Video Game / Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth

A new world of adventure!

Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth is the fifth mainline installment in the Etrian Odyssey series, and eighth overall (when counting the Untold remakes of the first two games as well as Etrian Mystery Dungeon). It was released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2016 in Japan, and 2017 overseas.

The game takes place in a completely new continent known as Arcania, where four races coexist: Earthlain (human), Therian (humanoid beings with animalistic features), Celestrian (elves) and Brouni (hobbits). Many years ago, these races used to be in bitter conflict with each other, often due to cultural reasons; but one day, they agreed to put aside their differences and live in harmony. The races have their own history, but none of them knows yet about the past of the world where they live. For some time, it's been hypothetized that the answer to their questions lies in the Yggdrasil located in the center, serving as the linking bridge between the races' respective homelands. Close to the tree is the thriving city of Iorys, which is currently governed by a young, yet wise prince named Ramus. He has made the historical decision of allowing explorers and researchers to enter the Yggdrasil Labyrinth to discover its secrets, as the tree and its surroundings were off-limits during the past years. Each race has a specific goal: The Earthlains want to achieve fame and prestige, the Brouni and Therians are interested in the riches and treasure within, and the Celestrians want to hone their knowledge by studying it. But thanks to the current friendship between the races, the guilds of adventurers often constitute multi-ethnic teams. The player's character party is one of these guilds.

The game marks a return to the series' roots after the story-driven Untold games as well as the overworld-centric structure of the fourth game. However, far from simply retreading to old ground, the game incorporates a bewy of unique features and mechanics that were unprecedented for the series: First, because of the presence of different races, the available classes (which are all new) will not only present skills characteristic of themselves but also skills tied to the races they're representing. Therefore, when building their party, the player has to check both aspects of each class for a more thoughtful consideration. There are four Earthlain classes and two for each remaining race, for a total of ten.

Secondly, the strata within the labyrinth feature spots where unique events and situations can occur. Some of these events can be completed with any set of characters, while others are suited for a specific race (like a Brouni entering a small hole thanks to their smaller height, or a Celestrian using their intuition to notice something that's amiss). When these events are completed, they're recorded in the adventures' log and experience points are gained. The strata also includes several spots where the party can place a campfire and rest, and while they do so they can prepare meals and dishes that grant benefits (usually HP restoration) upon consumption; as the game progresses, the party can learn new recipes to make new food.

The sub-classing system from previous games (which allowed party characters to add a secondary class to complement their primary class and earn extra abilities) is eschewed in favor of the Legendary Title system: Each class can now be extended into one of two branches, each having its set of skills and features, after the second boss of the game is defeated. It is not possible to have both branches at a time, and the only way to switch from one branch to the other is by giving the character a rest (which is penalized by lowering their current level by two).

The weapon forging system works differently, too. In previous games, by collecting special hammers in the strata or mazes, it was possible to imbue attributes (like the ability to inflict a specific ailment, elemental input, or higher critical hit rate to enemies and bosses, or raising slightly a particular stat to the wielder) to existing weapons as long as they had available slots. Here, in absence of the hammers, it's no longer possible to imbue anything external to weapons; forging now increases the attack stats (physical and elemental) of the weapon, raising its level by one. It can be raised to up to Level 5, and it's no longer strictly necessary to apply the materials that were used to craft the weapon in the first place: If you run out of the required material(s) and don't feel like grinding, you can use metal-based ingots instead (be warned that those are rare, so it's best to only use them for weapons crafted with very rare materials).

Finally, the game marks an evolution in the series' UI, as it eschews the style used in all past games in favor of one that would not look out of place in a science fiction or Solar Punk game (which makes sense in this case once the player discovers the story's ultimate Plot Twist), with heavy use of rounded edges and sans-serif fonts.

