Toggle Background Color
Etrian Odyssey: Even in HD, FOE
Welcome to the third iteration of the Etrian Odyssey megathread. After five years with no news, hopefully it will have been worth the wait.
For those who have never heard of the series before, Etrian Odyssey is a series of dungeon-crawler RPGs developed by Atlus, who are more famous for Persona and Shin Megami Tensei. The series was created by Kazuya Niinou (also responsible for Trauma Center, 7th Dragon, and Dragon Quest Builders), though it has been helmed by Shigeo Komori (director of Shin Megami Tensei V) from Etrian Odyssey II onwards. Niinou sought to modernize old-school dungeon crawlers primarily by using the DS's touchscreen to make drawing your own maps of dungeons more accessible and simpler, as well as applying modern design sensibilities to the combat system and building your characters. It's safe to say that the idea was sound, given that the series is still kicking 16 years after its first game, and while the series often radically changes its balance and internal math from game to game, the core gameplay loop established all the way back in EO1 remains.
If you're familiar with classic dungeon crawlers, Etrian Odyssey plays much more like Wizardry than it does Dungeon Master. You navigate a tile-based labyrinth, interacting with events and gimmicks as you go, and are occasionally thrown into turn-based random encounters. When the time comes to return to town—be it due to your inventory being full, finishing a quest, your party becoming unable to safely continue progressing through the current floor, or any other myriad reasons—you sell off materials gathered both from killing monsters, as well as gathered from specific points in the labyrinth, unlock the ability to buy new gear, restore your party's HP and TP, and then do it all over again, hopefully making more progress this time.
What sets EO apart from Wizardry, and other Wizardry-like dungeon crawlers, are FOEs. Short for "Field-On Enemy" in Japanese, and "Formido Oppugnatura Exsequens" in English, FOEs are mobile (well, most of the time) mini-bosses. They exist in the labyrinth, and generally move when you do—hell, some of them move while you're engaged in a battle with other enemies. Their one purpose in life is to impede your progress through the labyrinth, and force you to figure out how to manuever past them—or, sometimes, use their movement and ability to affect the physical space of the labyrinth to your advantage. Engaging them in combat is also an option, if you want! It's just that fighting an FOE as soon as you see it, especially in the early parts of the game, is usually going to end with your party becoming unrecognizable smears on the floor. However, taking an FOE out, be it through raw power or through smart application of disables (and, in later games, field gimmicks), can be rewarding...
The Series' Current Status
Etrian Odyssey has been dormant for a while. The last games—Etrian Odyssey Nexus, as well as Persona Q2—were released back in 2018, stretching out to 2019 for their English releases. A few years went by, with the only serious indication that the series hadn't concluded being a summer 2021 Famitsu interview with Naoto Hiraoka, senior managing director of Atlus. In the interview, Hiraoka mentioned that there were EO projects in the works, but couldn't say much more. Given the strange development hell that Project Re Fantasy has been stuck in for the better part of a decade, with the occasional vague statement saying it isn't dead, one couldn't be blamed for not finding much hope in Hiraoka's statement.
Then, during the February 2023 Nintendo Direct, out of nowhere, HD remasters of the first three games are announced for release on the Switch and PC (via Steam) on June 1st, 2023. Suddenly, the series is alive again! Per developer interviews in the run-up to the remasters' release, a whole new EO game is in the works, it's just taking its time due to having to adapt to new platforms (and, presumably, Shigeo Komori being busy with other projects until recently).
Unfortunately, if you are new to the series, playing the 3DS games has become significantly more difficult after the 3DS eShop was closed down. Finding physical copies of the games is still an option, of course, but even then, if you did not already own the DLC for the games that utilize them, obtaining them is now impossible.
