Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth is a contender for best of the series and I had no faith in it pulling off such a feat.
When the game came out in late 2017 I played its demo, and as if by a matter of course, readied myself for the full version. I'd played every other game in the series before, so why should this be any different? Upon release though, the best I could muster towards the game was indifference, and I put it aside with an air of disappointment I could not vocalize. At the time I wondered if the series had simply run its course for me over the hundreds of hours of collective play, and whether
EOV in particular was to blame for my disinterest in its dungeon-crawling. After having played and finished the game, I can with the benefit of context and hindsight say that
EOV was not responsible for my malaise at the time, but the supremely disheartening
Untold remakes of the first two games that had preceded it, which had insinuated and wormed their way into my brain affecting how I thought of
Etrian Odyssey in the abstract; a less interesting and good series than it actually is.
EOV effectively washed all the doubt away--the last time I was this excited about the games was in the days of
Etrian Odyssey III.
Some things I think
V is particularly good at:
- class design. As a player of RPGs, I'm not particularly numbers-crunchy for the joy of it, but I appreciate commitment to a theme and the mechanics to communicate that as much as anyone. V has a class selection that carries on the eclectic spirit of III, with dashes of the original game's straightforwardness and the refocused streamlining of IV. This is maybe the only series where I get into the party-building numbers-go-up aspect of play, where I can always approach it on terms of personal taste and inclination instead of raw optimization, and the game facilitates and indulges me in the act. These choices and personalizations were fun to make under the auspices of V's mastery class set-up, because they struck a very good balance between free customization and invisibly guided party builds. Experimentation still lives in EO even at its more directed moments.
- the town. I think this is something that's generally undervalued and underdiscussed with the series, but EO at its best lives and dies by its writing for me, and one way the writing manifests most consistently through the many hours you spend with the games is with their respective townships and establishments. Everyone in V's Iorys is likable and memorable, from the hardworking and hapless innkeeper Jenetta and her unseen sisters to the amicably enterpreunial Syrik, to the protective ex-adventurer Mirina, the firm but supportive guildmaster Egar and the culturally engaged council representative Prince Ramus. All of them have more going on on an individual level than the confines of their roles in the player's context, and they're depicted as such--at times you might run into them in the labyrinth itself, or spending time with one another just because (like Egar and Ramus sharing cooking tips, or Mirina beings friends with Egar's wife). These little moments are made better by the sort of low-key progressiveness that is not new to EO, under its eyebrow-raising surface--characters will positively muse about the dissolution of enforced gender roles or catch themselves racially profiling others and swearing to do better, and it's just part of the fabric of the world and its peoples like the rest of the game.
- the labyrinth. There just aren't enough good things to say about the feel of moment-to-moment exploration in V. After III and IV's expansion of the series's concept of a single explorable megastructure in their own ways, V's return to the original model may nominally seem like a regression. What it does is give every dungeon concept its due through several iterative steps, in ways where no idea is left unexplored or undercooked. At its best and most tense, V's labyrinths play out like dense dynamic puzzles, with slim margins for error but with room to breathe nonetheless between a rock and a monstrous place. The wild inventiveness never really stops, and at its strongest the game serves up some truly dazzling layouts and navigational means. It's one of the best dungeon-crawling experiences the series has ever accomplished, especially in this latter era when marathon endurance treks have diminished in favour of a different brand of a more peaks-and-valleys structure and challenge. In that context, EOV is unbeatable.
- exploration events. This is, I think, the more recognized aspect of the series's writing strengths, and something that's been with it since the beginning: quiet little narratives in the corners of the labyrinth that play out like excerpts from a tabletop roleplaying session. III's innovation (if I recall) was to integrate your guild members by name into these episodes, creating contextually and personally significant narratives out of stock templates so effectively that it may as well have appeared as magic. V's twist on the formula is to absolutely litter its environments with these events, making the act of exploring its world a constantly surprising and delightful task even outside of the inherent joys of mapmaking itself. Its other no less than game-changing alteration is to serve up a summary and exp tally of each individual happening, neatly providing a bookend and a material reward both for attentive explorers. Like III's introduction of exp rewards for quests that made them more palatable for those that weren't satisfied with them purely because of narrative and item rewards before, so does V's adventure log create more incentives for players to engage with one of the primary appeals of the series at its core: the exploration of narratives both environmental and personal, and be rewarded for doing so.
