History VideoGame / EtrianOdysseyI

** There's no way to store your items -- this feature was only established in the second game, and then back-ported into the HD remaster.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:

** This game is the only one that incorporates a system where lower-level combatants will deal less and take more damage in addition to those done by stat disparities. This makes it difficult to bring your weaker characters up to speed.

** In the DS games and their ''HD'' remakes, magic-based elemental skills come in single- and AreaOfEffect flavors, with the first two games having skills that are basically just an existing single-target elemental attack but more powerful. The 3DS games, including the remakes of the first two games, introduce spells with element-specific multi-hit properties: Fire spells inflict SplashDamage to adjacent enemies, ice spells hit two enemies that are on two different lines, and thunder spells inflict damage to all enemies in the same row.

* BellyDancer: They use their dancing talents to empower their allies in combat as well as weaken the enemies, though their defense is low and thus are best placed in the backside.

** The passageways that [[DoorToBefore shorten return trips and can only be made two-way once they have been opened from the later-reached side]] do not have any sort of visual indicator in the wall geometry; they look just like the normal completely-impassable walls, and you only find out they are shortcuts when you face the wall and the "Inspect" prompt appears. Later games introduce subtle differences like a patch of flowers so that you can see them from more than a tile away, with markerless shortcuts only showing up in late strata.

* FlyingSeafoodSpecial: Corotrangul, a higly evolved manta ray that can hover in the air and take control of water as well as wind; it serves as the boss of Azure Rainforest. There's also an orange clownfish-like creature with blue fins that appears in Sandy Barrens, but it's just a regular enemy.

* LateCharacterSyndrome: In the original, you unlock the Ronin and Hexer classes after reaching the third and fourth stratum respectively, but without any way to jumpstart a new recruit, you have to take the laborious task of grinding them up from scratch, which doesn't play nicely with the game's level-based mechanics. The remake remedies this by letting you create Ronin or Hexers from the get-go.

** {{Palette Swap}}s are more common here than later in the series. For one, there are some "FOE-lite" enemies that are just renamed, weaker [=FOEs=] fought in normal battles, and aren't reskinned at all; later games do this for quest enemies but otherwise not at all, and ''The Millenium Girl'' adds new enemies to replace these. For another, one boss (Fenrir) is sprite-recycled as a normal enemy later on, which would never happen for later games' bosses, and so Fenrir was given a new design when the series moved to 3D models for enemies.

* UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay: There is only a single through-the-wall shortcut in the 5th Stratum, when other strata have at least four each. Of course this stratum is barren of such shortcuts, [[spoiler:you're inside buildings with solid walls, not a forest or a jungle with trees for walls anymore]].

* UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay: There is only a single through-the-wall shortcut in the 5th Stratum, when other strata have at least four each. Of course this stratum is barren of such shortcuts, [[spoiler:you're inside buildings with solid walls, not a forest or a jungle anymore]].

* UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay: There is only a single through-the-wall shortcut in the 5th Stratum. Of course this stratum is barren of such shortcuts, [[spoiler:you're inside buildings with solid walls, not a forest or a jungle anymore]].

* UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay: There is only a single through-the-wall shortcut in [[spoiler:Lost Shinjuku]]. Of course this stratum is barren of such shortcuts, [[spoiler:you're inside buildings with solid walls, not a forest or a jungle anymore]].

* ContractualBossImmunity: Manticore in Sandy Barrens is only vulnerable to brute force, being immune to ailments and binds.

* DeadlyDoctor: The Medics can be powerful front-line fighters, the exact opposite of their intended role as fragile healers. This requires very deliberate skill-tree setups but is surprisingly practical.

** Protector's Anti(element) skills will ''completely'' block attacks of the corresponding element at level 5. If you upgrade them to 6 or higher, you will absorb the attack's damage and recover health, but this also lets through any [[StatusEffects secondary effects]]. This has been fixed in various ways in other games: in ''2'' and ''[[VideoGameRemake Millennium Girl]]'' absorption prevents status effects and ''3'' required mastery just to completely nullify the damage.

