Thank you Atlus for sending us the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection to review! Ever since I reviewed my very first Etrian Odyssey game on the 3DS, Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl. I've really enjoyed this series. I never had a chance to play the original game, only the remake, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. The Untold remake is no doubt a bigger and better game in many ways, but it's also its own thing - there are added classes, a form of subclassing called Grimoire Stones, and more. Not to mention a Story Mode, where you have preset characters that have spoken lines and a story. However, Etrian Odyssey HD is a remake of Etrian Odyssey, not the later Untold. Etrian Odyssey HD is in many ways a pure dungeon crawler. What I mean by this is it takes the classic first-person dungeon crawler, and distills it down to its essence. You start out by creating your party of five, and giving them all names, classes, portraits. Having a good party composition is critical to doing well. Since the developers don't know how you'll create your characters, there is no chatter between members or anything like that; it's purely about the dungeon, and crawling it. There is a basic story; in essence, you make your way to Etria, a kingdom who is encouraging adventurers to come from all over to investigate their local Labyrinth. You are one of many guilds of adventurers who desire to tackle it, and no one has completely mapped out its depths or discovered its deepest secrets. You have the opportunity to become rich and famous if you do so! When you start, you can create a party of five using any combination of seven character classes, and you eventually unlock two more. The starting classes are Landsknecht, Survivalist, Protector, Dark Hunter, Medic, Alchemist, and Troubadour. Eventually, Ronin and Hexer are also unlocked. Landsknecht, Protector, Dark Hunter, and I believe Ronin are front-line classes, best used to physically assault the enemy. The rest can be used in the front or back row, but are better in the back, where they receive (and give) half melee damage. Alchemists are your classic mages, and are skilled at dishing out tons of elemental damage. Medics are an absolute must for any party, and are almost broken in how overpowered they are. Every exploration party should have a Medic. Troubadours are unique in that they are almost entirely support, but these effects can be quite potent.

Before you set off to explore, there is a town where you prepare for each dive. The Explorer's Guild is where you started and formed your party. If your starting group isn't working out, or you want to make another group for any reason, this is where you want to go. Radha Hall is where you receive missions from the government, and report your progress. The Golden Deer Pub is where you go to talk to the pub owner and accept side quests. The Rooster Inn is where you sleep at night (or day) to heal up for the next run. There is also the Ceft Apothecary and Shilleka's Goods, which form a major part of the gameplay loop. The core of Etrian Odyssey is all about the dungeons. As you explore, there are random battles, where you fight off the enemy in simple turn-based combat, similar to classic RPGs where you simply assign each character an action for that round. There are also sometimes avoidable F.O.E.s, which are much stronger than a normal enemy. These F.O.E.s (Formido Oppugnatura Exsequens) can be quite powerful, and may take much more skill, sacrifice, or advanced level grinding to defeat. They also usually offer much greater rewards, in the form of experience, or loot drops. In the spirit of classic dungeon crawling games, an important part of Etrian Odyssey was its use of the DS bottom screen – to have the player map out the environment. Instead, on PC and Switch, the map shows up on the right side of the screen, and you can draw it with your mouse (on PC) or touchscreen (PC and Switch). You can also use the analog sticks and analog triggers to do the drawing; this method works far better than I expected it to. This, in addition to the automapping feature where walls are drawn for you when you are next to one, makes mapping manageable even without a bottom screen like the DS had. Everyone is expected to draw a map of each dungeon level, and it greatly rewards you in many ways if you do a good job. You still have to fill in plenty of details about dangers, secret paths, events, and more on your own. If you do not do these things, you will be sorry. Some puzzles are pretty much impossible without a good map. Your party lives and dies by it. As you explore the Labyrinth, you will no doubt find and collect treasure. Some will be straight-up cash (called 'en' for ental in this game) but most will be in the form of sellable loot. Most of that loot will come from those monster drops, but some will come from harvest points, where you take, mine, or cut the loot from the point. Others may come from treasure chests. When you take this loot back to town, you sell it at Shilleka's Goods. Once sold, she uses those materials to make more powerful weapons, armors, accessories, or items. Unlocked heading items show up for sale at the Ceft Apothecary, but most things are purchased right at Shilleka's shop. This process of defeating enemies for their loot and experience points, taking it back to the shop and selling it, then purchasing the newly available items forms a core part of the gameplay loop and makes it so that there is almost always something new waiting for you, as long as you keep exploring and find something new.

