Classic dungeon crawlers Etrian Odyssey 1-3 are heading to PC
Nintendo DS JRPG classics coming at you
The Etrian Odyssey series is a huge blindspot for me, and I imagine many others. They're a series of dungeon crawling JRPGs in which you pilot a party of adventures through first-person, grid-based mazes and turn-based battles. Now is your chance to fill the gap in your knowledge: the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection is headed to PC on June 1st.
Here's a trailer for the announcement shown during last night's Nintendo Direct, which featured a lot of news relevant to us PC players:
If you're familiar with Legend of Grimrock or older PC examples of the genre, then you know what to expect. You'll explore a dungeon, battle enemies, gather and manage your party's equipment, then head back to town to sell what you don't need. Where Etrian differs from its modern genremates is that mapping the dungeon you're exploring doesn't happen automatically - but it doesn't rely on you owning a stack of graph paper, either. Instead, you draw the map using in-game tools as you explore.
These remasters feature full mouse support, remastered graphics and soundtrack, quality-of-life improvements to save slots and difficulty selections and more.
Unfortunately the prices might seem a little steep for a set of former Nintendo DS games. Currently the collection will cost you £72.33/$80.37 on Steam, but that's with a 33% discount. The individual games, meanwhile, cost £35.99/$39.99. They're long games and reportedly excellent games, so perhaps that's a fair price, but it's not on-a-whim 'sure I'll give it a shot' money, is it.