Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection

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

Players: 1, Local Wireless Content Sharing, Online Content Sharing

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Review:

The Etrian Odyssey series is a franchise of games that combine First-Person Dungeon Crawler navigation with Turn-Based JRPG gameplay, with a strong focus on cartography – that is to say, one of the major mechanics of these games is that players draw out the maps of the dungeons they explore within the game itself, making note of landmarks, hazards, and charting pathways to follow. Previously, the series was only found on the Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS platforms, but with the 2023 release of the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection on PC and Nintendo Switch, the series is finally seeing release on a platform that can play on a big screen, with this collection including HD remasters of the first three games in the series, and with these games also being made available for purchase separately.

I separately reviewed the three games in this Compilation. Here is what I thought:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Score
Etrian Odyssey HD	First-Person Dungeon Crawler / Turn-Based JRPG	1	B
tl;dr Etrian Odyssey HD is a remake of the 2007 Nintendo DS Dungeon-Crawling JRPG with a heavy focus on players mapping out the dungeons within the game. It’s still a great game, and the controls on Nintendo Switch work surprisingly well, but this release is pretty pathetic when you hold it up to the 2013 Nintendo 3DS remake, Etrian Odyssey Untold. If you’re a fan of Dungeon Crawler JRPGs, this is still a superb entry in the genre, but this is sadly nowhere near the best version of this game.
Etrian Odyssey II HD	First-Person Dungeon Crawler / Turn-Based JRPG	1	B
tl;dr Etrian Odyssey II HD is a remake of the 2008 Nintendo DS Dungeon-Crawling JRPG with a heavy focus on players mapping out the dungeons within the game. It’s still a great game, and the controls on Nintendo Switch work surprisingly well, but this release is pretty pathetic when you hold it up to the 2015 Nintendo 3DS remake, Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold. If you’re a fan of Dungeon Crawler JRPGs, this is still a superb entry in the genre, but this is sadly nowhere near the best version of this game.
Etrian Odyssey III HD	First-Person Dungeon Crawler / Turn-Based JRPG	1, Local Wireless Content Sharing, Online Content Sharing	B+
tl;dr Etrian Odyssey III HD is a remake of the 2010 Nintendo DS Dungeon-Crawling JRPG with a heavy focus on players mapping out the dungeons within the game. This is the first time this game has seen any sort of port or re-release, and while the HD-polished presentation here is still dated, this is nevertheless a strong step forward for this series that’s still great to this day. If you only get one game in the original Etrian Odyssey trilogy on Nintendo Switch, this is the one to get.

So the elephant in the room that I’ve beaten to death by this point is that both Etrian Odyssey and Etrian Odyssey II already received remakes on Nintendo 3DS, and those remakes are clearly superior to these releases in multiple ways. Etrian Odyssey III is fortunate in that there’s no one other game to directly compare it unfavorably to, but it is nevertheless still clearly dated in its presentation. However, having said that, Etrian Odyssey III was a game that made multiple improvements to its series, so in turn its remake is the best of the lot here. Although, to be fair, despite all my complaints, all three of these games are still excellent First-Person Dungeon Crawlers and Turn-Based JRPGs.

All three games in this package take the original games’ anime-style 2D artwork and render it in smooth, clean HD. What’s more, the 3D dungeons have had their textures improved as well, making them look much cleaner and more detailed. While this definitely compares well to the original Nintendo DS games, the static images in this remastered trilogy seem… well, lifeless. What’s more, these games retain the poor draw distance of the earlier games in the series, even though Nintendo Switch could easily render far more, meaning this trilogy has plenty of pop-up. Disappointing. These remasters also feature music derived from the original game’s soundtrack, and while the sound quality is improved over the originals, it still sounds extremely tinny and artificial.

On the bright sides, it will relieve series fans to know that the controls in these games work pretty well. I wish the games afforded players more options to alter the controls and maybe reassign buttons, but what’s here is good. There are control schemes for using the traditional gamepad, the touchscreen, and a hybrid of both. With the gamepad, much of what players would have done with the touchscreen and stylus in the original game is now done using ZL/ZR and the right analog stick. It’s not a perfect replacement for the touchscreen, but it is a sufficient one.And for those worried about the capacitive touchscreen making map-drawing less efficient, this games’ designers have helpfully included the ability to zoom in and out of the map to aid in the accuracy of your map-making. Given the limitations of the hardware and the fact that this interface was originally designed for a different platform, I think this is about as good as we could have hoped for from a console port of the games.

Okay, now let’s talk about value. At $80, this trio of games is pretty pricey. An argument could be made that this is a pretty good discount off of the $120 it would cost to buy all three of these games separately, but I would argue that the price of $40 per game on three decade-old games is already pretty overpriced. I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re looking to get these three games, this is definitely the best way to do it, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s a good value.

In the end, this really feels like a mixed bag. On the one hand, all three of these First-Person Dungeon Crawler Turn-Based JRPGs are excellent, and it’s great to finally get them on a platform that’s not exclusively handheld. And to finally get a port or remaster of Etrian Odyssey III in particular is wonderful. On the other hand, the presentation and features of these ports is pretty disappointing, and it’s even more disappointing when compared to the Nintendo 3DS remakes of Etrian Odyssey and Etrian Odyssey II. What’s more, while this bundle is comparatively a good price, that price is still pretty bloated. In the end, I think this bundle is worth getting if you’re a fan of the genre, but you might want to wait for a good sale.

tl;dr – Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection is a Compilation that includes Etrian Odyssey HD, Etrian Odyssey II HD, and Etrian Odyssey III HD, all games that are remasters of Nintendo DS First-Person Dungeon Crawler Turn-Based JRPGs. The games themselves are excellent, but even remastered their presentation is terribly dated, and they compare pretty poorly with the remakes of two of these games that the Nintendo 3DS got. What’s more, while this bundle costs less than buying the games separately, the price is still a bit high for what’s on offer here. If you’re a fan of this genre, these games are still well worth getting, but it’s far from the triumphant return this franchise deserves.

Grade: B

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