Article Eclipse Expounds - Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth

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It's been a while, hasn't it? And I have another treat for you.

For those of you who aren't aware (which is probably most of you), I have had a long-running article series called Eclipse Expounds, wherein I take a video game I have played and very much enjoyed, and write a review on it. I haven't played a lot of new video games lately (besides Superstar Saga - but I already wrote a review on that one for the most part), but I did get around to this one the first moment I had a chance.

I have a few links in this article; those will be denoted by underlined text.

So let's begin, shall we?

This is the story of Yggdrasil, in the land of Arcania.
Children of men pass down an ancient fable: "The power of the gods will be granted there..."
Disciples of magic study an archaic myth: "The great mysteries shall be answered there..."
Descendants of warriors recite their folklore: "The ultimate techniques can be mastered there..."
Nomads from the plains exchange a fairy tale: "The lost treasures must be slumbering there..."
From all across the land of arcania, each culture pursues its own legends.
They journey to Yggdrasil, yearning to reach the top and meet their destinies.​

:: Introduction ::

You might find that a 3DS game was released so late into the console's lifetime, but here we are - and judging by recent news, Atlus still isn't done yet with this system; as of this writing, there is at least 1 more Etrian Odyssey game for the 3DS still in development (and you'd better believe I'm nabbing it).
However, Japan had this game for well over a year before anyone else did. Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth, the latest entry in the Etrian Odyssey series, was released first in Japan in August 2016, but it took another 15 months for the rest of the world to get it - so here we stand at the end of 2017, with this game in our hands.

If anyone remembers my Etrian Odyssey IV article, a few of the core points - particularly the dungeon mapping and battle system - do remain the same, though there are enough differences between EO5 and its brethren to warrant mention.
For example, having all new classes available is par for the course, but while EO titles like to re-use other monsters from older titles, EO5's monster line-up is entirely new to the series, with not a single returning monster. There are a few rough analogs - but that's as far as it goes.

To start off, I want to say that I loved this game. Before now I had trouble considering which of the EO titles I'd played was my favourite (and I managed to acquire a copy of each one that I could), and now that spot in my mind goes to EO5 without question. It's done a lot of new things (while bringing along some old ones), explored a lot of new strata environments which are totally new to the series, and the music (composed by Yuzu Koshiro) is eternally beautiful as always.



:: Gameplay ::

In EO5, you're in one of two places - in the town of Iorys, or in the Yggdrasil Labyrinth. Accessible from both areas is the menu (Y button), where you can view your inventory, party members, equipped items, allocating skill points, and a couple of other things. You will start off the game by being introduced to the various facilities one by one, so if you've read this review - or started the game - or have played EO before - you'll be hearing a lot of this information twice.

You will also be asked to choose the difficulty level for your game: Basic or Advanced. The Basic difficulty works like normal, and if your entire party is killed, you get one free chance to rewind the game to right before the battle where you lost. Advanced does not give you that luxury, and makes it so that monsters deal a bit more damage, take a bit less damage, and are slightly harder to land binds/status ailments on - so you can pick this if you really want a challenge.

There is no Picnic Mode in EO5 - though, honestly, you won't need it. You can always change your game's difficulty level on the title screen later, if you want to scale up - or down.

Anyway, I'll start with explaining the town.

The town has several facilities you will use as an adventuring party - and these are pretty standard across all EO titles:

:: Jenetta's Inn - Heal and rest your party overnight, and save your game. Needless to say, you'll be coming here often, if only to save your game (otherwise, you have to use the menu to make a temporary quicksave).
:: Iorys Marketplace - Buy and sell weapons/armour/other items, as well as strengthen your existing weaponry. Your main source of income will be monster drops from fights in the Labyrinth, and having money on hand never hurts.
:: Twilight Tavern - Accept various side quests given to you by the town's residents. Quests available to you vary based on the highest floor of Yggdrasil you've reached, and may require you to complete other quests beforehand.
:: Explorers Guild - Add members to your adventuring party, and manage details like party formation, class changes, and a couple other things. I'll elaborate a bit more on this later.
:: Council Hall - Accept official missions and report your findings, including maps and fought monsters. As opposed to quests, missions are more important because they help forward the main story. You won't visit here often, but your visits will be more significant.
:: Forest Entrance - Head out to adventure into the Yggdrasil Labyrinth.


Similar to EO4, which had the notion of various races inhabiting one land, EO5's town has four different races coexisting here: Earthlain (humans); Therian (beastmen, with males having canine ears and females having leporine ones); Celestrian (elves, basically); and Brouni (close to gnomes, despite its name being derived from the brownie). Unlike EO4, the races all cohabit together from the start of the game, and the class choices aren't restricted to race - which I'll explain shortly.

