Etrian Odyssey - Thoughts

Playing through Hollow Knight awoke a cartographic instinct in me, igniting my curiosity in the Etrian Odyssey series. I always liked the idea of needing to manually map out a dungeon mid-exploration, but have been hesitant to engage with rudimentary RPG mechanics—especially when you factor in how long a game like Etrian Odyssey can take to beat. Grinding has always felt like a draconian solution to difficulty, a bygone holdover from when RPGs sought to inflate paltry playtimes. But when the 3DS Atlus sale popped up in January (and factoring in the absurd rise of DS & 3DS physical copies), I decided it was time to delve into this notoriously brutal series.

Perhaps the most bizarre thing about Etrian Odyssey is that it categorically doesn't respect your time. Shortcuts are far and few between, a party wipe returns you to the title screen, and the Yggrasil Labyrinth itself is an elaborate web of mazes that only get more absurd as the adventure goes on. The sixth stratum alone takes around ten hours to map out, due to frequent restock trips as well as a plethora of stupid pitfall traps and one-way doors. It's a thankfully optional part of the game, but the fourth and fifth stratums will surely push your patience to its limits long before you arrive at the postgame.

However, Etrian Odyssey blatantly wasting your time is an intentional design. You can save yourself a lot of hassle by looking up maps, build guides, item locations, or boss weaknesses... but what's the point? The gameplay is fairly rudimentary even for a JRPG, and the story (while decent for what it is) is extremely bare-bones with nary a memorable character in sight. The main draw of the game is navigating its horrifying thirty-floor dungeon packed to the gills with booby-traps and overpowered enemies—a challenge that's neutered heavily with outside help. You're the one that's meant to be sketching out each floor, uncovering powerful artifacts, discovering enemy weaknesses, and avoiding surprise-attacks by game-ending FOEs. To deprive yourself of any of these facets robs Etrian Odyssey of the best thing it has going for it: overcoming the unknown.

Despite its "impenetrable difficulty" reputation, Etrian Odyssey's sharp edges dull once you know what you're up against. Playing cautiously, I only wiped a handful of times overall; debut fights against bosses and FOEs comprised the majority of my losses. But what gives Etrian Odyssey its "hard" label is that it's entirely on you to set the pace while dungeon delving. You have to decide at every juncture if you have enough health to forge ahead, enough TP, the right equipment, right items, and (worst of all) the right party members. The game will never let you know when you're prepared to face a FOE or stratum boss, so it's up to you to summon the mettle to look death in the eye. Yeah, it sucks losing all the XP and loot you've accrued after a party wipe, but at least your map markings will carry over, ensuring that each venture into the manslaughter-maze will grant at least some progress. It's a game that brings intrepidness to the forefront but isn't afraid to punish you for recklessness either. If you don't take your time and dive too deep, you're probably gonna get your ass handed to you—an indelible lesson you'll learn very early on.

Unfortunately, what will turn off a lot of would-be fans of Etrian Odyssey is that it requires grinding—a ton of it. Enemies on a floor giving you a problem? Grind. Looking for stronger spells? Grind. Need better gear in the shop? Grind. And should you swap in a new character or respec an old one, you'll have to do nearly twice as much grinding as you normally would just to get them up to speed (you lose 10 levels on a respec!). Whenever you get stuck, there's rarely a smart or creative way to deal with the problem before you; losing to a stratum boss usually means you're lacking levels, items, equipment, or all three—and the only remedy to that my friend, is more grinding.

Plenty of other aspects in Etrian Odyssey are cool on paper but obnoxious in practice. Loot from monsters can be brought back to the town merchant to form new armor and weapons... but you have no idea what raw materials you'll need for those shiny new swords/axes/whips/etc. Side quests give you a reason to revisit previous floors of the labyrinth... but are often so vague that they require an FAQ to follow (good luck on Reversal of the Poles). And binds are an awesome debuff that allow you to control which moves your enemies perform... but not only do they often fail even at max level, but you also have no clue which binds prevent which moves. You may be able to deduce that spellcasting is done via the head, but good luck figuring out what legs and arms will constrict half the time, especially on unconventional monsters (arm bind on a Lucifird prevents... Bad Beak?)

And though I maintain that Etrian Odyssey isn't as difficult as it first seems, the game can definitely punish you for suboptimal choices. Specifically in party composition—and even more specifically, if you form your party without a Medic. And even with the uber-broken Immunize at my fingertips, my journey with Etrian Odyssey ended when I encountered the Drake superboss and wiped on turn one. Keep in mind that this was after my party had reached max level and fully explored the sixth stratum! So rather than looking up the "correct" class and build combos for postgame, I concluded I'd be better off moving on. The game is still there in case I ever feel the impulse to torture myself, but considering that I have hundreds of untouched JRPGs in my backlog (including seven more Etrian Odyssey titles), I'm more than happy to accept that the labyrinth has trounced me. At least finishing the main story wasn't that bad—the second and fourth stratum bosses are the only real roadblocks.

Etrian Odyssey is a brilliant game that's somewhat-spoiled by a time-consuming core. Despite the banquet of options at the start, the gameplay plummets in depth once your theorycrafting has solidified. With no easy way to alter your team composition and side quests that are opaque at the best of times, Etrian Odyssey is a crude and rudimentary experience. But it also poses an interesting question, one that transforms its archaic design from stale to electrifying: how far are you willing to delve? Do you brave one more floor with dwindling supplies and low TP? How about one more room? One more fight?

It's a simple, repetitive, and an overly laborious game—but it's also unabashed in its demands, challenging you to risk your play time on each return to its twisting depths. It's up to you to put in the work to hone your team, to draw the maps, to sniff out secret shortcuts, and best the game's daunting bestiary. It can be grueling, punishing, and annoying at times (as well as straight up impossible in the postgame,) but it offers that rare chance at achieving elation and satisfaction, a blessing found only when your perseverance is put to the test. For better or worse, Etrian Odyssey is an oldschool dungeon crawler at its core—and it's a damn cool one at that.

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Images obtained from: nintendo.com, emuparadise.me, arstechnica.net, alvanista.com