- mindful hindsight. The series was almost a decade going when EOV was developed and released. Its arcs have taken it through iterative expansions, iconoclastic innovators and recontextualizing modernizers, and through all of these a certain iconography has been built up that makes Etrian Odyssey what it is. V's return to the series's roots, so to say, isn't just a call to nostalgia, but indicative and present factor in how it plays out and plays with series conventions. It may be a stratum that resembles a past one, like the Lucent Hollows to the Azure Rainforest. It may be a character resemblance, like Egar to Marion. It may even be larger thematic conceits, like the hidden nature of the world awaiting at the end of the journey, and the push beyond the beyond. Maybe it's just Lili and Solor, the two gay folk heroes of Iorys, who are surely a twist on the solemn watchers Ren and Tlachtga from the first game. Instead of inevitable tragedy, V chooses to spin its take towards catharsis and a hopeful future, and this is what's so crucial about the creative choices it makes with every bit of inheritance it carries with it: there's remodeling, reassessment and recontextualization. It's at once familiar and fresh, and the best possible incarnation of the series's holistic heritage in ways that aren't literally celebratory. As it is, it embodies the focus of EO1, the occasional cruelty of EO2, the creativity of EO3 and the sheer playability of EO4. Whether you read the series as having ended here or at Nexus, it plays out like a farewell note to everything that came to pass before it even as it adds its own wrinkles to its history.
I will conclude with some notes about the party that made it through the labyrinth. Usually I name my
EO guilds after friends, but this time I indulged some crossover fandom and made a very loosely-reasoned
Touhou-themed party. Oops!
Front row: Meiling the Barrage Brawler Pugilist, Tenshi the Cannon Bearer Dragoon, Youmu the Blade Dancer Masurao
Back row: Seiga the Spirit Broker Necromancer, Sanae the Divine Herald Shaman
There really was no plan initially for this bunch, I just did the usual and picked the portraits or classes that seemed interesting, and trusted it would sort itself out from there. And it did, more than I could've expected. I'm used to limping through
EO games with a sort of common confidence but no particular gift or effort as far as synergy and party composition, and here I thought it would be the same. As master classes unlocked, I spent some time retooling everyone to what seemed like an idea to pursue, and vets can probably guess what it was: all on Hell Slash, which I probably wouldn't even have paid attention to if I didn't think quad-wielding swords was inherently funny. After that, everyone just gelled into their roles to maximize Hell Slash's absurd damage output while maintaining survivability, and in effect it resulted in this team picking apart FOEs at threat level red on to the end of the game and into the bonus stratum. The final boss never got a move off because it was always bound and finished in a few rounds total.
I've never experienced such out-of-control bullying of ostensibly overpowering opposition, and it's a testament to the game's rock-solid design that I could stumble upon these tactics for myself, apply them, and still get an experience out of it that didn't by any means feel "broken" as a detriment to play. Beyond the specifics of the Hell Slash set-up, the basic rhythm and nature of exploration also tickled my preferences, with most standard battles solved through application of startlingly reliable mass poisons, and with an absence of a standard healer in favour of numerous in and out-of-battle passives stacking up to cover everyone. Even rid of the exploration context of the series,
EO combat at its best feels like few other RPGs do.
That's where I'm at now, a floor into the sixth stratum, which by all means seems surmountable by bumblers unlike most past
EO ultimate stratums, and I might pick away at it at my leisure. But for the most part,
Etrian Odyssey V is concluded for me, and I'm really, really happy that I could refresh on the series and my understanding of it through honestly engaging with what ended up being an excellent game.
