Etrian Odyssey HD Collection - Switch Review

[Jonasbrother]

Platform: Nintendo Switch
My Grade: D+

Anyone who reads my reviews knows that I love the switch, and that I’m a bit of a sucker for RPG’s and dungeon crawlers. It’s no secret - I’m constantly looking for new games of the genre I haven’t yet tried on the platform. My desire to acquire every Final Fantasy title physically for the NSW led me to importing some games from the international market, the only market some of which titles are available in cartridge format. I became curious about the prospect of importing a different game from the asian market; but this time, I wanted to venture out of my comfort zone and try something completely unknown. Combine these elements and you have key ingredients that led me to import this game from China: the Etrian Odyssey HD Collection.

Certainly the marketing for this game, while sparse in its English translations, made it seem like a slam-dunk. First person dungeon exploration and battles, complete with strafing around corners, much like an old Commodore 64 or Amiga dungeon crawler. Customizable parties. Beautiful art. Then the gimmick that throws this concept over the top - as you explore the dungeons, you’ll use a stylus to draw your own maps of the dungeons you can explore! Originating on the Nintendo DS, this seemed like a concept that would translate to NSW without a hitch. It was intriguing enough for me to pay the import taxes and buy both this game and the “official” Nintendo Switch stylus to try it out. An innovative design and an excuse to buy a neat peripheral that goes along with it- what could go wrong?

Well, to put it simply a lot. Before I even begin to criticize the game itself, which is flawed in many ways in it’s own right- this does NOT translate well to Nintendo Switch. I’ve read other reviews of people praising the implementation here. They are deluded. Even on a full size Nintendo switch, with the “official stylus”, you will struggle to draw precise walls and place icons to create the dungeon maps you want. It’s straight up bordering on broken. It’s so frustrating to map out dungeons that I often found myself entering in the bare minimum of detail possible. This will screw you later when you get lost, but fumbling with drawing the maps is such an exercise in futility, it might honestly be quicker to just brute force your way through blind half the time! If you want to know just how much the developers knew this system was completely wretched, the in-game menu gives you option to change where your touch input registers. For example, if you know your touch inputs are constantly coming out right of where you want to draw, you can correct the pen to draw some pixels to the left, to try and compensate and correct the faulty inputs. This doesn’t work whatsoever and fixes nothing. You can tell QA just threw their hands up and was like “this is the best we could come up with”. The touch input is so wrong it’s not going to consistently be wrong on one side, so ultimately it's a solution that does little to remedy ease of use issue.

So right off the bat, a main component and selling feature of this game is broken. Not a great start. But you don’t need to use the map system to beat the game, at least much. How about that 3D first person point of view that looked so cool in the trailers? Well, if you use the screen setup that maximizes the game’s first person POV, the dungeon map becomes smaller to compensate for the loss of screen real estate. But the first person perspective is garbage. Other than showing turns and dead ends, it gives you no indication of where you’re going or where you’ve been. Scenery doesn’t change except occasionally floor to floor. YOU NEED to use the games map. There’s no two ways about it. The game’s map system is abhorrent, and you’ll need to use it. Not only will you need to use it, most of the time, that stupid map is going to take up what’s onscreen. The First person POV adds next to nothing, I’m sorry but it’s true.

