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Well, not much else to do but start.

(Fun fact: the background changes between day and night based on what your 3DS's clock is currently set to. For example, because I recorded this footage when my 3DS's clock was around 8 PM, it's night time.)

You might recognize the name "Yamato" as another, more old fashioned name for Japan. However, in this case it's written as "Mountain Capital". Honestly, I wasn't sure if it was meant to be a place name at all, at first, but it became clear that it's the fantasy-Japan of this setting, where all the katanas come from.

(EO5's romanization of Brownie is closer to "Bronie," but like hell am I gonna be calling them that.)

Brownies are a somewhat odd race dedicated entirely to supporting. They have the absolute worst STR and LUC of any race (the LUC part is more relevant than you might think), and pretty bad HP (just a little more than Lunarians), but actually decent everything else--they have the highest WIS of any race, and their VIT's not too far off from Earthrun. Their INT's pretty good, too.

Note that in addition to their stat differences, different races have access to totally separate trees of racial skills. Especially important are the racial Union skills (essentially limit breaks, they'll be explained in more detail later), some of which are powerful enough to completely change your strategy.

Informative, no? Let's move onto the main event, however: the classes.

It's the Jouji Nakata customizer of my dreams

Also, something of a weird change coming from the English versions of EO, names are limited to 6 characters in the JP versions. It's probably not that restricting if you're typing in Japanese, but it can be a pretty big pain trying to spell out a name in English.

Making history: The first time a Dragoon has ever actually been exciting in an RPG.

Cesti are combination damage dealers and disablers, and one of my favorite classes to use. In EO1/2/U/2U terms, think Dark Hunters, but a little less good at inflicting binds and with far lower variety of ailments, in exchange for which they gain fun combo skills and skills that both drain their HP and become better as their HP goes lower (both of which are their own specializations). Binds are incredibly powerful disables, and having a class that can inflict good damage (or at least amplify it on other classes) while inflicting them is a massive plus in my book. Much like with Dragoons, I find it really hard to go wrong with using a Cestus.

Note that despite the bit in the description about "tempered fists", Cesti actually use gauntlet-type weapons. Brass knuckles, etc. So there's no weird unarmed attack scaling to worry about. Not many other classes can do binds at all, so when you throw in their excellent damage potential, it's hard to imagine a party that wouldn't be improved by adding a Cestus.

I hope you know which portrait to pick.

Reapers are kind of a strange class. They're debuffing damage dealers with some options for inflicting ailments as well. The description mentions miasma, and that's for good reason--their skills almost entirely focus on one particular thing, Miasma Weapon, which is essentially a state you either manually trigger or can passively activate through a few skills. In a way it's almost easier to describe them through their specializations: one focuses on damage and ailments, while the other focuses on debuffs and supporting other party members.

Moving onto Lunarian classes:

Fuckin wizards, how do they work?

The downside to Warlocks is that Lunarian stats mean they're incredibly fragile, and it's really easy to end up with a useless Warlock that's bled dry of TP really quickly in the early and midgame if you don't invest your skill points right.

Unlike in EO3, pets in this game go into special pet slots in front of the front row. There are three of these pet slots, and unlike the other pet classes Necromancers are encouraged to use all three of them at once. This can mean that they don't play nice in some party set-ups. The summons themselves will attack random targets each turn (or randomly do nothing, sometimes), but mostly they exist solely to be sacrificed by the Necromancer's spells. Both Hound and Necromancer pets can be summoned out of battle, so you don't have to worry about summoning 3 ghosts every single battle.

get dressed you fucking corpsehugging hippies

Shifting over to the Therian classes:

You can name your Hound pets. Technically, they're actually part of your guild, in that you can see them on the guild management page. There's only one dog and one hawk per guild, even if you have multiple Hounds in your party. Luckily they can share, and pets that have received multiple commands on the same turn will act multiple times. Pets have their own separate stats, so even as a Therian with low WIS, Hounds can make decent healers. On the other hand, this also means you can't increase their stats with equipment.

Wanna pet that dog

Masuraos are almost direct parallels of Ronin from EO1/2/U/2U--aka hard-hitting damage dealers that are also very fragile compared to other classes... Except the last part doesn't apply as much to Masuraos, because they have not-awful VIT and access to heavy armor, so unless you go with the 4-sword specialization (we'll talk about that when we get to specializations), they're not as fragile as you'd expect. Meaning that they're big physical damage dealers without too much of a downside. They don't do a lot outside of inflicting damage, though.

And lastly, Brownie classes:

"This is a class Brownies use. They're terrible at using half of it." Race equality!

You can totally beat the game with both a Hound and a Necromancer in the same party. Don't let the Man tell you what to do.

What if you combined them. What if you had a ghost dog. I'm gonna sell this idea to Atlus.

Starting a battle plays this effect.

Note that only the character who initiates the Union skill needs to have a full Union gauge: all participants are drained, but they can still participate with 0. If you plan it right, you can use, say, a 4 person Union skill two turns in a row. No one can partipate in two different Union skills on the same turn though.

Party members using Union skills can also take actions as normal. In Glock's case, he'll use Arm Break, which inflicts bash damage while also attempting to bind the target's arms, on the left Roper.

Early enemies hitting hard in an Etrian Odyssey game? I don't believe you.

The dog has its own passive AI--every turn, it'll provide a small amount of healing to whichever party member has the lowest amount of absolute HP at the start of the turn. This can include itself.

Well what if there's some redneck out there who still thinks that RPGs are in the age where spiders drop gold coins? Maybe they'd be confused by the fact that you're just getting items instead, Ragnar. Think of the elderly and the sheltered here.

And that should do it for this demo update. Next time: we actually start!