Help me get into Etrian Odyssey III

[GameHat]

I picked this one up yesterday on a whim. Mostly due to Tycho’s thoughts on the game:

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.

…

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.

I’m intrigued, since I want a hard, deep game with lots of stats and min-maxing. But I loaded it up last night (and I was a bit drunk), rolled a few chars, and then the game raped me.

Is there a decent online guide somewhere? I can see getting really into this game, but I’m a bit of a wuss (or maybe just a working adult with limited gaming time) in that I don’t want to spend forever learning slowly. I want to understand a bit more before I dive in.