My partner has been out of the country for a couple weeks, so in my temporary bachelorhood I picked up the new Etrian Odyssey HD remasters for the Switch. I played the first stratum of EO1 on my DS back in the day and got pretty into it, but fell off for whatever reason. I’d always meant to get back into these games! I’ve been reading Delicious in Dungeon, an incredible manga heavily inspired by old school dungeon crawlers, so that had me thinking about these games too.
I’ve never played any of the Wizardry games, but back in the mid-2000’s I did get pretty into this weird little freeware game that was a wizardry-like where you do DDR style rhythm games instead of turn-based battles. I wish I could remember what it was called!
Anyway, something about first-person dungeon crawling really appeals. I got immediately sucked into the EO1 HD remaster. I was pretty addicted for the first two stratums, but I must have gone too hard on it because it did wear out its welcome a bit by midway through the third stratum. I’d gotten to the point where I felt I’d kind of “solved” the game with my party. I guess that’s my fault for reading old gameFAQs threads for advice on the best builds! That immunize skill really carried me through the game, lol.
I will say that right when I started getting bored, the game did start throwing little curveballs and gimmicks in the dungeon designs. I particularly liked the FOEs on the third stratum that silently emerged from the water right behind you, the sand conveyor belts on the 4th stratum, and the elevators on the 5th.
That 5th stratum is gorgeous, and what a great thematic twist! Very cool to go down, down, down in this forest dungeon, only to emerge on the top floor of a skyscraper in an abandoned metropolis.
I did end up beating the game, though I haven’t done the postgame stuff yet. I’m sort of interested in trying it out, but I suspect it’ll be a bit of a slog. There are also the second and third entire games staring at me from my Switch menu, and by all accounts those are much better than the first. So maybe I’ll call it here, take a long break, and then start EO2. I’m a little tempted to go straight to the third though, because that seafaring theme looks like fun.
The HD remasters are pretty solid! I agree with @Tuxedo, the button controls for mapping are much better than I expected. It’s not nearly as satisfying as it was on the DS, but it works. I’ve never seen a control scheme quite like it… The designers must have had to do a lot of lateral thinking to come up with it but it does work. I put on full auto-mapping too, so I was really only manually placing doors, staircases, and such.