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This game provides examples of:

• Androcles' Lion: In Fetid Necropolis, you can feed a dog during a field event. On a later floor, you will encounter a zombie dog that turns out to be the same dog from before, mourning its deceased Master. If you spare this dog, that retains its sense of self despite being rendered undead, it will give you some of its late Master's money.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit:
  • The default cap of party characters at a time is five as usual, but Lili joins them as a temporary sixth character for the boss battle against the Undead King in Fetid Necropolis; the remaining instances don't happen until the Playable Epilogue, when a supporting character joins the fight against one of the Superbosses (even then, only the first time in each case; afterwards, it's a classic 5 vs. 1 fight).
  • Interestingly, the units that can be summoned in-battle by certain classes don't affect the party cap, as they use a different one suited for said units: The Wraiths (from the Necromancers), the bunkers and turrets (from Dragoons), and the dogs and eagles (by Rovers). Up to three slots are available for these units, so a player who has both a Necromancer and a Rover has to learn how to strategically manage the slots for both classes and win the fights efficiently.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The music that is played during enemy encounters in the fourth and fifth dungeons is reliant on electric guitars, contrasting the tamer music from previous dungeons; this indicates that the dangers that lie ahead are greater, but also that the explorers are honing their strengths to overcome them. The Bonus Dungeon uses yet another theme, which goes straight into hard rock.
• Bait-and-Switch: One sidequest has you gathering Forest Wheat and Meat for Jenetta to make a gift for someone named Friedrich. She sounds as if she's referring to someone she's fallen in love with...but it turns out Friedrich is a cat she adopted, and she wants to make cat food for him.
• Benevolent Precursors: Arken hails from a race of tree-like humanoid aliens who travel the universe to revive life on dying planets by planting a Yggdrasil on each of them, Arcania included.
• Big Boo's Haunt: The Fetid Necropolis is filled with corpses, limited visibility, undead skeletal enemies and toxic floors. During day, the sunlight will allow the explorers to evade the F.O.E. that are vulnerable to it. During night, no light will be present but at least the floors won't be toxic. As such, planning how to explore the place and at what time will be important.
• Blackout Basement: The hidden west portion of 13F in Fetid Necropolis grants a very limited visibility due to the dark mist spewed by the Zombie Dragon. While the mist vanishes after the party characters walk a few steps, the monster will spew the mist again shortly afterwards. The darkness is so severe that, whenever Random Encounters ensue during its effect, all party characters will get the Blindness ailment since the first turn, forcing one of them to use an ailment-removing skill or item to cure it. Also, the mist is highly flammable, so if an enemy or party character uses a fire-based attack, it will ignite the mist and burn everybody, potentially killing the weakest or most vulnerable. Once the Zombie Dragon is finally met in person, it's not recommended to initiate the boss battle until the mist vanishes.
• Bonus Dungeon: The Empyreal Bridge is an otherworldly labyrinth that goes well beyond not only Yggdrasil, but also the atmosphere of the planet, thus being a Space Zone. Deceased planets can be seen from afar, and the stratum is home to vicious extraterrestrial creatures as well as hazards like toxic puddles, color-coded teleporters, and a layout and design that violates many laws of physics. Awaiting at the end is the Star Devourer, which is currently sealed and left in that state unless the player's characters wish to unseal it and start the battle of their lives...
• Bonus Feature Failure: The game has DLC that offers new portrait options. Unfortunately, these DLC portraits, like the ones that are part of the base game, can only be used on new characters and "apprentice" characters that replace retired characters. This can come off as a screw-you to those who downloaded the demo and worked hard to get their characters to the demo's level cap of 10. This was corrected in Nexus, in which you can change your characters' portraits at any time.
