Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl

Etrian Odyssey Untold is just an amazing remake: thanks to the new Story Mode and three different difficulties it will finally appeal to a wider audience, making both newcomers and veterans happy with tons of items, monsters and exploration.

Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl is not only a great example of how to remake a classic, it's also a fantastic game in its own right.

While I wouldn’t consider the game play to top the one present in the excellent EO 4, the addition of the Story Mode with some streamlining of the mapping process in the form of floor jumps makes this the most accessible, easily recommendable EO game release thus far.

In the end, Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl feels less like a remake and more like a full-fledged sequel.

As I said before, The Millennium Girl offers a fantastic opportunity for new players to dip their toes into Etrian Odyssey, as it provides the familiar sorts of characters we have grown to love in JRPGs while keeping intact the extremely strong foundations of the original game.

A robust, long, flexible and fascinating dungeon crawler and another gem in the huge 3DS catalogue.

If you like RPG games, this is a great experience and a wonderful remake, that adds not only improved visuals, but also loads of content.

With Etrian Odyssey Untold Millennium Girl, Atlus showed us all how a remake should be done, cramming a lot of quality content in a tiny cartridge and trying to keep happy both veterans of the franchise and newcomers.

The Etrian Odyssey series remains the pinnacle of the dungeon crawling series for the current generation. Though the game’s high difficulty and required vigilance will not appeal to more casual gamers, it is exactly those aspects that will keep the cartridge in many an RPG fans’ 3DS for months to come.

Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl is a fairly solid game. While the early going can be a bit rough since money might be more spent on healing than buying new weapons and armor, the game’s mechanics and Story Mode’s story elements still make for a fairly sold game. This is one that newcomers and veterans alike should enjoy.

On the surface, Etrian Odyssey Untold may look like a retread, but the enhancements made to the 2007 DS original are substantial enough for veteran players to give it a whirl, and the barrier of entry has been lowered so that anyone who calls themselves an RPG fan can find enjoyment.

In the end, the game’s best feature is how well it respects the player’s time. With some minor options tweaks, even boss battles can be lightning fast. Growing your characters and working out new strategies with Grimoire Stones is incredibly rewarding.

The Grimoire Stone system is too random to be consistently useful, and might make you miss out on a good chunk of Millennium Girl’s content. But what’s here is still some of the most difficult and rewarding turn-based battling you can find on the 3DS.

As magnificently, defiantly old-school as ever, Millenium Girl introduces enough new elements to come away feeling fresh and rarely compromised. [July 2014, p.81]

If you haven't tried the original Etrian Odyssey, this "remake/ re-imagining" is the perfect opportunity to experience the origins of this great franchise.

Etrian Odyssey Untold is a successful and well-executed remake which does a superb job at introducing the series to newcomers, as well as to rekindling the interest of its veterans. The game's enormous lifespan, its wide variety of locations and magnificent remastered soundtrack more than make for a rather simple narrative.

Not as good as the fourth part, but aficionados of cartography dungeon crawlers will without a doubt be drawn into the caves of this remake.

Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl revisits the first chapter in an novel way, adding some meaning to the quests through a story told from the perspective of involved characters. This remake also refreshes exploration with new tricks that venture into uncharted territories, and thus justifies another trip to Yggdrasil.

An excellent remake that makes the game vastly more accessible for newcomers, while still providing plenty of new features, and updated visuals, for existing fans.

A lengthy, and hugely enjoyable, first person dungeon romp.

An impressive remake of the first Etrian Odyseey, that adds a lot to the formula, preparing the franchise to a new story-driven evolution.

Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl is the very first remake which looks like a brand new game. Its hardcore mechanics are still there along with a good customization, the great visuals of Etrian Odyssey IV, and an entertaining story.

Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl has a limited audience. It exists for people who want to get into dungeon crawlers but find the mechanics confusing and the plots lacking.

Millennium Girl serves as an excellent example of how to refresh an old game and introduce it to a new audience. It keeps the basics that give the Etrian Odyssey series its identity, adds in the many improvements that have appeared in that series over its four entries, and provides new content, such as the redone labyrinth and Story Mode, to make the game feel fresh and new even to gamers who played the original.

The original Etrian Odyssey is remade with refined customization, enchanting visuals, and an intriguing story.

Fans of the JRPG genre who are looking for a challenge and aren’t bothered by the facepalm-worthy tropes will be delighted with the experience. This game won’t do much to capture anyone who isn’t already interested in the series with its very confusing mechanics and foreign gameplay structure.

A deep and hugely rewarding 3DS RPG that I'm more than happy to recommend.

At the end of the day, despite the enhancements, the core gameplay of Etrian Odyssey Untold is still likely to divide players.

Taken on its own Untold is a quality piece of work. Between its multiple modes and numerous difficulty settings, it really is the most accessible and flexible entry in the series: A great entry point to the series and genre, while offering something interesting for the seasoned player as well.

Etrian Odyssey Untold largely succeeds at marrying the series’ gameplay with a more narrative-driven adventure, creating a unique take on the traditional Etrian Odyssey formula, while the Classic mode ensures that longtime fans will not be alienated by the game’s new direction.

For me, this is an ideal remake. It keeps all the hardcore mechanics I love, gets rid of the ones I find tiresome, overhauls what needs to be improved, and leaves the right things alone. Any EO fan who isn't burned out should enjoy this game, and even if you're burned out it might be worth a shot thanks to the reduced rote activities.

That said, the original Etrian Odyssey was a rough, brutal and vaguely experimental experience that I managed to complete out of sheer tenacity. In contrast, Millennium Girl takes the same content and makes it a thousand times more beautiful, approachable, and enjoyable for an all-new audience.

An enjoyable nostalgia trip for Etrian Odyssey veterans. Etrian Odyssey Untold's tedium-reducing improvements elevate it above the original game, and for first-timers, it's the best entry point in the series.

No matter how you play it, you'll cherish your time with The Millennium Girl - even if you occasionally find the journey to be more hassle than fun.

Millennium Girl won’t change how you feel about Etrian Odyssey, but it may open the door for further improvement.

It’s a far better introduction to the peculiar designs of this superb cult series.

With the likes of Bravely Default, Fire Emblem and Etrian Odyssey IV already being readily available on the console, Untold is more of a curiosity; a remake of a game that people can already play on the console that plays classically well, but ultimately feels a little limited for any but the faithful.

In the end, Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl serves as a worthy introduction (or reintroduction for longtime fans) to the hardcore RPG series.

The game does a generally solid job of educating the uninformed on how to manage the extensive skill set necessary to prevent shattering Nintendo's latest handheld in frustration.