Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth

Genre: First-Person Dungeon Crawler / Turn-Based JRPG

Players: 1, StreetPass Support

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Review:

Etrian Odyssey V, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2017, is the first entirely new entry in the Etrian Odyssey series since 2013’s Etrian Odyssey IV, with the intervening years bringing two remakes of the earlier games in the series. However, despite being new, this game was undoubtedly instantly familiar to fans of the series, featuring the same style of gameplay that combines a fairly straightforward RPG and a strong focus on using the Nintendo 3DS touchscreen to chart out the dungeons you explore.

This entry in the franchise contains neither the overworld map of Etrian Odyssey IV, nor does it have the character-driven stories of the Etrian Odyssey Untold games. While this would seem to be something of a downgrade for the series, Etrian Odyssey V does expand in a few areas that greatly surpasses the prior games in the series. Namely, character customization and combat.

For character customization, there is of course the superficial – you can now choose not only which artwork will represent your character, but you can also change the characters’ color schemes and choose what type of voice they’ll have. However, more importantly this game has you selecting both a race and class for each character, with both races and classes offering different upgrade trees. This is expanded on further a few hours into the game, when you get the opportunity to re-spec your characters into new classes at the cost of a reduction of their levels, a change I had been wanting this series to make for years.

To go along with this added flexibility in mixing and matching the classes of your party, Etrian Odyssey V adds multiple new classes, including interesting new class types that allow players to summon helper creatures to assist them in combat, or act as a decoy for enemies to attack instead of your party. What’s more, these helper characters can passively provide bonuses to your party, and you can have more than one out at any given time.

As if this wasn’t enough, Etrian Odyssey V also adds a new “Union” mechanic (taking the place of Etrian Odyssey Untold 2’s “Burst” mechanic) that works as a sorta’ “limit break” style move that needs to charge up over multiple turns. The twist here is that using these moves requires players to expend the meters of multiple party members. This can add an extra bit of strategy to deciding which characters’ Union moves to use, and which of their comrades’ meters to expend to fuel it.

All of this builds on the same great First-Person Dungeon Crawler and touchscreen-enabled map-making gameplay that made the prior games in the series so great. However, with these new added character customization and combat options, it feels like the gameplay of the series has really opened up to make both dungeon exploration and combat interesting this time around, resulting in the best gameplay yet for the Etrian Odyssey series.

When it comes to the presentation, you know the drill – some nice anime-style 2D artwork for the game’s characters, some nicely-detailed 3D dungeons to explore (with noticeable pop-in), with a little voiced dialogue for the characters (not for every line, though), as well as a decent anime-style instrumental soundtrack.

To sum it all up… look, by this point, it’s probably clear that I’m a sucker for Etrian Odyssey’s map-making style of Dungeon-Crawling gameplay, and I definitely feel like Etrian Odyssey V is missing something in its lack of the overworld map and without strong central characters to buoy the story. However, despite these flaws, this game makes such a massive improvement in its character customization and combat that it vaults to the head of the series in my opinion, and as a result is one of the finest RPGs on the Nintendo 3DS. This game is not to be missed.

tl;dr – Etrian Odyssey V once again combines Turn-Based RPG gameplay with First-Person Dungeon Crawling, with the Etrian series’ big hook being that players are using the touchscreen to map out the game’s dungeons as they explore. While Etrian Odyssey V lacks the overworld map of IV and it doesn’t have the stronger story elements of the Untold games, it more than makes up for this with massive improvements to character customization and combat. The result is the best game yet for the series, and one of the best RPGs on the Nintendo 3DS.

Grade: A+

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