• Book Ends: The first boss and final postgame boss both open their fights by self-destructing with the rest of the fight revolving around not permitting them to fully reform due to the threat of having to survive the attack again.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: There's a sidequest, available after the player's party unlocks the fourth stratum, that revolves around a female Therian who is in love with a male Celestrian... but because her father looks at Celestrians with Fantastic Racism due to their affinity with magical arts, he doesn't approve of the relationship. The male Celestrian ventures through the Yggdrasil Labyrinth to prove his worth and show his future father-in-law that he's strong enough to protect his daughter. He ends up wounded badly, but the player's party saves his life. The father commends the Celestrian's courage, and promises to train him hard so he grows stronger in combat and then becomes a worthy husband for the now-happy Therian.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Empyreal Bridge not only has the standard fare of far-stronger-than-usual enemies, it is a large teleporter maze in almost its entirety. Unlike the Claret Hollows, though, there is a visible logic to the teleporters' behavior, though it doesn't become apparent after enough warps — especially when some teleporters are necessary to move between floors. The frustration factor, instead, comes from sheer length, especially when the penultimate floor's teleporter maze leads you down all the unexplored regions of the previous floors and is littered with traps to set you back and few ways to shorten return trips.
• Character Select Forcing: Several strata feature special events that can only be completed when there's a character from a specific race in your party (there are four races in total: Eathlain, Celestrian, Therian and Brouni).
• Chest Monster: There's a chest in the locked area of the second stratum that, when opened, triggers a guaranteed blindside by a pair of Megavolt Marmots, which are identical to the Volt Squirrels native to the stratum but significantly more powerful. You have to trigger this chest and beat the enemies for a sidequest item, so it's a necessary misfortune.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: In the Bonus Dungeon Empyreal Bridge, there are wave-like teleporters that can take one from their current position in the stratum to another. These teleporters are unique because the destination will not only depend on the side from which the person approaches the teleporter, but also on the color of the luminous energy of the teleporter itself. Blue teleporters take the user to a spot placed five spaces forward (again, the spot in question is also determined by the direction the user approached the teleporter from), orange ones take them to a spot placed 10 spaces forward, green ones 20 and purple ones 30. In case the destination would theoretically be placed beyond the boundaries of the current floor, the player will either Wrap Around to a spot placed in the map's opposite side (if the warp's trace goes west or east), reach a lower floor (if the trace goes south), or reach a higher one (if the trace goes north).
• Cooking Mechanics: The game allows the player to cook food that restores HP and/or TP. To do so, the player needs to learn the recipes from NPCs, gather the ingredients from specific types of gathering points, and then go to one of the dozen or so campfire points hidden throughout the game's labyrinths to make the food out of the ingredients they've gathered.
• Crystal Landscape: The Lucent Hollows, the fourth stratum, is a large cavern filled with all sorts of crystals and gems. The later floors have larger crystals that can warp your party around as well, making up much of the puzzles of that part.
• Death Mountain: The second stratum, Jagged Reach, an orange rocky landscape overrun by wild creatures, including a gigantic monster (the Primordiphant) that must be avoided at all costs until the postgame when it's fought in Superboss form during a sidequest. In this place, there are stone columns that can be knocked down to either make way through the floors, or incapacitate a F.O.E. (and deplete part of their HP in the process). Be warned that a specific kind of F.O.E. can do the same thing against you, however.
• Disc-One Nuke: It's possible but difficult to kill the Owl Beasts in 3F, even in the demo version where you're limited to the first 10 levels and first three floors, but they drop materials needed for the Feather Staff, which from +1 to +4 comes with a reasonably-powerful fire-elemental attack that costs only a single TP.
• Double Entendre: Giving a character the "Sultry" voice option (#40) makes them sound less like they're adventuring and more like they're in a bedroom:
  (when leveling up a skill) "Sooooo GOOOOOD!"
  (when unlocking a new skill) "That's giving me chills!"
• Dual Wielding: The Masurao can acquire a special Prestige Class that allows them wield and attack with four blades despite having only two arms.^note It's possible that they're striking with one or two blades at a time in rapid succession. However, each of those additional blades takes up an equipment slot that can also be used for armor, meaning that a quad-wielding Masurao will have the defenses of tissue paper.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole:
  • Multiple characters have voice clips proclaiming "We won!" regardless of whether or not allies are present in battle.