* RareRandomDrop: The [[InfinityPlusOneSword Shinryu Sword]]. The sword itself is forged and not dropped by enemies, but the materials used to make the sword (the Fire Scale, the Volt Scale, and the Ice Scale) are dropped by the [[{{Superboss}} three elemental dragons]] ''only'' when they are killed by an attack of the element they resist the ''most''. In the first and second games' remakes, the Shinryu sword instead requires non-conditional but rare drops from the Dragons, which may force many a player to break out the Formaldehyde to obtain them.

''Etrian Odyssey'' is the first game in the [[VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey series of the same name]], originally released on UsefulNotes/NintendoDS in 2007. It was developed by Creator/{{Atlus}}, as a homage to the old-school era of role-playing games like ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}}''.

** The passageways that [[DoorToBefore shorten return trips and can only be made two-way once they have been opened from the later-reached side]] do not have any sort of visual indicator in the wall geometry; they look just like the normal completely-impassable walls, and you only find out they are shortcuts when you face the wall and the "Inspect" prompt appears. Later games introduce subtle differences like a patch of flowers so that you can see them from more than a tile away.

** The passageways that shorten return trips and can only be made two-way once they have been opened from the later-reached side do not have any sort of visual indicator in the wall geometry; they look just like the normal completely-impassable walls, and you only find out they are shortcuts when you face the wall and the "Inspect" prompt appears. Later games introduce subtle differences like a patch of flowers so that you can see them from more than a tile away.

The game received another remaster in 2023 for Windows PC via UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} and for UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch, along with remasters of ''VideOGame/EtrianOdysseyIIHeroesOfLagaard'' and ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyIIITheDrownedCity''; it can be bought by itself or with the other two games as well as part of the ''Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection''. It is based on the DS original, lacking ''Untold''[='=]s Story Mode content, and some -- but not all -- of the quality-of-life touches from ''Untold'' and other newer games are kept, such as skill flowcharts, multiple difficulty levels, the option to choose character portraits other than ones specific to their class, and the upgraded map interface. Both versions of the game modify the cartography interface to accommodate a single 16:9 screen, and mapping can be done with keyboard, game controller, or mouse controls on PC, the touchscreen on Switch when in Handheld or Tabletop Mode (with options to accommodate both stylus and finger touches), or a controller on Switch in any mode (including TV Mode, which does not allow use of the Switch's touchscreen).

The game received another remaster in 2023 for Windows PC via UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} and for UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch, along with remasters of ''VideOGame/EtrianOdysseyIIHeroesOfLagaard'' and ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyIIITheDrownedCity''. It is based on the DS original, lacking ''Untold''[='=]s Story Mode content, and some -- but not all -- of the quality-of-life touches from ''Untold'' and other newer games are kept, such as skill flowcharts, multiple difficulty levels, the option to choose character portraits other than ones specific to their class, and the upgraded map interface. Both versions of the game modify the cartography interface to accommodate a single 16:9 screen, and mapping can be done with keyboard, game controller, or mouse controls on PC, the touchscreen on Switch when in Handheld or Tabletop Mode (with options to accommodate both stylus and finger touches), or a controller on Switch in any mode (including TV Mode, which does not allow use of the Switch's touchscreen).

** The [[WhipItGood Dark Hunters]] can learn a skill named Climax, which can instantly kill any enemy on low health. If an enemy is at low health, you can just kill it the conventional way, and bosses with mountains of health are immune to instant kills. [=FOEs=], though, have both the health counts to warrant its use and aren't outright immune to instant kills. On the other hand, this last point is what turns Climax into an overpowered skill in the second game, as it always instantly kills an enemy and, as a result, dramatically shortens an FOE fight.

* WhipItGood: The Dark Hunter class has the option to use whips. The females in particular like to dress in scant leather outfits, and they all sport skills such as Climax and Ecstasy. They even specialize in [[InstantKnots tying up enemies]] and their [[LimitBreak Dominate]] skill lets them [[{{fetish}} completely bind and gag]] an enemy without fail.

* WhamLine: Not a conversation line, but an area name (specifically, that of the fifth and final non-postgame stratum): ''Lost Shinjuku''. This establishes that not only does the game take place AfterTheEnd, but after the end of a ''modern [[EarthAllAlong Earth]]''.