Etrian Odyssey Nexus

As I age, my appetite for unforgiving, hardcore game experiences has predictably diminished. It’s true that these days, I’m forced to be very selective about the time I dedicate to this hobby, and so it isn’t often that I’ll opt for an experience that entails many hours of dedication, slow progress, and the opportunity to be met with a Game Over as a result of a single unlucky random battle.

For whatever reason, however, my loyalty to the Etrian Odyssey experience endures. Surely this is partially a result of my familiarity with the formula after having played nearly every previous installment in the series. But beyond that, there’s just something truly enticing about the no-nonsense, content-heavy, gameplay-focused design that underlies it. This is a game (series) intentionally light on story but positively laden with deep strategic motifs, emphasizing the attention to detail and the careful crafting of your characters and their respective equipment. And, of course, like all Etrian games, Nexus even requires you to draw your own maps (or, at least, to annotate and fill them in as you explore, depending on which setting you choose).

Etrian Odyssey Nexus is, unsurprisingly, officially the final installment for the aging 3DS, a system now in its twilight years and exiting the spotlight after a lengthy and successful run. It’s a bittersweet milestone that’s also an inflection point for the franchise, as it’s one of the only games which practically requires the availability of two screens and touchscreen functionality given the complexity of the labyrinths the player is tasked with navigating and the constant need to trace one’s path as they explore.

Fittingly, Nexus distills many of the best features, ideas, environments, and musical pieces from the entirety of the series into one gargantuan adventure. Whereas most EO games feature roughly six dungeons (usually with around five floors each), there are more than a dozen labyrinths in this game to explore, nearly all of which feature three or more floors. Eight of these are returning environments from previous EO games, and while the layouts, stories, and other elements are entirely new, the music, enemies, and even bosses are lifted from those previous games. That means that, apart from those taken from EO3 (which never received an Untold-style 3DS remake), none of the assets for those returning areas are new.

But the new areas are quite large, interesting, and heavily imbued with gameplay gimmicks that render their exploration at least somewhat unique. What’s more, all of the missions are dotted with permutations and little surprises that shake up the gameplay in various ways, such as (for example) being carried off and stranded in a particular labyrinth with only a tent as a temporary base. There are myriad companions that provide their own individual modifications to the missions and serve as an added sprinkle of story to an otherwise mostly solitary and gameplay-focused expedition as well.

Nexus (re-)introduces a world map of sorts to help tie together the disparate labyrinths along with some other perks throughout (mini-dungeons, camp sites, resource gathering points, and so on). But apart from that, the primary mission is the same as always: dive in and explore—carefully, strategically, incrementally. Operations are still centrally-based out of a single town: in this case, the town of Maginia, from which the Princess Persephone has issued a royal decree summoning explorers from around the world to investigate a valuable hidden treasure in the region. Of course, at the center of this world lies the omnipresent Yggdrasil, a tree whose branches overlook the surrounding islands, eerily calling out to those intrepid adventurers who dare persist.

The difficulty seems fairly consistent with the rest of the series, which is to say, it’s not easy. But as usual, there is a difficulty slider, and the lower settings provide a single mulligan option in the event that the player is defeated while exploring and wishes to continue just before their death. There are some pretty jarring early moments, such as the two back-to-back first bosses (!!), separated only by a forced save point and a (necessary) full party heal. There is nothing forgiving about Etrian Odyssey, and it’s all the better for it.

Some 19 starting classes for characters are available, and the player has full reign over which ones she brings to the action. Most of these seem disproportionately offense-heavy, and only one of them is new (Hero). Still, there’s a wide range of options and combinations available for practically any play style, and while not everyone will bother doing so, switching up the party is heavily incentivized by the game’s challenges—as well as the fact that EXP sharing is implemented (via an accessory) at the very start of the adventure.

Subclasses also make a return, which essentially means that each character can carry two separate classes. Respeccing characters is also relatively inexpensive time-wise; you lose a couple of levels and in return get to reallocate all of your skill points.

In terms of presentation, Yuzo Koshiro’s soundtrack is, as ever, magnificent, with the highlights in this case being the EO3 covers—a poignant reminder of the fact that we never got a true Untold remake of the original game. Visuals are neither better nor worse than previous games, but there’s only so much that can be done on the 3DS anyway. Not much else has changed since the previous 3DS entries, but then again, there’s nothing particularly broken about the formula, either. Each new installment shakes up the story, organization, classes, and gimmicks enough to stand apart from previous games, but there is still nothing else quite like EO on the market, so it has all the rights to continue to drive home what’s already proven successful so many times as long as it still feels fresh to the audience.

Naturally, the game isn’t perfect, even if it could be accurately described as the ultimate EO experience for series veterans (perhaps based solely on nostalgia and its cherry-picking of Best Of elements). It’s best enjoyed over a protracted period of time, ideally interstitially alongside other games. That’s because a number of the (earlier) environments do carry the same sort of forested feel, and even some of the gimmicks are reused in some way or another. But the sheer fact that with each new labyrinth (again, a few floors apiece) comes new enemies, new bosses, and new music absolutely does help.  Finally, balance is also not necessarily one of the game’s strong points, with difficulty spiking in some areas and ebbing conspicuously in others, and the choice of classes and associated items a little bit lopsided.

But it’s all easy to overlook once you’re off on your adventure—enjoyed in moderation, of course. EO continues to captivate me even in spite of my relative laziness and general lack of time in adulthood; Nexus is the perfect swan song to close the chapter of its life on the 3DS. Let’s hope it finds a way to make ends meet with only a single display in its transfer to Switch (or wherever else), because this is a classic dungeon-crawling RPG series that deserves to live on.