  • A more major one occurs with relation to the game's setting and subsequently its ending. In the Japanese version, the game contains numerous implications that the game is set on a Terraformed Mars, including the presence of two moons, mentions of the world formerly being a "Red Planet", and several references to actual Martian geographical features. In the ending of the game, Arken, the creator and keeper of the Yggdrasil tree, elects to move on from the world to another that needs her aid. This world is then revealed in the ending scene to be the Earth of the previous Etrian Odyssey games. The English localization, however, removes any and all references to Mars from the script, and at points outright refers to the planet as "Earth"; this causes the subsquent ending reveal to make next to no sense.
• Elemental Dragon: Despite not featuring the classic trio of elemental dragons, it does feature two bosses that showcase the trope differently: The Crystal Dragon is a powerful draconic monster whose attacks apply all three standard elements when its wings are razor-shaped (when they're shaped like jet engines, the dragon only uses melee attacks but also increases its defense against the elemental damage inflicted by the player's character party). The other example is the Zombie Dragon, an undead Superboss whose affinity is poison and can also exhale an inflammable dark mist that blinds the party and also makes the surroundings' visibility more difficult.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning:
  • The Fencers take a page from previous games' Landsknechts, as their sets of skills include moves that allow them to follow-up other character's attacks by hitting the targeted enemy with a residual hit based on a chosen element. The main difference is that, whereas Landsknecht required the ally's attack to target the enemy the former hit first for the follow-up to work, the Fencer can follow up multiple enemies as long as the allies' attacks are of the same element or melee type (it's here where the Shamans' elemental prayers become handy).
  • The Shamans can learn skills that allow them to not only imbue their allies's weapons with fire, ice or volt, but at the same time increase said allies' resistance against enemy attacks based on those same elements. Think of these skills as a hybrid between the Sovereign's skills to imbue elements to the weapons (third game) and the Protector's and Hoplite's skills to increase elemental resistance (first/second and third games respectively).
  • The Warlocks can employ elemental attacks, with specific skills based on fire, ice and volt. As a special feature, depending on which Legendary Title the player gives to their character(s) when the option is unlocked, can either hone their basic elemental traits by adding stronger attacks (Elemancer) or keep their existing skills and add attacks from extra elements like earth and wind (Omnimancer). Lastly, one of the Limit Break skills, Tri-Magic, launches an almighty attack onto all enemies, imbued with all three elements at the same time.
  • Due to the absence of the Elemental Dragons, the only Superboss who invokes this trope is Dryad, who has powerful attacks based on the elemental trio.^note The other superbosses before the True Final Boss focus on other types of attack: Primordiphant on performing strong melee attacks, Zombie Dragon on inflicting status ailments, and Lamia on inflicting binds. However, there's also a regular boss whose attacks apply this trope: The Crystal Dragon, which additionally can deploy its wings to acquire resistance to all elemental attacks from the party (it becomes vulnerable to them when the wings are retracted).
• Fishing Minigame: Party characters can learn how to fish by investing one Skill Point each. The fish obtained can be cooked alongside other ingredients gathered to prepare meals that can restore large amounts of TP (Mana Meter) and/or HP (health).
• Flunky Boss: The third stratum boss, the Undead King, will summon Undead Fencers and Archers shortly after the battle starts. Not only can these mooks attack once during their turns, the Undead King can enable them to attack a second time, which urges the player's party to exterminate them as soon as possible.
• Garden of Eden: The fifth stratum is clearly based upon this, being a floating biodome in which Arken, an alien of a Precursor Race planted the first seeds of life. Arken then kept watch over the planet until said life became strong and developed enough until someone could scale the labyrinth and learn the truth about it, as well as deal with the Sealed Evil in a Can that is present there.
• Giant Enemy Crab: The Iron Crustacean is a species of FOE that can lurk on land as well as underwater, which can make them difficult to evade because the party can only walk on the ground (though they're docile otherwise, so they won't attack the party unless there's a clash); during battle, the attack with a slice imbued with ice. There's also a Mini-Boss version called Hurt Crustacean, which is fought during a specific field event.
