Back from the dead.
One of the unfortunate casualties of the end of DS and 3DS eras was the death of games that were uniquely suited to the quirky dual-screened devices. The Etrian Odyssey series, the first three games of which are represented in the new Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection (also available separately) was a good example of this bespoke design, as you were presented with dungeon-crawling RPG adventures that required you to actively make maps using their stylus on the touch screen. So, how do these games play now on the Switch, a console that they clearly were designed made for? Pretty well, believe it or not! Though we would have liked Atlus to give these games a little more love for this re-release, all three games in the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection hold up quite well today.
In a rare subversion of typical RPG tropes, the story in each of these games is something that mostly takes a backseat. None of your characters individually ‘exist’ in the plot because each of them is custom-made and named by you, so the narratives mostly deal with broad ideas that could fit any party and character type. For example, the second game is about a legendary treasure held within a flying sky castle that can only be reached by entering the Yggdrasil labyrinth, while the third game is about a highly advanced city that sank into the ocean which can also only be accessed by delving into another maze. These games hardly feature dynamic plots packed with all kinds of twists and interesting characters, just basic premises and a whole lot of dungeon-crawling.
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