On top of all that, the actual RPG underlying all of this is what I would call at best, an absolute slog of a grandest, and at worst, miserable and borderline unplayable. I spent about 40 hours on this, didn’t even complete the first game, and said “enough” already! So much of this game’s content relies on backtracking to previous dungeon floors and back to home base, gearing up, and going back out to explore more dungeon again. Except most of the time, you won’t be seeing anything new, you’ll be spending most of your HP and MP points slogging through the same areas you’ve already been before just to get to the good part! Again, the idea of going deeper into an endless dungeon is good in concept, until you actually start doing the math on what that means. I remember the first week I got this game, describing it to my girlfriend and having her say “that sounds *really* repetitive”, and you know what, it is! It’s no fun! This is not a fun game. I spent so much time leveling up, grinding stats, thinking “when my party gets to X level” or “when I learn X attack”, this game is really going to start getting fun…. But it never does! Even when your characters learn a new attack, there’s no special animation showing the damage it does, no cool sound effects, no payoff. It’s just a larger number on a screen. Then I reached a realization. This isn’t even really a game, it’s a simulation of a game. The heroes in your party are just static images. They don’t move and all talk is through text. The entire story is text. Most of the game is just navigating menus, staring at a map screen, grinding through an endless gauntlet of repeated enemies, and fumbling around with the Switch’s awful touch functionality while pretending you’re having fun. All while the grading, same-y music drones on in the background the entire time. I’ve had more fun playing around with a baseball simulator than this pathetic excuse of a game!

I had lots of friends at school who would play stuff like this growing up. I thought there was something I was missing. I would look over their shoulders and see them navigating menus, thinking “I’m not smart enough for this now. When I’m older, I’ll appreciate these kinds of games.” Well, 15 years later, and I’m putting those feelings to rest. You’ve got to be an *expletitive* NERD to play this! Complete with endless hours of mind numbing gameplay, this is the type of game I’d give to prisoners just to torment them. Etrian Odyssey HD collection is a game is so boring it will make you want to open a book.

I took a cursory look at some of the sequels included on the cartridge and after finding art in both sequels reused from previous entries within the first 5 minutes, that about told me all of what I needed to know. At this point, after 40 hours, I’ve seen what I’ve needed to see. It’s all the same mediocre product.

Etrian Odyssey HD collection is a great example of a game that illustrates exactly why American audiences aren’t always totally wrong when it comes to matters of taste. Nothing was lost by the fact this game didn’t sit on store shelves here. I said what I said.

[BlasteroidAli]

It is an interesting review for a game series I had never heard of. I had a look on steam, where it has some really positive reviews. Then I saw two things that shocked me. Atlus and Sega. Atlus are known to me to make amazing ideas in games but a lack of playability. Sega, the fallen hero of gaming. I avoid both. Looking at the screenshots on steam, the game looks to be a great DS game. The dual screen aesthetic would work extremely well on DS, which was superb for odd games. So it would have the top screen for the map, use the stylus for that, and the bottom screen for the fake 3d. Aping games for old, which used the single screen approach to 3d. It is a shame to hear that it did not work that well on Switch.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1868180/Etrian_Odyssey_HD/

We both like RPGs. So can I suggest this 3 or 4 hour game based around the same idea. Crypt of the Serpent King Remastered 4K Edition. I played it on Xbox 1 Series X and can say it was a good, fun game. Short-lived, but I would assume it does everything that EOHC wanted to do. Oh, it is 2.49 over here in the UK, so it will not break the bank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY2sRztAumU&ab_channel=eastasiasoft
East Asia Soft. They produce a lot of mobile type games which are fun for about 2 hours.

[MaverickMoPete]

Looking at the screenshots on steam, the game looks to be a great DS game. The dual screen aesthetic would work extremely well on DS, which was superb for odd games. So it would have the top screen for the map, use the stylus for that, and the bottom screen for the fake 3d.

It was a great DS game(s). Etrian Odyssey was created for the DS, hence the two-screen setup.

And Sega's name is only on it now because they own Atlus.

[BlasteroidAli]

Looking at the screenshots on steam, the game looks to be a great DS game. The dual screen aesthetic would work extremely well on DS, which was superb for odd games. So it would have the top screen for the map, use the stylus for that, and the bottom screen for the fake 3d.

It was a great DS game(s). Etrian Odyssey was created for the DS, hence the two-screen setup.

And Sega's name is only on it now because they own Atlus.

Thanks for that. I did think it looked like a DS game. A great system until I spilt sprite on mine. Then it died. Boo hoo for me.