I only played Etrian 1, I enjoyed until I got bored by the combats. In comparison of similar system I found it a bit weak. It didn't help that I didn't build that well my team which pushed me to some grinding that contributed to the boredom.
But that's a game with many cool ideas. For Inf Adv, despite I have less and less faith for that combat system, and indie on Windows is something I try avoid, i still bookmarked to consider it later.
It probably means nothing but the only three games using a similar combats approach and for which I enjoyed combats really are:
- Might & Magic X, but it's not the same system. Many combats are multi fronts and multi range, and it's mainly those combats that bring in the fun. But then it's not a front to front system.
- Battle Chasers Nightwar, enjoyed quite a lot the combats. But it's possible that because of importance of UI initiative list it cannot work well with more than 3vs3 or requires waves.
- Planet Stronghold, a big good surprise for the combats. Planet Stronghold 2 should come I'm very curious to play it.
For example combats wasn't awful but didn't work that well for me in Lords of Xulima, Loren the Amazon Princess, Cursed Lands, Tales of Aravorn Seasons Of The Wolf. And was even borderline tedious in The Quest, The Huntsman Winter's Curse.
In fact I believe that for cheap budgets, Horizontal 2D combats system have much more potential, but in RPG context, Horizontal 2D is hardly a good context for exploration, and map exploration has limits.
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