The Games
Etrian Odyssey
- First game in the series, if it wasn't obvious
- Nine classes, two of which have to be unlocked by progressing the story
- In some ways the most straightforward game in the series
- Still has its fair share of nonsense
- Level is the most important stat in the game
Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard
- Developed pretty quickly after the first game, original version has a fair amount of technical issues
- Twelve classes, only one of which needs to be unlocked
- Balance is completely screwed in this one compared to EO1. The game is either ridiculously easy or extremely annoying, depending on your team comp
- Multiple long quest chains are required to do the postgame at all
- Stats besides level actually matter now
Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City
- Smoothed out a lot of the technical jank of EO2
- Introduced subclassing, allowing characters access to another class's entire skillset (save for class-exclusive passives), with no restrictions on level
- Story has multiple endings, with the branch point being halfway into the game. You'll need to do all three paths if you want 100% completion
- Twelve classes, two of which are unlocked through different story branches
- To facilitate the above, New Game+ has been added, allowing you to start the story from the beginning with your characters and items exactly as you left them
- In addition to the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, there's also two vast oceans to explore and chart out, through a somewhat puzzle-like sailing system. Not only does exploring the seas unlock additional bosses and provide some extra money, it's also required for 100%
- Related to the above, you can fight sea quest bosses with other players, the only time multiplayer has been featured in EO! While the original DS version was limited to just local wireless play, the remastered version of EO3 allows for netplay with other people (no crossplay between PC and Switch, sadly)
- Character portraits now come with one alternate palette, allowing for more visual variety when you create your party
Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan
- Introduced overworlds, traversable by skyships. Navigating the overworlds, and avoiding the extremely strong FOEs that inhabit them, is how you unlock dungeons now
- Subclassing returns, but nerfed. Still useful
- Ten classes, three of which need to be unlocked. This is the last game with unlockable classes
- Skills now have far more variance in how many skill points they need to be maxed out. In general, it's much easier to max out every skill you would want on a given character than in previous games
Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl
- Remake of EO1
- Offers both Classic Mode, which lets you create your own party ala the original, and Story Mode, which gives you a pre-made party, along with an entire exclusive dungeon
- Eleven classes, two of which are exclusive to Story Mode characters. You can use them in Classic Mode through New Game+, however
- While returning classes have the same roles they do in EO1, along with many of the same skills, they're generally more refined and offer far more greater depth than the original
- Introduced the Grimoire Stone system. Allows mixing and matching of different classes' skills on one character, but requires far more setup than subclassing
- Postgame is widely considered the most brutal of the entire series, which is saying something
- Introduced several QoL changes that would become series mainstays
- Introduced voice acting to the series, for better and for worse. Ever wanted to hear Chie from Persona 4, but Canadian?
Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
- Persona, but Etrian Odyssey
- Gameplay is a bizarre mixture of EO and Persona mechanics. Dungeon exploration and the core of the battle system are straight from EO, but significant alterations have been made to how skills work to accomodate Personas and the fusion system
- Can choose to experience the story from either the Persona 3 cast or the Persona 4 cast's view. Doesn't change much gameplay-wise besides what characters you're limited to for the 1st Labyrinth, but does alter cutscenes significantly
- You'll need to do both the S.E.E.S. and Investigation Team stories if you want to 100% the game
- FOEs are severe HP sponges, and fighting them is heavily discouraged compared to EO
- Dungeon design and gimmicks range from "alright but not too memorable" to "worst out of all of the EO games"
- Don't play on Risky. Just don't do it. "The protagonist's death is an instant game over, and also you can't run from FOEs" really does not work in the context of EO
Etrian Mystery Dungeon
- An attempt to put EO characters and design into the Mystery Dungeon format
- Didn't really work well
- Honestly not much else to say about it
Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight
- Remake of EO2
- Same Story/Classic Mode deal as EOU
- A whopping fifteen classes. One of them is exclusive to the Story Mode protagonist, while the other is only available through DLC
