuts on a femur. Maybe I should turn up the difficulty? Which one is the right one, which is the one where it starts to cheat? Etrian Odyssey III only has one difficulty, and that difficulty is motherfucker. There is a cat you might see five, maybe six minutes into the first level of the dungeon that will wipe out your entire party. TPK. Get past him, and there's another one waiting in a tree. Your time, your wealth, and your optimistic young adventurers bleeding optimistically on the forest floor.
You can write a paean to this game, give it the best part of yourself, but it will never love you. It will instruct you, and with a firm hand; that might be the best you can hope for. You might decide that braving the Yggdrasil Labyrinth is a fool's errand, and take your place as a functionary in your father's shipping concern, supplying adventurers braver than yourself. You'll mend nets. You never wonder what it might have been like, that other life. You never wonder, except when you do.