On Expert and even Basic difficulty levels, the dungeons can be quite punishing. The Etrian series has always been known for punishing difficulty, and the original difficulty of the Nintendo DS game is available here as 'Expert'. Basic makes the game just a bit easier, but still plenty challenging. Picnic is the final difficulty, and quite simply, it's a picnic. I don't recommend playing on Picnic unless you are powering up a new group, grinding for a specific item, or just stuck and need to get past a difficult section. Having no challenge takes the fun out of the game otherwise; I noticed doing 2-4x the damage against most enemies in Picnic difficulty versus Basic, so it's quite a change. Unless you play on Picnic, you're probably going to have one or more party member die. When that happens, you can take them to the Ceft Apothecary, where you can Revive them for a fee. That fee goes up every time they die, so it is possible to get into a negative gameplay loop, but avoidable with careful planning and appropriate use of an Ariadne Thread if you get stuck. Ariadne Threads are an invaluable item that sends you back to town in an instant when used out of battle. Another surprise is that the game lets you reload quick saves. In the Untold games, you create a suspend save in the middle of a dungeon, and reload it later; however, the act of reloading deletes the quick save, so if you mess up, you have to reload an older save from town. In Etrian Odyssey HD, you can make a quick save, mess up, and reload that quick save from the title screen later. So, you might as well quick save often! Thankfully, not only does this game do a good job of drawing you in, it's also a solid port, with delightfully remastered graphics. The music and sound effects seem to be the original; they sound like the retro-styled music from the DS version, rather than the orchestral music from the Untold remake. That is probably what I miss the most; I really love Untold's music. Despite that, the graphics look sharp even if they are simple 2D portraits on 3D backgrounds, and the music and sound effects are great. The system requirements are vanishingly low, as it plays quite well (probably around 30fps) on an older laptop with Intel-integrated video. Hitting max settings on virtually anything more modern, even something like the Steam Deck, is easy to do. It supports refresh rates up to 150 if you want to explore dungeons with ultra-smooth frame rates. Mouse and keyboard controls are flawless, as are gamepad controls. You really can't go wrong with how you choose to play this game, and using a mouse to draw the map is nothing short of fantastic. You may want to play this game on PC over Switch just for that feature alone. The only downside is it's shipped with Denuvo DRM; not a major inconvenience when you play with an active internet connection, but it may phone home every couple of weeks. Morally, Etrian Odyssey HD is relatively clean overall for an RPG, with some notable exceptions that definitely puts it firmly in the Teen category. There is violence, but quite limited, where you just see sword slashes, magical bursts and so on as enemies are attacked. Enemies vary from various bugs and other real or mythical creatures to the purely magical like dragons. Magic is used by enemies and the player. Some character portraits show some or a lot of skin/cleavage, and leave little to the imagination. The Dark Hunter portraits in particular are kind of strange, and some of the skill names and descriptions are clearly hinting towards the sexual. These are mostly the whip skills, like Gag, Shackles, Cuffs, Ecstasy, and Climax. I did not catch any foul language in the game, but it's possible I missed it; the ESRB doesn't note it, so if it is present, it's likely to be minor in nature. Some characters drink at a bar. Etrian Odyssey HD is a solid remake of the original Nintendo DS classic, and is a ton of fun for those who enjoy classic dungeon crawlers. While future games (and even future ones in the Origins Collection) have more to them, I think there is a certain charm to the pure simplicity of the original. With that said, $39.99 is not cheap, but then again, you do get a whole lot of play time out of it. Personally, I would spring for the whole Origins Collection if you're interested in this series, as if you like one you'll probably love them all. Regardless, if you do decide to check out the mysteries of the Labyrinth, and love that classic tough-as-nails gameplay, then I think you'll love Etrian Odyssey HD.