Etrian Games, From Worst to Best
I'm a shameless fan of the Etrian Odyssey series. I have been since the mid-2000s, when I was struggling both with depression and long-term unemployment. My family was less-than-appreciative and so I turned to what was, historically, my outlet for my frustrations: Vidya. Problem was, I was constantly in and out of job placement centers and training facilities at the time. I needed something portable, and something that was legitimately different at the time. This is when Antipothis spoke up and sent me something via mail that I didn't expect: The original Etrian Odyssey, on DS.
And thus began me becoming a fan. Etrian Odyssey was a clear callback to oldschool RPGs from when I was little - like Bard's Tale or Wizardry - but in many ways was its own beast. The game was so influential on me and so beloved by me that I wound up buying - and playing to 100% completion - every game in the series so far. Whilst there's one that I haven't completed in its entirety yet, I will eventually, and I can now say, with complete assurance that it's one of the better series of RPGs out there - and I can now safely say which games are the best in it.
Before I begin, I want to get across: In no way am I suggesting that any of the Etrian games that are low on this list "bad." If they were, they wouldn't have me as a fan, nor so many others. With that in mind, let's strap on our rose-tinted goggles and cover pretty much Etrian Odyssey Game, in order from worst to best in overall quality:
6. Etrian Odyssey (2007)
Etrian Odyssey may have been a ground-breaker at the time, noted for its unusual difficulty, unique mapping system, and setting, but it's also a flawed masterpiece. In much the same way that the earliest Pokemon games are fun but hilariously buggy and glitch-ridden, Etrian Odyssey's first game is one riddled with problems. The FOE encounter system is noted for potentially making fights unescapable if your back is to a wall. The game's difficulty spikes are numerous and anus-shattering, and the game's plagued with a series of brain-dead design decisions and outright bugs (for example, only two major enemies in the entire game are vulnerable to electricity - the first FOE you fight and the Stratum 2 boss). The game is virtually unbeatable without a very specific party design and ability set - whilst the game is theoretically beatable without these, it's goling to be a ridiculously uphill battle. Etrian Odyssey also has the most primitive graphics of the set and a number of bizarre choices for the overall game setup.
However, beyond all these problems, Etrian Odyssey is a game that defied covnentions in many ways. In a world where conventional wisdom was that people didn't like oldschool JRPGs, Etrian Odyssey was a game that came out, being a game type and game style that was tacitly believed to not be successful anymore, and created a critical and commercial success. The story for Etrian Odyssey is also unique in that it establishes that EO's universe is, in fact, our own, and the various big implications of its plot make it a worthy game in terms of fluff as well. From this humble beginning, an entire empire of niche games would flow.
5. Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (2010)
I feel remiss putting Etrian III so low on my list; it's easily the most ambitious Etrian game of its age and has one of - if not the - best overall storyline in the series, with multiple endings and one of the most robust sub-systems of the early Etrian games. However, Etrian III is a game with serious problems - almost all of them mechanical and having to do with internal balance and the game being rushed rather than more immaterial shortcomings. Class balance, in Etrian III, is atrocious, with classes ranging from concentrated godliness to utter fail, and the subclass system essentially making many choices in the game irrelevant. This lack of internal class balance absolutely ruins great swaths of the game's overall playability, and the rushed nature of the build team for Etrian III leaks out in gurgles due to the map design; Etrian Odyssey III is a much smaller game than previous Etrian games due to slashing and burning to reach a deadline, and it shows - most of the Stratums are much shorter and harder to navigate solely to make them more of a challenge. Etrian III did add sailing mechanics and team quests, but this is a small comfort because you can't really explore the world very much and the bulk of it's just there to give you some new bosses to fight, many of which you've fought before. It also brought the forging system, an easily min-maxed system for weapon customization.... That ultimately also made the game significantly more grindy.
Where Etrian III makes up for all this is in its other areas. It has easily the best soundtrack of the original trio of games, with its boss theme, FOE theme, and final boss themes being consistently rated amongst the best of all the games. It brought us the (hilariously lopsided) early subclass system and numerous refinements to the engine and game design (even if it wound up being intensely buggy). The seafaring, though almost entirely accessory, did a lot to make the world feel more alive and expansive, and the storyline, again, is one of the darkest, most interesting, and most ominous of the set. If it weren't for what had to be sacrificed to make it happen, and for what else was involved, Etrian III would doubtlessly be at least one slot higher in this list, if not two.
4. Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard (2008)
Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard is widely considered to be one of - if not the - best of the original Etrian trilogy. It has the distinction of being remembered more fondly than its predecessors, though it's hard to see why if you're new to the series - Etrian III does seem to have more content - but this is only at a glance. Etrian Odyssey II is a great example of how even when you make a mis-step and screw many things up, it's still possible to do so much good in the process that it remains a net win. Etrian II has two of the worst things ever in any Etrian game: zero experience when killing FOEs and the single worst level-cap removal system in the history of video games - but the rest of the game is so robust and handles so well that it doesn't really matter. Building on Etrian Odyssey, Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard adds enough that it's hard to go wrong with, fleshing out existing characters and adding multiple new options. The two new classes, though somewhat middling, are nonetheless quite interesting and offer many unique tricks all their own. For the first time, a Medic was no longer a necessity, and for the first time, neither was any class, really, offering you more flexibility. All of this was backed by Etrian Odyssey II's fantastic storyline, which is one of the stronger ones in terms of narrative and excellent class balance, which was far better than the previous game - and indeed the one after it - in virtually every capacity.
Etrian II's biggest drawbacks were its music - which whilst excellent, was not as good a the other games in the series overall - and its progression, which was actively fairly user-hostile, demanding a player retire a character dozens of times to reach the level cap. In a game with no FOE XP. Players fought on despite this, however, and beating the true final boss at the basic level cap is hardly an unheard-of occurrence, marking Etrian II as being stronger than its shortcomings. It just edges out Etrian III on this list because of its across-the-board improvements; it falls behind Etrian Untold in this list solely because Etrian Untold is put together better.
3. Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl (2013)
Etrian Untold marks a new chapter in the series - the second of the 3DS Etrian games, Etrian Untold was a remake and added a host of new facts and information to the canon of the series. From a purely technical standpoint, Etrian Untold is an incredible achievement, implementing voice-acting, a full-fledged conventional story mode, and a host of other new features, plus an entirely new dungeon and bosses - to the existing framework of Etrian Odyssey. It also added the new lower difficulties for Etrian newcomers, whilst keeping the game challenging and brutal for the oldschoolers. The result is an overall solid game with significant promise, echoing the original game whilst at the same time being its own beast. Gone are the oft brain-dead original shortcomings of the first Etrian Odyssey - the game is smooth, polished, and relatively well-balanced. The music is fantastic and the story is excellent, deepening the story of the original Etrian Odyssey game. However, this is definitely the weakest of the three 3DS Etrian game so far, not necessarily through any one specific major issue, but through a host of smaller ones that are big enough that they cannot be ignored.
Like the first Etrian Odyssey, Etrian Untold is a game with some shortcomings. Lacking the subclassing system, Etrian Untold brings the player the Grimoire Stone system, a system that allows the player to essentially subclass in a fashion whilst potentially getting the skills of the monsters as well - but unfortunately the new system is so heavily lopsided and such an incoherent mess that the system is almost entirely luck-based, to the point of being considered tacitly unusable if it weren't for the fact that the game has item duplication tricks for spamming Grimoire Stone-related items. Moreover, Etrian Untold has much lower experience curves and less viable farming methodologies for leveling up than in the games to follow on this list. So whilst Etrian Untold is, storyline-wise and gameplay-wise, head and shoulders above its predecessors, it's ultimately hamstrung by some of the few areas it screws up. Some of these are the inevitable result of relying on the original game as a base; others seem to be the result of trying to do something different. Regardless, it's a solid game, and certainly deserving of its place on this list. Whilst the weakest of the "new" Etrian games, it's most assuredly one of the most interesting ones and worthy of a spot on this list. The refinements to the game are simply too big to ignore, even with the myriad of minor issues it has.
2. Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan (2012)
To date, Etrian IV is the most successful Etrian game in terms of sales, and with good reason - it's undeniably one of the best games in the series not only in terms of balance, but in terms of overall quality, and do accomplish all this whilst making for one of the most enjoyable Etrian Odyssey games of all is a hell of an accomplishment in and of itself, considering that it's the earliest of the 3DS Etrian games. It accomplishes this by making good use of what it has available; with so much improved hardware power, Etrian IV leveraged its newfound muscle very carefully and in so doing created an impressive gaming experience - using fully orchestrated music, careful use of 3D graphics, and angling itself specifically towards an older crowd, Etrian IV creates a unique and compelling game that feels like it's got a coherent world all its own. The Skyship flying and expansive world-map meant that even though the central tenet of the game hadn't changed, there was so much added that it was legitimately hard not to like. Etrian IV kept some of Etrian III's early missteps, and shares some of the same problems in design philosophy - shorter stratums, smaller maps - but these problems are minimized because of the improved overall design of every other asset in the game being designed around them, allowing for small additional dungeons and making each area unique. Etrian IV has the gentlest XP curves of any of the games barring Etrian Untold II, and there's legitimately simple XP farming methodologies, which makes the game way less grindy and progression much more enjoyable. It was the first Etrian game to reliably have a system where, without excessive grinding, you were likely to hit the level cap before the story's main boss - and it was also the first one to come up with a work-around for the economic shorting that's so common in every other Etrian game. It also brings forward Etrian III's subclass system, and then fixes it for good measure, resulting in a fully customizable character system that isn't as front-loaded as Etrian III's. The subclass system offers a lot of possibilities, meaning every class has some great possibilities without a relatively small pool of character classes. Every class in it is also great - there's no class in Etrian IV that's really underpowered, and all of them have major tactical advantages. This is a far cry from even Etrian Untold, where the Survivalist was usually considered accessory and Troubadours struggled to find a position in a party.
Etrian IV sometimes gets flak for being too easy, but this stems from both including a lower difficulty mode and because of how aggressively powerful the classes in it are (Etrian IV has three of the heaviest hitters in the series' history). Under the surface, the game is just as brutally, soul-crushingly, ball-tweakingly difficult as the others, but it's less openly dickish in design, which makes it a better experience overall. The party-centric aspects to the storyline and the general tale of conflcted loyalty and good intentions gone wrong makes Etrian IV have its own appeal storyline-wise as well. If there's a major criticism to be had about the game, it's the inclusion of the Forging system (which is, again, an emphasizer of min-maxing and a major grind increaser) and the fact that it's got a very unconventional Stratum V layout that makes it feel shorter than it actually is.
1. Etrian Odyssey Untold II: The Fafnir Knight (2015)
If you had told me after Etrian IV that the best Etrian game ever would be coming out in a few years, you'd have raised my eyebrow. Color me completely unsurprised, however, that the "new" version of the best of the three older Etrian games quality-wise, howvever, is the best of the current new ones.Etrian Untold II is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best Etrian Odyssey game thus far in terms of overall quality, presentation, and content. It's easily the biggest Etrian game thus far, as well, and the most robust as far as subsystems go; this is a game bristling with content. Not only does it include a fully-fledged story mode with specific characters, a full-fledged improved Classic mode with substantially more content, and an Untold version of Etrian II's storyline, but it includes even more character classes, a completely revamped (and easily the best in the entire series so far) force system that enables a wealth of different combat tactics. Improvements to class balance and a wealth of DLC that adds tons of content to the game (and was free if you bought the game but is pretty damned cheap if you didn't) makes this one a winner.
In almost every respect, Etrian Untold II is an achievement. The character dialogues include everything from idle chatter amongst your guildmembers to humorous episodes in which they discuss their hopes and concerns. The story is touching and tragic, wrought with personal tragedy and good intentions gone hideously wrong, painting characters with a dark history fraught with regret. The environments and setting are given immense care to make the world feel richer and more robust, and the game meets this with keeping its mechanics flawless. When Etrian Untold II was rumored to have the Grimoire Stone system, I was concerned, but that concern was unfounded; Etrian Untold II's system improves on this one so thoroughly that it's difficult to describe, since you can now readily trade grimoires and get exactly what you need. The game is more generous with XP than any other Etrian game, resulting in a smooth growth curve that generally does not require grinding. The game throws unique, interesting traps, environments, and techniques at you, and challenges the player to think on their feet and come up with solutions. This results in a game that seems almost perfected in its motions. Mechanically, the game is solid, building on Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl's premise and it backs this with a whole new guildhouse and subsystem therefore, allowing you to build up a cafe to try food to boost your stats, provide handy benefits, and even earn you significant money on the side. Multiple saves - a first in the series - allows players to try both the Classic and Story mode seperately from different angles, or to save in specific spots for content. This huge aresenal of content truly sets Etrian Odyssey Untold II apart from the crowd, and means that any Etrian game to follow has its work cut out for it, to say the least!