• Glass Cannon: The Masurao class can unlock a Legendary Title, Blade Dancer, that allows wielding up to four blades at once, which makes for a very powerful frontline attacker. However, each of those extra swords takes up an equipment slot that could go towards armor instead, meaning that a quad-wielding Masurao can easily tear apart random encounters but will keel over at the poke of a finger if they're not sufficiently protected by the rest of the party.
• Gravity Screw: The fifth stratum (Untamed Garden) has panels that disable gravity. During this state, you'll be able to hover very quickly across the corridors and fields of the floors (including pits), but the local FOE will also have their respective behaviors altered. This, when combined with the Wrap Around feature in the east and west borders of the floors, plus the need to frequently swap between enabling and disabling gravity with the panels, makes up for very unique toggle-based navigation puzzles.
• Great Offscreen War: When you reach the Fetid Necropolis and return to speak with Ramus, he will recall a few major moments of Arcania's history. Notably, a despot and his opponents clashed in the same stratum, and the numerous ensuing deaths would transform the place into the Fetid Necropolis. The founding leaders of Iorys would proceed to entrust the Guild with the task of discovering the mysteries of the Yggdrasil before another such war would ensue.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Lili will join you during the fight against the Undead King in Fetid Necropolis. During the postgame, when exploring the Bonus Dungeon (Empyreal Bridge), Arken will accompany you as you aim to take her to the final floor (though she cannot fight during battle; at least you don't have to protect her either). Also in the postgame, you'll play sidequests where you're accompained by a supporting character as you look for Superbosses: Jenetta when looking for Dryad in Tutelary Forest, Egar when looking for the Primordiphant in Jagged Reach, Solor when looking for the Zombie Dragon in Fetid Necropolis, and Mirina when looking for Lamia in Lucent Hollows (luckily, all of them do help you during battle).
• Human Subspecies: The game explicitly refers to all party members, be they Earthlain, Celestrian, Therian, or Brouni, as humans.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Beyond the Myth has an entire separate item tab for food, of which there's a large variety. Food can be fed to your party members to restore HP and/or TP and can be cooked or used for recipes to restore even more. However, food cannot be used in-battle, nor can it be sold for ental.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Giving a character the "Sultry" voice option makes them, upon leveling up a skill, sound less like they're studying adventurer techniques and more like they're in someone's bed:
  "Sultry" adventurer: Soooooo goooood!
• Instakill Mook: One of the enemies found in the Empyreal Bridge is the Stardust, a bead-like entity that will self-destruct to instantly kill a party character in the turn when it takes any sort of damage, and appears in the Bonus Dungeon.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: Like in the second game and its remake, the Yggdrasil Labyrinth of Arcania is explored this way, as the explorers have to climb it steadily upward instead of downward to conquer it.
• Journey to the Sky: The top of the Yggdrasil in this game topples the planet's atmosphere, and houses an artificial forest (the Untamed Garden) that is home to the Eternal Tyrant, whom the player's character party has to defeat to save the world and conquer the Yggdrasil. Yet, during the Playable Epilogue, the characters are encouraged by the mysterious girl who's been guiding them (Arken) to go further upward, and doing so takes them to the realm of outer space, well beyond the atmosphere of the planet. This leads to one more stratum, the Empyreal Bridge.
• King Mook: Among the bosses, the game only has the Undead King (based on the skeletal enemies and F.O.E. found in the Fetid Necropolis), with the remaining examples being minibosses (such as Angry Mole Lord, Luring Phantom and Xenolord; respectively based on the Rending Moles, the Roamng Wraiths and the Xenopods); the other major bosses, including bonus ones, are thematically unrelated to the enemies found in the game.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: Despite Revisiting the Roots by going back to exploring a single Mega Dungeon, Beyond the Myth changes up the formula both aesthetically and mechanically, and some of these differences are carried forward to Nexus.
