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If Atlus’ Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City for the Nintendo DS isn’t pretty enough for you, check out Forests of Eternity, the preorder exclusive art book spanning the history of the series. It’s much prettier than the game.

I suppose it’s not hard for the concept art for a Nintendo DS role-playing series to trump the visuals of the games themselves. The Nintendo DS can only push out so many polys and pixels, after all, and there are no such restrictions for Forests of Eternity.

The book contains 60-pages’ worth of full-color artwork, giving us a clear idea of what the artists had in mind before the DS came into play.

Forests of Eternity will be available for pickup with your preordered copies of Etrian III at participating retailers while supplies last, so hopefully your local GameStop isn’t staffed by a bunch of video game art fanatics.

[Source : Kotaku]

After much labor and toil involving well over 3500 files, the EO3 [世界樹の迷宮Ⅲ 星海の来訪者] sprite collection is complete. We hope these spritesheets prove useful. Feel free to share what you do with them (we’d love to know), but most of all, take a thoughtful look and appreciate all the hard work that went into this wonderful game, import a copy if you haven’t already, and hope for an English release soon!

To download sprites from EO3, click here.

We are now continuing work on our character editor, so stick around for that – the entire Monk class will become available shortly. If you have requests, let us know and we’ll try to prioritize.

For those interested, input and help are needed for the English translation, so check the forums!

In light of recent news that EO3/SQ3 will feature a secondary color set for all its playable characters, we imagined how fun it would be if you could completely customize your character. And so, we’ve  set about turning that idea into a reality.

We would like to share with you the beta version of our EO3 Character Editor.

This version currently allows you to edit the colors of the default female princess in any way you like, with optional shadow, outline, and backgrounds. With sufficient feedback and enthusiasm, however, it is likely that we will upgrade the editor to allow editing of all characters. Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

There’s more news today about Etrian Odyssey 3 [世界樹の迷宮Ⅲ 星海の来訪者] goodies. In addition to the pre-order bonus CD, there will be a set of telephone cards (again featuring new character artwork by artist Yuji Himukai), an A3 sized calendar poster, and a set of 10 clear file folders each bearing members of the character classes. This merchandise can be purchased separately or in a marginally cheaper bundle with the game.

But wait! That’s not all! Atlus has announced that it will give out a limited edition book – one containing the game’s conceptual images and information – to the first 500 people who submit a certain form after the game’s release. There’s not much else to be said for this book for the moment, as director Komori informs us it’s not even been assembled or printed yet.

[Discuss]

As fans eagerly await the arrival of Etrian Odyssey 3 [世界樹の迷宮Ⅲ 星海の来訪者] on the first of April, a fair amount of new promotional material continues to appear. The second promotional video, as seen below, first appeared on Famitsu. It is now on the official website too, along with a new wallpaper featuring the four Pirate class models. It should be noted that since the game’s release was pushed back, the OST has also been delayed and will become available on April 7th, 2010.

In this week’s Famitsu issue, EO3 has a little corner to itself, announcing secondary color palettes for every character portrait. This option involves a toggle between color versions once the character base has been selected, and provides a total of 80 unique sprites to choose from. A HQ scan is below the cut, for those who would like to see the second set of colors for the Princess/Prince class.

The development blog sees another post by battle designer Kakuichi, who notes various technical improvements: making the active attacker more obvious, giving monsters shadows, allowing powerful monsters such as bosses to dish out damage to the entire panel at once,  and adding distinct damage animations to indicate the types -  slash, bash, and pierce damage.

[Discuss]

The Etrian Odyssey 3 [世界樹の迷宮Ⅲ 星海の来訪者] official website has been updated, with all character portraits now up for viewing. We’re happy to provide all these images (with transparent backgrounds) and hope you will put them to good use: whether it be for assembling your guild and party line-up, editing to create custom characters, or embellishing a desktop or even a website. Enjoy!

To download the full set of EO3 class portraits, click here.

Furthermore, there are three new system videos which demonstrate the skill types and the use of limit skills (we reported on these in our previous post). The character customization screen has individual tabs differentiating between main and common skills, limit skills have their own submenu, and subclass skills appear in blue (versus main skills in green) in the battle menu. Director Komori has posted in the development blog, apologizing for the long silence. He comments on the subclasses, though he isn’t entirely clear on the limitations of the feature. Komori seems to say that the best use of the subclass involves augmenting the strengths of a character’s main class. The videos, however, suggest a huge range of possibilities: among others, there’s a Shinobi with healing skills, a Warrior with Beastking skills, and a Monk with guard skills. Make of it what you will!

There are no new Famitsu website articles nor development blog posts for Etrian Odyssey 3 [世界樹の迷宮Ⅲ 星海の来訪者]. However, scans from the latest issue of Famitsu showing a female model for each of the Ballista, Beastking, and Farmer classes. Scans are below the cut, click for a larger view.

There are three kinds of skills in Etrian Odyssey.
Common – Skills common to all classes, like those for item collection and those that raise TP and HP.
Main – Skills unique to the character classes. Since skill points are gained slowly by leveling up, you may want to give your characters a focus within their skill ranges.
Limit – Skills that open up for use when special items are obtained. Anywhere from 1-5 characters may be involved, depending on the skill.

An interesting new feature, limit skills depend on an item equipped to the head of your adventuring party, and the characters involved can be set. Over the course of several battles, the limit gauge fills. When each character has a full gauge, the limit skill can be used – making it possible to suddenly turn the tides of war in your favor. Lots of different limit skills exist, so search high and low for new ones!

January is winding down, bringing us a month closer to the April 1st release of the third Etrian Odyssey installment [世界樹の迷宮III 星海の来訪者]. As of today there are still no new posts on the game’s official development blog, however, this week’s issue of Famitsu did include another spread on the game. The images above refer back to the new nautical features: fishing, ocean navigation with unique obstacles, and multiplayer quests as well as item trading through the NDS’s wireless communication. This presumably means that completing the item compendium can now be a team effort!

The magazine article, in combination with the new post on Famitsu’s website, shows off the Warrior and Zodiac classes and introduces the new “subclass” element of the game. With subclasses, characters become able to acquire the skills of another class. For instance, a Pirate with the subclass Shinobi enhances the agility advantages the class already has, with the potential to develop into a character specialized in speed skills. This all-new feature allows for a far wider range of character specialization, customization, and development, refreshes battle tactics, and potentially softens battle difficulty. HQ scans are below, click to enlarge.