Etrian Odyssey, a great series of Atlus-brand dungeon-crawler JRPGs which often takes a backseat to bigwigs like Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, has finally made the leap to PC and Switch.
The Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection is now available on Steam and the Switch eShop for a fairly eye-watering $80. That's technically a good deal given that the three games included cost $40 each, but it's not like those prices were set by mother nature. That being said, these are HD remakes of the original three Etrian Odyssey games from the Nintendo DS days, and I'm here to tell you that they're really freakin' good.
Etrian Odyssey is a bunch of old-school, first-person, turn-based dungeon-crawlers that put a hardcore and amusingly literal spin on the genre. You are gonna crawl through these dungeons one tile at a time, and you're gonna like it. You'd also better enjoy painstakingly mapping out every wall, trap, treasure chest, and enemy in that dungeon – or maybe you won't and you'll just turn on the new auto-mapping feature which really would've helped this series' appeal back in the day.
Between detailed mapping, party management, frankly ridiculous skill trees, and a kick-in-the-teeth difficulty curve, these games are extremely complicated and unapologetically harsh. There's a lot of combat with random encounters, which means a lot of ways to die, hence why this series has an almost Darkest Dungeon-grade cult around it. But if you can learn to love the pain, or you, like me, actually prefer for your JRPGs to kick you in the teeth, you'll find a near-bottomless pit of uniquely rewarding progression.
The best part? The PC ports seem to be quite good based on early Steam reviews. If I've somehow convinced you to take the plunge, I'd argue that you really only need to play the third game because it's the best one and has the most stuff, plus you can always play the rest later if you desperately want more. Just don't say I didn't warn you; these games have zero chill. If you're coming from the PC ports of Persona 3 Portable, 4 Golden, or 5 Royal, expect an incomparably unfair experience.
One of Square Enix's most underrated JRPGs could get a long-awaited sequel if its own remake sells well enough.
