Etrian 1:Etrian Mystery Dungeon

This Etrian Mystery Dungeon page is about the first title in the Etrian Mystery Dungeon series. For the list of available games in the series, see Etrian:Etrian Mystery Dungeon (series).

Etrian Mystery Dungeon 世界樹と不思議のダンジョン World Tree and Mysterious Dungeon
Information Developer(s) Spike Chunsoft Publisher(s) : Atlus : Atlus : NIS America : NIS America Platform(s) Nintendo 3DS Genre(s) Roguelike, Role-playing Mode(s) Single player Version 1.0
Release date(s) March 5, 2015 April 7, 2015 September 11, 2015 September 17, 2015
Rating(s) CERO B ESRB E10+ ACB PG PEGI 12
Additional info File Size 4,312 blocks (Download Version)

Etrian Mystery Dungeon (Japanese: 世界樹と不思議のダンジョン, World Tree and Mysterious Dungeon) is the first entry in the Etrian Mystery Dungeon series. It was released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2015. On December 3, 2014, Atlus later announced the game would receive an English release later in 2015.

Gameplay

The game features the character customization and character class system from the Etrian Odyssey series, and the dungeon crawling from the Mystery Dungeon series; the player's party, which is made up of custom-made characters, ventures into randomly generated multi-floor dungeons, with the objective to reach the end of each dungeon. Only the party leader is directly controlled by the player, while the other characters follow along, attacking enemies and providing support. The game is turn-based; each time the player performs an action, including moving one space on the map, attacking, or using an item, enemies will also move or attack. When the player's party is not engaged in combat, each turn the party makes will make the characters' health regenerate a little, but will also make their hunger go up.

There are various classes to choose from during character creation, which determine the characters' roles in the party: for instance, the Protector class has a high defense stat and is capable of attracting the attention from enemies who might otherwise attack the other characters, the Medic class is capable of healing or reviving wounded characters, and the Gunner class specializes in ranged attacks and is capable of "binding" enemies' body parts, thereby hindering them from moving or attacking.

If the player gets a game over, their party is sent back to the town outside the dungeons; additionally, the player loses all their in-game money and items. However, if the player has set up a manned fortress in the dungeon, they can attempt to lead the characters from the fortress to the fallen party, and attempt to rescue them.

Some enemies, referred to as D.O.E.s, are much stronger than normal enemies, and will attempt to escape the dungeon and attack the town outside. If they succeed, the player will get a game over, and certain facilities in the town will be destroyed and rendered unusable by the player for some time; it is up to the player to protect the town by fighting these enemies. When doing so, the player may set up various kinds of fortresses, some of which will buff the party's stats. These fortresses can either be left empty, or be manned by the player's characters. Even empty fortresses can be used as a way of protecting the town from D.O.E.s; if the D.O.E. manages to destroy a fortress, it will stop its attempt at reaching the town, and return to the bottom floor of the dungeon.

Development

The game was developed by Spike Chunsoft and Atlus, the developers of the Mystery Dungeon and Etrian Odyssey series, respectively, with most of the actual development done at Spike Chunsoft, while Atlus acted as supervisors. The game was directed by Yukari Yokoro and Seiichiro Nagahata, and produced by Shigeo Komori. Background designs were handled by Nizo Yamamoto, while character design was split between Kaoru Hasegawa who designed the character classes, and Shin Nagasawa who designed the enemies; additionally, some character designs from previous Etrian Odyssey games, done by Yuji Himukai, were brought back for Etrian Mystery Dungeon.

During development, both the companies would continuously share their most recent data on a shared server, and discuss details of the game direction using an instant messaging program; additionally, they would hold weekly meetings during which they made various arrangements for the game, and every month during development, Spike Chunsoft would send their latest playable build to Atlus, who would check the direction the game was going in.

Character classes that were brought in from the two series had to be carefully considered in order to maintain game balance and to avoid overlap with other classes; for instance, the Gunner class was chosen to be the "ranged attacker" class of the game rather than the similar Survivalist class—a class introduced in the first Etrian Odyssey game—as the Survivalists in addition to their ranged attacks have several skills that assist with dungeon exploration, and thus would overlap with the abilities of the Wanderer class - a class based on the player character in the Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer series. Another class that was considered for the "ranged attacker" role was the Arbalist—a class from Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City—but due to its high damage output it would have been very difficult to balance the game had it been included. Another factor in choosing the Gunner was that it already was a popular class in the Etrian Odyssey series, and had been made into figurines in Japan.