The very first thing you'll have to do in EO5 is create your party - which can be anywhere from 1 to 5 people. (You can mix and match your party however you want throughout the game, though a full gamut of five is recommended.) Unlike the past EO games, the character creation process is a lot more involved:

:: First, you'll need to choose your character's race. Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to stats, and you'll see a quick schematic on where races do better or worse compared to the others. The stats are HP (Hit Points), TP (Talent Points - paid to use skills), STRength (physical attack), VITality (physical defense), INTelligence (magical attack), WISdom (magical defense), AGIlity (affects turn speed), and LUCk (affects likelihood of landing or avoiding binds and status ailments).

:: After that, you will choose your character's starting class, which is based on race. You can change classes later freely regardless of race, but starting classes tend to play off the race's strengths. Each race has 2 starting classes to pick from (except Earthlain, which has 4), for a total of 10. Then, you pick 1 of the 10 basic portrait choices available for the class (8 related to the class itself, plus 2 default race portraits), either male or female based on your preference. Unlike other EO games (barring the Untolds), all classes are available from the start.

:: Now here's where it gets a bit more in-depth. New to the EO series is a full-blown character creator - after you've chosen the class and portrait, you can choose your character's name...as well as set his or her hair colours (two tones), eye colour (also two tones - with the option for heterochromia if desired), skin colour (from a choice of 12 dependent on race), and voice clips (20 male and 20 female choices - or none, if you prefer).
The skin colour is a bit more restrictive, but the hair and eyes can be set anywhere from #000000 to #FFFFFF and everything in between. They do give you 12 pre-set colour palettes if you need a starting point, but you essentially have total freedom. The only thing you can't change is the clothing colours.

And, with the exception of the base portrait, you can go back and edit ANY of that later. I was stuck in the character creator for almost 40 minutes on just one character - and while your max party size is five, you're allowed to create up to thirty.

Things That Keep Me Distracted #11​

Class changing can be done relatively freely; a character can reduce its Level by 5 to change to any of the other 10 classes, even if it 'doesn't match' its race - for example, Dragoons have to start off as Earthlain, but may change to the Rover class later (which is a Therian class), or whatever you want. However, despite that, racial skills will stay the same (more on that later).


The Yggdrasil Labyrinth, on the other hand, is true to its name. Key to the Etrian Odyssey series is that you have to re-create the dungeon map layout, by drawing it out on your bottom screen, including walls, floors, floor types, secret passageways, and many other assorted objects. EO5's map editor gives you even more icons to toy with, and new to this game is the ability to toggle which icons appear in the editor (as well as how much of it you see on screen at one time).

You do have the option for the game to automatically draw in floors and walls for you, and the map will denote some special icons (like resource-gathering points, or backtrack points), but it's your responsibility to find everything and record it dutifully.

Note ALL the things!​

As you're drawing the map, you'll probably run into a lot of dead ends, but many of them have some sort of ‘event' at the end of them. Some are repeatable daily, but many are one-time affairs. All EO games have them, and they tend to give you a choice, with the rewards differing based on your choice. EO5 takes them a bit further: some of the events require that a party member have a specific skill (which is usually a race skill), and all of the events will give your party members a bit of EXP upon completion (which the past games haven't done). I like this, because I think it gives an extra level of significance and flavour to your exploration - especially when you get messages like this or this.

Battles are a fairly straight-forward affair - this is a turn-based JRPG, after all. I don't need to go much in-depth about it, though I will say that both you and the enemy monsters will have a 'front line' and a 'back line': those in the back line will take half as much damage from melee attacks (but also deal half as much), and melee attacks in 1 back line can't hit the enemy's back line at all. All of that goes both ways, but the back line is where you'd place your squishier classes, like the Warlock (think Black Mage).



:: Progression ::

Your characters themselves work on a skill tree system. At Level 1, a character starts with 3 Skill Points, and gains 1 more with each level-up. You have to invest Skill Points in order to learn skills, some of which require certain weapons equipped to use, and some of which branch off other skills; to learn a skill, you need to put at least 1 Skill Point into it. All of them require a body part (head, arms, or legs) to use, and if that body part is bound in a fight, the skill can't be used. (In EO, binds are your best friend if you inflict them - and your worst friend if you're on the receiving end.)

There are 3 broad categories of Skills:
:: Race Skills are skills that are innate to your race - these are set at character creation and cannot change. This includes basic things like survival abilities and Union Skills (battle skills where you cooperate with your other party members to unleash a powerful attack). All Race Skills only need 1 point to max out, and you start with some basic ones unlocked by default. (Other skills will require 1, 5, or 10 points to max out, on a case-by-case basis.)

:: Base Skills are skills keyed to your class, and depend on whatever that is at the time. Initially, most of your Skill Points will be invested in the Base Skills, to create your niche in a fight. If you change your class, these will change as well. Most Base Skills will branch off into other Base Skills, or onward to...

