Etrian Odyssey

I'm looking to get into this series, where should I start?

I started with that one and it's pretty good.

4 is the most beginner friendly but will ruin the older games for you.

Start with 1 and enjoy the improvements through the series.

Avoid the Untold games.

Could you explain what's wrong with them? Should I just play the original games on the DS?

The are casualizations of the DS games with a shitty story that spoils the big twist of the series at the very start of the game. Also they're riddled with DLC, Untold 2 has cart locked dungeons on it that leave empty spots on the map unless you pay up like a good goy or pirate.

Alright, thanks. I'll put the ds games on my flashcart when I get the chance.

dungeon crawler thread?
anyone played bunny black?

As a guy who has played the original 1-4 and is currently going through Untold 1 rn, here's a bit to consider:

Adding "picnic" easy mode is casualization to a T, but they still have the old difficulty there under "veteran"

Re-balancing is an important point for E1:U. Most EtrianO1 guides will tell you to get a healer skill called immunization asap. It had a flat damage reduction of 20+% and I've seen it called essential many times. They nerfed this skill and rebalanced the game so you don't need a healer with this skill proc'd 24/7.

Storymode addition: You have the choice of classic (original way to play) and story for a save file. I wanted to go classic immediately, but they lock the best Katana (and a medal) behind storymode so my OCD wouldn't let me. You can NG+ between modes with characters carried over apparently.
Anyway, onto storymode-
I believe this is the biggest antithesis to what Etrian Odyssey originally was. , Etrian always felt special to me because it was a world that was a specific world set up with a specific set of rules, but no story to limit you or hamstring you along. In other words, it felt like it was set up for you to make your own story in.

In story mode you're locked to a group of 5 characters who I don't feel much for. Gameplaywise the party balance is solid, but you can't use any of the other classes because muh story-involved characters.

The actual story given is mediocre. The voice acting doesn't trigger my dub>subs mentality too hard, but it seriously irked me at first. They try to use it to add greater explicit context to a world that didn't really need it. One you get to floor ~20 you'll understand what I mean when I say that the environment itself tells the story fine. The game itself is fine, but the new story mode does it no favors.

Grimores come in from the newer games, they're alright. A neutral addition imo.

Quality of life changes are okay. Floor jump saves on redundancy, but can be abused to escape dangerous situations and it reduces the use of the formerly essential Ariadne Thread (escape rope). I don't feel much skipping over lower floors where I can easily autobattle through any encountered enemies.

Not sure how to feel about tweaking the maps yet. Seems like they reduced a bit of the complexity to some parts of the maps so far idk. It's been a while since EO1.

DLC existing shitty ~$10 overall, but I have a CFW so I can just pirate the free new bosses whenever

I'll keep all of this in mind as well. Maybe I'll play through the untold games after beating the original four games.

I have played it, but haven't finished it yet. I expected just an eroge game and not a full fledged rpg as well.

Dungeon Travelers is better than this trash.