The Longest Grind 04 - Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl

You Can Have Your Story, I’m Staying Classic

The highlighted item with Etrian Odyssey Untold is its new Story Mode, where the developers flesh out the story initially set from the first Etrian Odyssey with animated anime cut-scenes produced by Madhouse (I think) with voice acting dialogue. There’s even set of classes, weapons, armor, and bosses only found in story mode. I played Untold’s Story Mode for one hour before I immediately stopped. While it’s nice to have a vague story fleshed out (something I wished as I played through the final phase of the game), I was miffed that I run into the labyrinth with my guild of characters. I didn’t expect Untold’s Story Mode to go so slow at the start (lengthy introductory movie with dialogue) and locking you in with set characters. I hoped Story Mode went more like adding the story/detail as I went along, not a full-on locked in ride.

Luckily, Classic Mode fits what I was looking for in Untold, giving me the ability to compile a party of five from numerous classes and immediately run out to explore the labyrinth with reckless abandon. It’s also nice that the user interface from Etrian Odyssey IV is completely carried over to Untold, so I had no problems navigating through Untold’s numerous menus.

Streamlining the Adventure

As I wrapped up my adventure in Untold and starting to gather my thoughts on the game, I picked up that Untold streamlined/condensed some mechanics from IV as well as adding in a few new mechanics to help pacing and adding flexibility to the player in exploring the labyrinth and in battle. I was largely indifferent with most of the tweaks as I feel they didn’t significantly change how I went about Untold from IV.

I’ll highlight a few of Untold’s tweaked/new mechanics that I had the biggest reactions to from my experiences between it and IV.

Grimoire Stone

A “new” feature highlighted on the packing of Untold, it’s essentially a revised version of IV’s Sub-Class mechanic. While I love the Grimore Stone mechanic on paper, its execution in Untold falls a bit flat. IV allowed the player to assign one sub-class to their characters, allowing the character access to a limited set of skills culled from another class they’re assigned to. It’s designed to help extend use of the character with access to another classes’ skills. (e.g. Assigning a Medic a Runemaster sub-class.) However, the character is locked in with one sub-class only with its limited skill tree. Running with Untold’s flexibility theme, Grimoire Stone allows the player to choose their skills of their liking through synthesis. This sounds like a great improvement on paper against IV’s sub-class mechanic.

Floor Jumps and Drinking Water Points

The new mechanics introduced in Untold that wasn’t featured in IV are the floor jump and drinking water points. These new features caused the biggest reactions to me because it was convenient… too convenient. When a player successfully reaches a stairway to the next floor down, they’ll have immediate access to jump back to that floor at any time. On one hand, it’s nice to immediately jump to a specific floor right then and there, useful in tackling Untold’s numerous side quests. On the other hand, this circumvents any challenge the player has to endure by having quick access to a floor whenever. IV forced the player to navigate the labyrinth’s floors again to get to the desired floor. You really don’t need to any around many Adrienne Threads at all in Untold! The only times floor jump is unavailable and the need to carry at least one Adrienne Thread is when the player has not reached the stairway to the next floor on the current floor being explored.

Untold’s other new mechanic is the drinking water point, once the player finds the point, their entire party recovers all of their HP and TP. It’ll also recover all of their HP and TP even when they’re knocked out! In IV, the only way to fully recover your party’s HP and TP is to stop in the inn, which costs money. In Untold, these drinking water points makes going to the inn almost irrelevant for recovery. The drinking water points also costs no money and the player can access it as many times as they want.

Take the two together and players will have an easily accessible fallback plan whenever their party is in trouble. No need to carry Adrienne Thread or use the inn to pay fees to revive KO members and restore full health. Just jump to the floor that has a drinking water point and your party is quickly back in full force.

Losing the Grand Adventure

It couldn’t be helped the Untold is a remake of the first game, as you’ll limited to going through that game’s floors. There’s no venturing the vast different lands featured in IV, which I really enjoyed. You’re just going through floor after floor in the lone labyrinth. Sure, there’s still the signature Etrian Odyssey-long elements found in each floor of Untold (the shortcut passages, memorizing the F.O.E.’s paths and patterns, events at specific spots in each floor) and a few floors had neat designs/challenges, but I felt slightly disappointed with Untold’s floor design overall. It didn’t quite capture the exciting experience I had going through IV’s floors. Of course, it doesn’t help that I came I riding so much on my experience with IV going into Untold.

No Resistance

My biggest disappointment with Untold comes with its boss and F.O.E. battles, in that most battles against them were shockingly easy. I managed to win against a majority of them, including the final boss, on my first try. Only a few bosses managed to knock my party out the first time, and a few more made it relatively tough, but I came away flabbergasted on how easy I defeated Untold’s numerous bosses and F.O.E.s. The final boss was one of the lamest final boss fights ever, as his move set rarely pitted me in any danger and won with ease. Sadly, the toughest boss fight I fought in Untold was one from a side quest. That particular boss fight is what I loved from IV’s F.O.E. and boss fights, where every boss move really tests your strategy and patience.

It’s No IV, But It’s Still Untoldly Good

To me, Untold doesn’t come close to my joyful experiences that Etrian Odyssey IV brought last year. In spite of all the complaints I wrote about Untold in this entry, it’s still a damn good game in its own right. The developers did a great job updating Etrian Odyssey I by integrating IV’s great UI onto it and implementing some novel mechanics to ease newcomers to the franchise while still delivering on the franchise’s hallmarks in party creation, map creation, and plenty of exploration for those who played any of the franchise’s other games.

I’ll also give the developers credit in putting in so much with Untold’s Story Mode with full on anime animated cut-scenes and full voice-acting for its characters. It’s clear that this is more than a lame update cash grab a ton of the HD Collection games that were released for the X360/PS3 generation. Unfortunately, the mode just wasn’t for me. It’s not “Etrian Odyssey” in my eyes.

Recommending – IV or Untold

If you want a distilled Etrian Odyssey experience or want to ease into the franchise, I’d lean folks over to play Untold first. I feel like the development team took into account how tough and overwhelming the Etrian Odyssey franchise can be to folks unfamiliar with its games and tweaked it to help them explore with a bit more ease.

Other that really want to experience Etrian Odyssey and the grand adventure with tons of dungeons to explore with tough and engaging battles, I’d tell folks to definitely go to IV. And if IV gets tough for anyone, you can adjust the difficulty on the fly. IV was that special game that I genuinely felt like I was going out on a long and exciting adventure with its fills of tough obstacles via excellent floor design and boss battles.

Au Revoir Spark Guild

• Protector Krauser
• Landsknecht Charlotte
• Dark Hunter Hilda
• Alchemist Kula
• Medic Fiona

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Thanks for reading. I had a tough time gathering my thoughts and squeezing in time this past week to get this blog post done. I apologize if this isn’t up to par with my other stuff, but I hope it was an interesting read at least.