Etrian Odyssey 5: Beyond the Myth is the latest in entry of DRPGs from Atlus’ DS & 3DS series of the same name. The core & main selling point of the series is being able to chart out maps right from the touchscreen & challenging but fair difficulty. New to this entry is character customization & voice acting. Pack your bags, grab your weapons & get ready to climb Yggdrasil yet again.
Much like the older entries this one is also turn-based & challenging to boot. Mixing things up is the addition of a row for your summons, up to 3 of them, which a few classes take advantage of. For example, the Necromancer can raise wraiths & use them as fuel for their abilities or the Dragoon using their bunkers can add another layer of defense for the party. New as well is the Union skills, replacing the older games ‘Boost’ action for something more akin to EO4’s Burst skills, a fast action super skills. Unlike EO4, this one based character race meaning that only certain races can have certain skills available to them thus a well balanced party is to be considered for balanced play but by no means is this a must as they are nice to have skills but not ‘make or break’ the game. This rounds out everything “non-traditional” to the series, everything combatwise is the same gool ol’ RPG thing, like attack, spells or skills & defend. On to making your characters now.
Character customization is something that has been expanded upon in this entry, as I’ve mentioned a few times now. While maybe not impressive comparatively to open world games or some other RPGs, it is nonetheless a welcome addition, even I am as color coordinated as a broken stop light. Outside of making your characters bright green monstrosities, race is a new aspect to add to the ordeal of making a character. There are 4 races in total; Therian, Brouni, Celestrian, Earthlain, each with their own stats they excel or fail at. Each race has 2 to 3 classes to choose from though after doing the obligatory first tutorial you can mix & match to you heart’s desire. This will come into play if you care for mix-max’ing as certain races have classes where they don’t particularly shine at. One example being the Brouni, having the lowest Luck stat of them all & one of their native classes using ailments such as poison or petrification (incidentally, this one is no longer a party-wide insta-kill move, it now disables you or enemies for a few turns) of course you want to maximizes your skills proc’ing so choosing a Earthlain with their crazy high Luck stat is ideal.
Adding to the customization conundrum is Mastery. Each base class has 2 ways to play them as, an example being the Dragoon, able to use guns to deal damage or a shield to prevent it. What mastery does is focusing in one of the two aspects of the class & enhancing it. It is a neat concept adding to the fun. To top of, voices, nothing major but also a nice addition. Having your characters scream out as they do an attack or skill adds to the role play aspect. Of course if you don’t care for this, voiceless is always a way to go.
With that out of the way, on to dungeon & monster design. Little bad to say, if anything at all really. Dungeons are varied & above all beautiful to look at, ranging from the wide open spaces of the 1st Stratum forest, easing you in to the eventually pain to come in later floors to the 2nd’s small corridors that eventually open up to big open areas having you dodge FOEs (they being miniboss-like monsters), which in itself is a puzzle of sorts. Then kicking it up a notch in the 3rd Stratum’s poison filled bogs which by day is bad enough but by night, the small reprieve that the now poisonless floors provide is quickly lost as you get chased by the various sword-wielding spooky scary skeleton FOEs. All in all, it mixes things up enough from stratum to stratum & them throws it all at you in the staple post game 6th Stratum.
Enemies, Atlus sure knows how to keep you on your toes with them. The Etrian series has always had this way of giving you a love-hate relationship when it came to fighting enemies. While fights are random, the monsters themselves are not. You will often if not all the time see interactions between how monsters are paired, examples being having a bulky & strong enemy in the front row while one in the back row pelts you with status effects or magic. Knowing how to handle these at any given moment is what makes the challenge in Etrian Odyssey so likeable…until you get party wiped & lose progress because you forgot so save ages ago. Sigh.
Stories & plot have never been DRPGs strong suit, the Etrian series (the ‘story’ mode of the Untold remakes notwithstanding) no different but in this one I found it to be the weakest one of all. It starts as always, being told you are a new adventuring party & you & countless guilds before you seeking glory by being the first to reach the top or bottom of Yggdrasil’s dungeon. But that is were it ends up until the 3rd Stratum in which a minor plot device shows up & resolved, unrelated to Yggdrasil itself. You are never really given a reason to explore outside of the glory of it, EO2 had you seek out a Grail, EO3 was a cure, etc. In this one, your half-baked reason is extremely vaguely brought up on the later half off the 4th Stratum, & then just having a bomb dropped on you as to the why’s right in front of the final boss door. Ultimately, Etrian Odyssey is about the challenge & cartography more than story but I just felt it lacking in a reason as to why should I care.
Art as always is enjoyable, nice & beautiful character work, monster design being adorable (zombie puppy is cute) in cases & others oozing strength. Dungeon wise, believable & full of life. Music is no slouch as always with the series. Rocking guitar riffs, jazz & vocals mix to make a treat to listen to. Fans of the ‘End of the Raging Waves’ are in for an ear blastin’ amazing track. Top tier remix for sure.
An aside, the game has cooking, find food items in dungeons & cook them in campfires. This aspect is well, half-baked (boo!), no way to sort foodstuff, little benefits to go out of your way collecting food items as most of them just heal you, it just a there, a small bonus but nothing amazing.
All in all, Etrian Odyssey 5, is yet another amazing entry in the tried & true series with near same design overall but with a few new things sprinkled in to keep it fresh. I definitely recommend it. It is enjoyable & comfortable enough to keep you coming back for more even after getting punished mobs after some damned squirrel that stole your only means to escape the dungeon. RIP.
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