Localization

Atlus USA, the American subsidiary of Atlus, began work on an English localization of the game before development had finished, resulting in an English release only a month after the original Japanese release. According to an interview with Atlus USA localization editor Nich Maragos and PR manager John Hardin, this was "kind of a hassle" because of the risk of having to redo localization work as the developers make changes to the game, but ultimately worth it since they could release the game in English much sooner than had they waited for development to finish.

Music

The game's score was composed and arranged by Yuzo Koshiro, with Takeshi Yanagawa arranging an additional 10 tracks. In addition to new compositions, the soundtrack also includes arranged music from previous Etrian Odyssey games. An original soundtrack release, titled Sekaiju to Fushigi no Dungeon Original Sound Track, was published by 5pb. Records and released in Japan on April 22, 2015.

Release

The game was released by Atlus on March 5, 2015, in Japan, and on April 7 in North America. The game was published in Europe by NIS America on September 11.

The first print of the Japanese release came bundled with a copy of an Etrian Mystery Dungeon themed issue of Marukatsu Super Famicom—a Japanese video game magazine that had not been in print since its final issue 23 years previously—titled Marukatsu Super Famicom 2015 Revival Edition, including 52 pages of information and artwork related to the game, as well as a soundtrack CD with six songs from the game. Similarly, the first print of the North American release came with a set of bonus items titled "The Sights and Sounds of Mystery", which includes a soundtrack CD with rearranged versions of six songs from the game; a 28-page book with artwork from the game as well as information intended to help the player with forming their party in the game; and a box that holds the game and the items.

Players of the North American version were able to get five pieces of downloadable content for free during the first month following the game's release. Since the end of that period, the content is available for purchase for players who did not download it during the first month.

Delist

Etrian Mystery Dungeon was delisted on Nintendo 3DS in Australia and North America some time between April 13th and July 12th, 2020. The game was confirmed to be available as late as April 13th when it was featured in an Atlus sale on the 3DS eShop. Atlus’ own webpage for the game was last confirmed to be accessible on June 3rd, after which the game was submitted to our site on July 12th.

Etrian Mystery Dungeon was likely delisted due to the end of a licensing deal between Atlus and Sega, who own and publish the Etrian Odyssey series, and Spike Chunsoft, creators of the Mystery Dungeon series. The game was next delisted in Europe between August and September of 2020. As of October 2020 the game remains available exclusively in Japan.

Relisting & Second Delisting

Etrian Mystery Dungeon reappeared on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in North America no later than April 29th, 2021 when it was submitted to the site. However, by May 18th, 2021 another reader noticed that the game had been removed from the 3DS eShop. Attempting to purchase it through Nintendo.com returned the error “this content is currently unavailable”. It is unclear if the delisting was intentional or if the game may yet return to sale. The original delisting details follow.

Reception

The game has been mostly positively received, with an aggregate score of 77/100 on Metacritic.

Famitsu gave the game a score of 34/40 in their review, with the sub-scores 8, 8, 9, and 9.

Sales

Etrian Mystery Dungeon was the second highest selling video game in Japan during its opening week, with 65,226 copies sold and 91.96% of the initial shipment sold out.

Categories

All content about Etrian Mystery Dungeon is organized into these categories. Click on a section name to learn more, and to drill down further to more specific and detailed pages.

Categories about Etrian Mystery Dungeon
Classes	Information on classes available in the game.
Gameplay Elements	Information on aspects of the game that make it unique from other games in the series and other roguelikes.
Guides	Topics of interest to help players master this challenging game.
	Introduction to Basic Gameplay (Etrian Odyssey)
Items	Information on all items.
Locations	Detailed pages for all dungeons and other locations.
	Towns
	Dungeons
Monsters	Information on all monsters.
	Special Enemies	Details on all bosses and special enemies.
NPCs	Information on the NPCs that can be found in towns and dungeons.
Quests	All the various story related, post game and side quests you can do.
	Side Quests
	Post-Story Quests
Other	General pages that don't fit in other categories.
Community	Miscellaneous interesting stories, challenges and archived information from the Etrian 1 player community.
Removed and Unused content	Documentation on removed, scrapped, unused, inaccessible, dummied out content and features.

Gallery

For this subject's image gallery, see Gallery:Etrian Mystery Dungeon.

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  The Japanese cover art.

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  The English cover art.

In other language

Language			Name
English			Etrian Mystery Dungeon
Japanese			世界樹と不思議のダンジョン, World Tree and Mysterious Dungeon