  • The game uses a new damage formula that puts equal weightage on your equipment as well as your character's stats. This means that every weapon now has a Magic Attack stat, and every armor has a Magic Defense stat. The TEC stat, which used to govern both magic attack and defense, is split into INT and WIS for those respectively, and character stats now cap at 255 to make them comparable to your equipment's numbers. What this means is that you are heavily encouraged to keep your equipment up-to-date, and your mages now have a bigger benefit to upgrading their weaponry instead of just comparing the stat bonus of your Stat Sticks.
  • Rather than have the classes alone dictate stat growth and skill set, you have four races that determine the base stat growth (and some race-exclusive Union Skills), while the class determines your skill set. You can use the Alter Class function to mix and match race-class combinations. The Mastery Prestige Class system is unique to this game, too, where the Mastery class not only dictates your skill specialization but also influences stat growth to suit the specialty.
  • The Elemental Dragons, which are series-long Legacy Boss Battles, are absent in this game, substituted by a separate trio of Optional Bosses. In fact, there is not a single returning monster from any of the previous games. This is because the game takes place on an entirely different planet.
  • This is the only game to feature a separate row for summons, since you have three of ten classes (Dragoon, Necromancer, Rover) that can use that feature. There can only be a maximum of three summons total, and the summons can't be buffed.
  • On a cosmetic level, the gameplay interface eschews the style used in all past games in favor of one that would not look out of place in a science fiction or Solar Punk game, with heavy use of rounded edges and sans-serif fonts. This interface style is kept (sans a few changes) in Nexus.
  • Character customization has been greatly expanded on. Not only can you choose eye, hair, and skin color, but you can choose the former two color categories with RGB sliders, unlike in past games where each character design has only one alternate palette. You can also assign voices to characters; while the Untold games also have voices, they are only for Story Mode characters and not your made-from-scratch Classic Mode characters.
• Limit Break: Union Skills work similarly to the Limits in the third game, as performing them requires input from a specific number of party members and they all need to have their gauges at 100% to participate (afterwards, their gauge will drop at 0% and will need to refill it). However, each race and class has their own set of skills, like the Boosts and Forces from the first two games respectively.
• The Lost Woods: Tutelary Forest and Untamed Garden. The former is a dense forest with strange gizmos that have to be manipulated in order to progress; you first deal with statues that, upon being broken, open doors located at a distance within their same axis (as if there were invisible wires connecting them); you later deal with statues that instead move a stone barrier from one spot to another, allowing you to enable a path while also blocking another. The latter stratum is a more futuristic variant that was conceived in a terraformed area beyond the planet's stratosphere, and thus it's equipped with devices that turn off gravity; this stratum also brings back the Wrap Around concept from the fourth game's Misty Ravine, though its existence is for a different reason this time around.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: One sidequest chain in Beyond the Myth concerns an engaged couple consisting of a Therian woman and a Celestrian man. The Therian's father won't allow it, because he feels that her fiance is not strong enough to protect her. Eventually he does come around, with the caveat that the to-be husband trains under him to become stronger.
• Maximum HP Reduction: The Camo Dog is a green-colored, six-limb creature found only in the hidden areas of Tutelary Forest. Its main attack, the Roar of Triumph, halves the party's HP for three turns. This can be eliminated before then with debuff-cleansing skills, but it's still advised to either kill or disable the enemy before it performs that attack (which is hard enough as-is, both for being durable HP-wise and having a high resistance to head binds).
• Meta Twist: The Etrian Odyssey series has a well established pattern of fellow adventurers who are helpful and friendly early on, only to become antagonists after some major plot twist. So in the fifth game, when Lili and Solor show up for the first time, experienced players were already planning for the inevitable betrayal and battle. It never happens. While they become a major part of the plot around the third stratum, it leads to them fighting the boss alongside you. Another twist is that, whereas previous games introduced a civilization in the fourth stratum (and almost always a hostile one), in this game's fourth stratum the only character found is a friendly, mysterious girl whose race remains unknown until the sixth stratum, where she shows her true form as an alien from another world, the Arken. And her civilization was tragically slaughtered by the Star Devourer, making her the Last of Her Kind.