:: Master Skills are skills based on specialisations - after you reach a certain point in the game, you can pick an 'advanced class' for any character that is at least Level 20, intended to further refine an aspect of the class. Each class has 2 specialisations to choose from - for example, the Dragoon (a shield-wielding gunslinger class) can go with Shield Bearer (which increases guard efficacy) or Cannon Bearer (which increases damage output), and each of those branches off different skills in the Base Skill set.

The Master Skill tree doesn't appear unless you choose a specialisation. And, in style with the rest of this game, the names given are just suggestions; you can pick any name you want for your specialisation - anything from more serious-sounding names to silly little inside jokes, or even just clever wordplay. You can't go back and change this name once set, but resting (resetting your skill points) or reclassing makes the specialisation disappear, so you can choose one again later anyway.

I spent an entire week picking the specialisations and names for my party - which is twice as much time than I spent on the character creator for them. I'm not sure what that says about me.



:: DLC & Demo ::

Etrian Odyssey V does offer some small bits of DLC to go with it. The lineup is rather small and simple, and is either aesthetic or just helps accentuate what you already have - so it functions more like Etrian Mystery Dungeon's DLC than it does like 2 Untold's lineup (which had new areas and such).

As of this writing, all DLC is available (it was released in installments, starting at launch), and while none of them are free, they're relatively inexpensive and small in file size. Each piece of DLC must be purchased separately. You can easily go through the game without them (I did), but in case you're curious, here's a list:

Spoiler

:: There are 2 repeatable quests: one increases item drop rate and money acquired; the other increases EXP earned - and both do so by a very substantial margin.

:: There are 6 character creation portraits - 3 of them are more generic-looking characters, which bear similarities to other games Atlus has made; the other 3 are of past Etrian Odyssey classes, namely the female Protector, the female Medic, and the female Gunner, all drawn in similar poses to existing EO5 classes. These are just portraits; they don't unlock new classes. None of the DLC portraits are race-specific, so there's no restriction on their use.

:: Lastly, there is an FM Sound option, as a callback to the past EO games. This DLC is more expensive than the others (though not by much), and requires about 1560 blocks of SD card space. It gives you the option to switch between the standard and FM instrument sets while playing the game, as well as in the Sound Test. It is good for the nostalgia factor, but I'll let you decide if the tracks are better or worse. (I recommend playing without FM first.)

More significant, however, is that Etrian Odyssey V has a downloadable demo in the Nintendo 3DS eShop. I highly recommend you play the demo first before you decide to purchase the game - in my opinion, it's the most useful demo of any game I've ever played.

:: You can make a party as usual, but your characters cannot go higher than Level 10.

:: You can only explore as high as 3F. If you try to ascend to 4F, the game will stop you from going any further. (You are still free to play around with the demo as much as you like, though.)

:: You only get 1 save slot in the demo, but you can transfer your demo save data over to the full game. (The game proper has 1 save slot on a physical copy, plus 9 more slots that can be saved to the SD card, just like 2 Untold did.)

:: Other than that, the demo plays exactly like the full version of the game - it is not stripped down at all. You can start off the demo and transfer it over when you get the full game, or you can do what I did and use the demo as a testing ground before making a file for real.



:: Conclusion ::

I said this before, but I'll say it again: I absolutely loved this game. I've played it all the way through - including the post-game! - but the only reason I don't want to start another new file is because I'm going to be trapped in the character creator again, never mind all of the other hours I'm going to sink into the game! This game was fun, enjoyable, and a great way to relax; I could listen to the music for hours (and I do).

There were a few things I was expecting to see but didn't, though mostly because I had seen them in past titles (either monsters or plot structures) and was expecting to see them. The only real gripe I had with this game is that you can't see the specialisation skills until you're actually about to pick one, so it makes it trickier to plan ahead, even if you have a natural tendency towards some of the skills over others.

Other than that, this game is priceless. The writing is fantastic and charming, there are a few subtle pop culture references slipped in - with spooky scary skeletons, Guy Fieri, and the aforementioned Elmer Fudd being my personal favourites - and the game as a whole seems to have its own broad sense of life to it. Even the labyrinth strata are rich, colourful, and vibrant, and some of them are so beautiful that I lack adequate words to describe them - never mind the music accompaniment! I could gush over this game all day, but I think you get the gist of it.

Especially if you can make a team of your own characters just how you like them. I've known a few of my friends who have made characters in their own likeness - and they work! (If only I could do the same.) I've gotten a few ideas of characters of my own from playing this game, as well. I don't know if that's a major point to derive from this game, but there it is.

Thanks again for reading through another of my reviews. I hope that I've at least interested you into looking at Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth - if not outright compelled you to do so. I don't have any plans for what my first expounding of 2018 will be, but I hope you'll be around for it!

◈◈ From the desk of Eclipse, the Dark Dragon Deity ◈◈