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Guardian562's review of Etrian Odyssey HD | Backloggd This game was quite an experience compared to Etrian Odyssey 3. I wasn't sure if I would like it since the third game had two games worth of hindsight to build itself upon, whereas this was Atlus' first time making a game like this. I fell off of it when I first played it but resolved to see it through this time. I'm glad I did, since this game was a very interesting experience, though one I find harder to recommend then EO3 HD. The plot revolves around Etria, a town built upon the economy that comes from explorers trying to conquer the massive Yggdrasil Labyrinth. You are one such adventurer who shows up, starts a guild, recruit a few others and start dungeon crawling to get to the bottom. The plot doesn't really develop from there, though some notable things do happen towards the end of the game. Unfortunately, one of those is something I'm pretty mixed on. Upon making a bit of progress in the fourth stratum you are suddenly given the quest to "Eradicate the Forest Folk". These are a race of people living in the Startum and are fully sentient, so the game is essentially telling you to commit genocide. And if you want to reach the final boss you have to do this. The game even pretends like you have an option, only for the chief to tell you "it's them or us" without any real justification. It's a very jarring moment that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Part of me wonders if there was a story branch that had to be cut due to time concerns. Another part wonders if this was meant to be intentional commentary. Etria wants access to land that people are already living on and won't take no for an answer, so they decide to kill them all for the sake of money. The parallels to real world genocides are clear, but due to the game's complete disinterest in story it feels like a swerve that isn't properly explored by the narrative. And despite the fact that the game treats this like you completely wiping out the forest folk, they still appear as random ecounters and FOEs so I'm left wondering what the point was of offering this faux moral dilemma. Maybe the Untold remake does better with this plot point, but as it stands here it's a poorly though out sequence. It's a shame since the reveal of the fifth Stratum and the final boss' motivations are pretty cool, especially since it was one of the first times Atlus used this plot point (won't spoil it but people who've played lots of Atlus games know what I mean). The gameplay is meant to be the main draw of Etrian Odyssey, and the game certainly fairs better here. It does feel much more limiting than later installments since you only can pick from seven classes at the start (with two more unlocked later). Build variety is limited as a result, and due to how Immunize is busted and the superbosses require elemental blocks, you're going to want a Medic and Protector on your team regardless. There is fun in discovering how broken certain skills and classes are but it makes the late game rather repetitive once you've figured out the ideal strategy. One thing to note is that I played this game on Expert difficulty. Despite what the name may imply this is actually the difficulty closest to the original DS game. Basic is slightly tilted in your favor and Picnic is almost effortless. I don't mind easy difficulties in games, I just wish the balancing was better so that regardless of skill level there's at least a little tension in a playthrough. I can't fault anyone who picks an easier difficulty since Expert doesn't mess around. Enemies as early as the first floor can kill party members in a few hits, so preparation is more important than ever before setting out into the stratum. The stratum themselves were a bit of a letdown for me, since the first four are all variations on a forest. The floor gimmicks also aren't interesting - the first stratum has none, the second's is just hurt tiles, the third has a sort of teleporter maze and the fourth is built around hidden walls. This game loves having long hallways with no forks or chests, forcing you to just hold forward on the control stick until you hit the end. The complexity of floor layouts does improve towards the end game but I groaned every time I realized I had to travel more than ten tiles in a row with no variation or gimmick. FOEs are in this game as well - the powerful enemies that you need to avoid when you first enter a stratum, lest your entire party become compost. However, it's clear they didn't quite have an idea for how they wanted them to work. Sometimes multiple of the same FOE type will have different behavior, sometimes they're just a normal enemy with a different name and higher stats, and some will spawn behind you as traps. A few are also mandatory to defeat to progress since they block critical paths. It made me appreciate how 3 handled them. I think that really hits on what I enjoyed about this game. I always find playing the first installment in a series like this fascinating since you can tell the developers have a vision of what they want their game to be, but don't quite have the experience to pull it off. Seeing absolutely horrendous level design like 60 hurt tiles in a row or one way walls leading to nothing became very funny to me after a while. Seeing how barebones some of the quests are and how unbelievably tedious others are was interesting due to the contrast. Having to beat every single FOE on the fourth startum's boss floor before the fighting the boss is objectively terrible, but to me, hilariously so. I realize that isn't a great sales pitch, but this game takes a certain mind to enjoy it. If you have played and enjoyed later installments in the series it's worth playing the original just to see how far Atlus has come since. If you're just getting into the series though, I wouldn't start here. Also as a bonus I have to briefly talk about how horrendous Claret Hollows is. It's the first bonus stratum I attempted in an EO game and it's incredible how each floor is awful in its own way. Floor 26 makes you guess which teleporter will take you forward while every wrong one will take you back to the start. Floor 27 is a maze with over 300 pitfalls to fall into, requiring you to leave FOEs alive so you can watch their movement and figure out where it's save to stand. Floor 28 is a giant dumping ground for each pitfall you encounter in the previous floor. There's hurt tiles everywhere and FOES that will pursue you if you enter their (frankly absurd) sight line. Floor 29 is the worst teleporter maze I've ever experienced and if I didn't have HD's memos to keep track of where each teleporter goes I would have gone mad. Floor 30 is the least awful but is also the laziest - it's a long winding path to the boss consisting of multiple extremely long straight lines with occasional U-turns. Strangely I don't regret doing this stratum but I would NOT recommend doing it yourself. Also, I didn't beat the final superboss. I did beat one of the dragons but my attempt to beat the electric dragon ended after a 15 minute fight and I didn't feel like trying it again after. Still, I may go back and do it in New Game plus. https://backloggd.com/u/Guardian562/review/4439113/