I Finished Etrian Odyssey 1 HD

I couldn't finish this game on DS, but greatly enjoyed the HD remaster, which I played on Steam Deck.

Etrian Odyssey 1 HD on Steam

Wikipedia page about the Etrian Odyssey series

Things I liked

Automapping. God this was an irritating mandatory feature in the DS games. I much prefer having the game map walls and floors, while leaving me to annotate the rest.

Art Direction. The remaster is gorgeous. The monster art is kinda wonky, and the character art is a bit cringe, but the environments are gorgeous.

Vibes. This is a tremendously relaxing game. The soundtrack and environs are entrancing. The gameplay is straightforward and, even on expert, the main game is super easy. Great couch game.

Postgame Challenge. The postgame is surprisingly engaging, and tough as nails. I'm impressed with it.

Things I disliked

Not much, honestly. It would have been nice to rebalance the classes a bit, but I also enjoy being able to play the game in its initial incarnation.

For that reason, it was a bit strange to discover some abilities and other things had been arbitrarily rebalanced. The Medic's Healing Touch, for example, is way more useful now (for 5 skill points, you get an ability that heals your entire party to max in the field for 1TP. That's kind of ridiculous.) There are a few other cases of this.

Personally, I think the sticker price for this remaster is way too high. I got the collection at 50% off, which felt just about right.

I wish they'd released more DLC character images: I enjoyed using the DLC character art, even though I have no idea who they are. If there were ten of them instead of two, I would have happily paid 10USD for it, and that seems like pure margin.

Looking forward to trying the next two. I really hope the 3DS games get the same treatment, since they seem like much better videogames in general than the DS Etrian Odysseys.