- Grimoire Stones return, heavily reworked compared to EOU
- Boss design is heavily patterned and MMO-like. Whether or not this is a bad or good thing comes down entirely to personal opinion
- Several quests are only available through the now-unpurchasable DLC. This includes an even more powerful version of the game's superboss
- Introduced even more QoL changes, including dynamic map icons that allow you to, for example, see what treasure chests you've already opened
Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth
- A far more back-to-basics game compared to the Untolds
- No more Story Mode, you've gotta make your own characters again
- Ten classes, each with two specializations that you can take after clearing the 2nd Stratum. Specializations allow access to more advanced skills that can completely change the role a character plays in your party
- No Grimoire Stones, and no subclassing. To compensate for this, certain weapons now give access to skills when they are equipped
- Yet more QoL changes, though the Untolds' Floor Jump has been removed
- Lets you customize your characters' portraits through changing their hair, eye, and skin colors, as well as giving them one of a number of voices—or no voice at all, up to you
- DLC is limited to extra portraits, grinding assistance quests, and an FM synth soundtrack option
Etrian Mystery Dungeon 2
- EMD, but with more classes, and somehow even worse
- Has the dubious distinction of being the only non-cellphone EO game to not be localized
Etrian Odyssey Nexus
- A "celebration" game that largely remixes content from the older games with a bit of its own new stuff
- A whopping nineteen classes; one new class, Hero, alongside eighteen returning classes from every previous game
- Encourages the use of multiple characters of different classes, a notable departure from previous games
- To accommodate the above, EON is generally easier than usual for the series, and it's quite easy to break the intended difficulty curve by just using the same five characters all the way throughout
- Character portraits are customizable like EO5, and you can now use any portrait with any class
- No English dub, due to the English versions coming out almost two years after the Switch was released
Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
- Persona Q, but now the Phantom Thieves are here too
- Only one story path this time. You start the game with just the Phantom Thieves, and recruit the Investigation Team and S.E.E.S. as you progress through the game
- Battles and dungeon design are generally less frustrating than PQ1, with the notable exception of the first boss being severely overtuned
- Instant-kill spells have been heavily nerfed from PQ1
- The same note about Risky from PQ1 applies here
- Like EON, the English versions are undubbed due to being released in July 2019, over two years after the Switch was released
- Fun fact, PQ2 was the final 3DS game released in both Japan and Europe
Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection
- Remastered versions of EO1, EO2, and EO3, all with significant UI changes as a result of no longer having the DS/3DS's bottom screen
- Available on both Switch and PC (via Steam). No crossplay for EO3 sea quests. Besides that, the main difference between the platforms is that the PC version supports mapping with the mouse, while the Switch version allows for touch-based mapping when in handheld mode
- Balance-wise, the games are almost entirely the same as their original versions. Some player-detrimental bugs were fixed, while player-beneficial bugs have been left untouched
- A metric ton of QoL changes and features from the later games have been backported to each game in the collection, including the ability to walk faster in dungeons, the ability to see your entire party's buffs and debuffs at once, the ability to see monsters' information and buffs/debuffs during battle, etc.
- Every class now has an additional new portrait you can use (note that classes that appear in both EO1 and EO2 share the same new portraits). In EO3, these new portraits also have alternate palettes
- Like EON, you can use any portrait you want for a character, regardless of their class
Resources
Work is presently ongoing for creating a definitive resource for EO, but in the meantime, if you want to check, say, the numbers behind certain skills or enemies, there are data-heavy Let's Plays for most of the games that you can refer to.
- EO1, by Crosspeice, Araxxor, and Rea
- EO2, by Araxxor
- EO2, by Crosspeice, Araxxor, and Rea (In progress)
- EO3, by Araxxor
- EO4, by Rea (In progress)
- EOU, by Rea (In progress)
- EO2U, by Rea
- EO5, by Rea, Clarste, and Kinu (Japanese version)
Got any questions about the series in general, specific games? Need advice on party composition, what skills to invest in, or how to beat a troublesome boss? Please feel free to post in this thread and ask! Many of us have sunk way too much of our lives into this series, and are more than willing to help as needed.