Of all the Nintendo-related news to tumble out of Japan this week, I’m most excited about Etrian Odyssey IV, the 3DS debut of Atlus’ map-drawing, F.O.E.-fighting, soul-crushing RPG series. While we’ve only seen a few details of the game, what little the company has revealed (both through a Weekly Famitsu spread and a short video trailer at Japan’s Nintendo Direct press conference) indicates this entry has the potential to bring a cult-favorite series to a wider audience than ever before.
For starters, it’s a much more modern-looking game this time around. Sure, it’s still a first-person dungeon-crawler, and as ever it looks to be patterned after early ’80s RPGs like Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale — not exactly the sort of thing that’s likely to blow past Dance Central and Modern Warfare on the NPD charts. But the game looks considerably more immersive on 3DS, and not only because it includes 3D effects. The static sprites that represented monsters in the DS iterations are now animated polygonal beasts that stalk players through the dungeon exploration mode — no more abstract balls of color to represent its roaming F.O.E. super-bosses. The bottom screen remains a do-it-yourself mapping sheet with which players chart their own progress, but the action on the upper screen is much more dynamic and lively than in previous chapters.
