Etrian Odyssey III HD Reviews

fun

One of those games where you do "just" one more dungeon crawl and suddenly it's 5am

I'm the map. I'm the map. I'm the map. I'm the map. I'm the map. I'm the map. I'm the map. I'm the map. I'M THE MAP!

Great game lovely art style and music. Love the game

I just started out and I have to say. This may be the best gamer in the series on Steam so far. (fingers crossed for a port of EO4!) The difficulty is balanced a lot better so far, all new classes that borrow some things from the first two but give enough of a spin to it to be interesting. *summons a pet cow to end the review*

Etrian Odyssey is a series I absolutely adore. I've played every single one, and I consider it Atlus' best franchise of them all. I was delighted at the news of HD remasters, and of the three that got the treatment, this one is my favorite. However, EO3 itself is not a game I would recommend to anyone, and this remaster is a very faithful adaptation of the original, flaws and all. If you're an EO diehard, you already know what this is and you already want it. If you're a newcomer or just looking for a dungeon crawler in general...this is not the EO HD I would start with. Etrian Odyssey was a series of RPGs on the Nintendo DS (and later, the 3DS) that involved exploring maze-like dungeons, and drawing maps to said mazes on the touch screen. You created a party of up to five adventurers, put points into their skill trees, and encountered turn-based random battles. In addition, far stronger enemies called FOEs would also wander the mazes, and join in battles already in progress. EO2 was extremely similar to the first, to the point of bringing back all the same character classes (alongside a few newcomers). EO3, however, was a much bigger departure, with a nautical setting, a whole new cast of characters, and a more involved plot. Altus later remade the first three games in these "HD Remasters". While EO1 and 2 had gotten "Untold" versions on the 3DS which remixed the games heavily, these HD versions are adaptations of the DS originals. EO3 never got the Untold treatment, so it's all the more refreshing to see it again. Without a touch screen, EO HD instead splits the screen in half, with a first-person view of the maze on one side and a top-down map for you to draw and notate on the other. The mouse controls for drawing the map are simple and intuitive, and you can turn on "auto-map" options which fill in the spaces you walk through. However, it's the little details that make it hard for me to pitch this game to anyone who isn't already an EO fan. For example, when leveling up characters and assigning skill points, you're only shown vague previews of what that actually gets you. Okay, another point in Front Mortar raises the damage it deals--but by how much? You have to go look up a data-mine (such as the "skill sim" planner website) to know if a healing skill scales with character stats or heals a fixed amount at each given level, because the game won't say. Even the ATK and DEF values shown on the Status and Equip screens is a lie; those numbers aren't actually used in damage calculations. Hell, the Zodiac doesn't even use their weapon for the most part; the only consideration of their gear is in how much TEC bonus they give. Some classes, like Wildling and Buccaneer, are simply bad--and not even in the same way as the Farmer, who is a purposefully poor combatant but learns very good exploration skills. Even the Farmer is obsolete when you unlock the "subclass" option, in which the stat growth and skill tree of one class can be augmented by the skill tree of a second class. Once you have the option to use a Ninja with a subclass of Farmer, there's no point to using Farmer as a primary class anymore. The DS original didn't have difficulty select, and too many wrong choices would result in a party being unable to defeat a boss. (Expert difficulty is the equivalent here.) Party building should be fun, but it's way too easy to feel like you did it wrong--through no fault of your own. And then there's the plot. Like most EO games, it starts out sounding flimsy and barebones, but the further you delve, the more intricate and intriguing it gets. Here, a tragedy unfolds as duty pulls factions apart that would otherwise be allies. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, you have to pick a side, and different sides offer different unlockable character classes, and different bosses. Only, one side gives you literal burning trash in the Yggdroid (whose best armor is crafted from a drop from the other route's final boss), and the other side bequeaths the Shogun which is extremely good. Oh, but to see and get everything, you gotta play the whole game not once, not twice, but three times! There's two routes, but there's a "true" ending with some of the most counter-intuitive steps of any video game. (Step one is to make a promise and immediately break it, and it only gets worse.) And that ending...well, I don't wanna spoil it, but I will say, the "true" ending feels unsatisfying and handwave-y, and it makes the tragedy presented in the other paths just seem stupid. This branching plot idea was undercooked and it's telling that, for all the things EO3 does that become series mainstays afterward, this is not one of them. I do really like the sea questing, though. In addition to mapping the dungeon mazes, there are seas to chart. Early on, the party is given a ship and basic supplies, and there's a sort of puzzle involved in using them. Based on your rations, you can only sail so far before your journey is cut off and you have to return to port. By exploring thoroughly, you can find items to sell or even upgrades to the ship. Upon reaching certain landmarks, like lighthouses and other cities, you unlock optional boss fights, some retooled from the first two EO games. The catch is, you have to partner up with CPU teammates, so there's this aspect of matching your party members to both the boss and the hired help. You can also do these quests in multiplayer, with each of you contributing one character to the cause. It's all a nice change of pace from the usual Labyrinth exploration, and the sea battle theme is a legendary banger. Overall, I like Etrian Odyssey 3 a lot. But at the end of the day, Steam asks if I would recommend this game to other players, and...no, of course not. It's self-contradictory, counter-intuitive, and it almost requires outside material like a data-mine to guide you. If you still have the old cartridges, there's almost no point to getting these remasters. If you're an EO newcomer, I'd say to start with damn near any other one--2 if you must pick between the HD remasters, 4 or 5 if the 3DS being discontinued isn't a deterrent. The HD remasters are very good adaptations of games from utterly different hardware, and they're so accurate to the originals that the old Scylla RNG exploit still works here. But there really should have been more work done, more quality of life upgrades, more intuitive game design, more of the sensibility of the 3DS EO games. As it is, though, only the most fervent dungeon crawling fanatics need apply.