So you like dungeon crawlers, do you? You like to go into the depths of horror. Fire off a bow. Do a few magic spells. Maybe get back to town to sell some goods before you die. It’s not an easy life, but it’s the one you chose for you and your companions. You even have a pre-written obituary for each of the idiots who thought you could help keep them alive.
It’s a great genre. We all love it. Numbers going up is fun. And, based on the chatter on the information superhighway, Diablo 4 is the current king of dungeon crawlers. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s Diablo! Diablo has always been mostly, usually, sometimes good. Diablo 4 feels like it’s finally living up to the full potential of the series with its open world and quest structure that feels like you’re actually exploring a real place rather than riding on rails.
But it’s the strategy and need for clever planning at the higher difficulty levels that makes the game shine. It’s you versus the Butcher, and whether you put points into your skeleton mages or skeleton warriors could have a massive difference. Every choice could result in your success or your death. Every wrong step could spell doom for your beloved Necromancer. Too bad Etrian Odyssey puts all that shit to shame. It shames it so hard.
If you haven’t played Etrian Odyssey or its numerous sequels, good news: They’ve just released a collection of the first three games for PC and the Switch. It’s three games for $80. Is it worth it? I don’t know. The games were originally made for the Nintendo DS. They don’t look amazing in HD. If your ability to discern the value of a game is based on whether or not it uses ray-tracing that you’ll turn off for performance mode anyway, this doesn’t have it. If your ability to discern the value of a game that hates you as much as you hate yourself, Etrian Odyssey is the way to go.
Let me back up. Etrian Odyssey and its sequels are turn-based dungeon crawlers in which you create a team based on different classes. As the series goes on the classes get weirder, but in the first one you’ve got pretty standard classes such as Landsknecht (warrior), Troubadour (bard), and Medic (uh, medic). Why are they mostly named strange shit? Because the game is letting you know every step of the way will be weird, delicious suffering.
Speaking of which, you’re expected to map the dungeon yourself. This isn’t some ‘fog of war’ shit that reveals the locations of everything as you jog around a crypt. Sure, you can use an auto-mapping mode in Etrian Odyssey, but that basically just marks down walls you pass. Anything interesting, any quest markers, any locations to come back to: That’s all up to you, douchebag. You get lost in a magical tree, that’s on your ass. Oh, and the menu for marking your map looks like Mario Maker threw up on a cartographer.
But it looks so cute! Don’t let Etrian Odyssey fool you. It’s a trap. The game has this cheerful, kids’ anime look to it that’s going to throw you off. You’re going to think, “Everyone in the town likes me! What jaunty music? It’s a city with only five shops! It’s like Saugerties, New York!” When you walk into the dungeon the first time, you’re not greeted by dank stone corridors; you walk into a lush, bright forest that seems to welcome you with open arms. Except those arms have a fucking knife and they’re going to use it on you and your family.
You know how Diablo 4, even at the most trying moments, gives you a sense of power? When you first walk out in the opening hours of the game, you feel like you’re the chosen one. Sure, you might get close to, but even at level one, you can feel the power to fight demons flowing through you. You’re a baby god, about to become the most powerful whatever in all of Sanctuary. Soon, even the Prime Evils will remember your birthday. You probably won’t die the first time for an hour or two. Etrian Odyssey will kill you in the tutorial.
The quest that kicks off the game is mapping the first level of the dungeon. It’s not a big level, either. Theoretically, you could walk down a few corridors, map out what needs mapping, and then return to the village. If you were cruising, this tutorial might be all of 15 minutes.
Except you’re not cruising. You’re dying. The very first enemies are adorable little creatures such as moths and bunnies. They will destroy your ass. The first time a rabbit takes off 3/4 of your tank’s health in one attack, you realize that this isn’t going to be a walk in the park - despite the game starting with a literal walk in a park. The first time I played this game, it took me four tries to finish the tutorial. And that was after realizing I had to map a little, run home and heal, map a little, run home and heal, and then map a little more. All for the very first quest in the game.
Diablo 4 is far more user friendly. And good for it! It wants you to have a good time. You can even adjust where the health bar is if your wittle eyes pwefer it in the middle of the scween. Etrian Odyssey’s quality of life features include that the game loads and the game saves.
Don’t get me wrong: Both are great games. And to be fair, they seem very different. It might sound like I’m comparing apples to oranges, but both of those are fruit. They’re actually pretty easy to compare. That phrase means absolutely nothing. I just think it’s funny that Diablo 4 sells itself as this hardcore, dark, edgy journey into darkness - while Etrian Odyssey is one of the most hardcore games I’ve ever played. Even more hardcore than Diablo on hardcore.
Etrian Odyssey wants you to have a bad time while it tells you in graphic detail what it did with your mom last night. My Landsknecht that specializes in swinging axes was killed by a mole who happened to hit him once after I forgot to heal 5 HP from the last battle. And this is just the beginning of the game. As it goes on it hates you more and more, as if by giving Atlus money, you’ve proven yourself a worthless coward. God I love it. God I hate it.