• Mini-Boss: The presence of minibosses is limited to sidequests and stratum events, and most of them are just souped-up versions of enemies or F.O.E.; examples include Luring Phantom, Hurt Crustacean and Angry Mole Lord.
• Multi-Mook Melee: The Masurao has a skill called Challenger, which allows its user to lure a series of enemies into battle so the party can defeat them and increase experience. Depending on how upgraded this skill is, the number of consecutive battles can range from two to eight, and each upgrade also increases the chance to summon a shining enemiy (whose defeat adds extra experience points, though they're prone to flee so it's important to kill them quickly).
• Necromancer: The game introduces the Necromancer class, the moveset of which primarily revolves around summoning and manipulating wraiths, whether to command them to attack or use them up for other abilities.
• Nerf: Petrification attacks are more common than in past games and now appear as early as the first stratum, but the status has been modified to wear off after a few turns, rather than being permanent until manually cured, so having all alive party members turned to stone no longer triggers a Game Over; in other words, it's now an immobilzation-type status with a physical defense boost. Of course, this applies to petrifying enemies as well.
• Next Tier Power-Up: The game swaps out the subclassing feature from previous games in favor of Legendary Titles, in which a character can take up one of two mutually-exclusive extensions to their class's Tech Tree.
• Night of the Living Mooks: In the stratum Fetid Necropolis, there are numerous enemies and F.O.E. that are undead creatures by nature. Only to name a few, we have the Bone Archers (sentient skeletons that attack with arrows), Coffin Demons (corpse clusters that can inflict ailments onto the player's character party), Skeleswords (undead soldiers that attack with rapiers), Zombie Mutts (undead dogs), Roaming Wraiths (cloaked ghosts), and the bosses Luring Phantom, Undead King and Zombie Dragon.
• Non-Combat EXP: In addition to the series-classic feature of granting experience points for reporting completed missions and sidequests, the game also introduces "Adventurer's Log" field events that will also grant EXP even if the event doesn't result in any combat.
• Noob Cave: The first half of the first floor in Tutelary Forest is designed to provide a friendlier approach to newcomers than the first floor of most previous Yggdrasil Labyrinths in the series. The difficulty doesn't increase too much in the rest of the floor, but the gloves are definitely off from the second floor onwards.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The Battle Theme Music for the Final Boss, "Ordeal of Stars", has a long opening phase with ominous vocals that provide the buildup. When the song climaxes, the vocals appear less often, though they're not fully dropped.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder:
  • The Phantom Duelist title for Fencers has Lightweight, which increases evasion for each empty equipment slot the Fencer has. Forsake all armor and throw in the Fencer's Predict, and you effectively have this trope as the Fencer will die the moment anything manages to hit them despite the evasion buffs.
  • The Impact Brawler title for Pugilists has Death's Edge that grows stronger with the party on lower health. It is strongest when you invoke this trope on your entire party... but you have to hope it kills before the enemy acts.
• Orgasmic Combat: Assigning the "Sultry" voice to a character gives them some very suggestive lines. In the English dub, only available in Beyond the Myth, this leads to lines like "Things are getting steamy!" (when several other party members are dead) and "Does it hurt?" (when using certain attacks). In the Japanese dub, you get several flirty giggles, and a pleasure-filled moan when activating a Force Boost.
• Platform-Activated Ability: In addition to having the usual spots where the characters can perform their Taking, Mining and Chopping skills to obtain items, the game adds luminiscent spots in specific water moats in the dungeons that indicate where the party can fish (as long as at least one of the characters has the Fishing skill unlocked).
• Player Data Sharing: The game takes a step further with Guild Cards by having the cards' featured characters appear in certain field events, immersing the player in the idea that their guild isn't the only one exploring the labyrinth.
• Prestige Class: In the absence of subclassing, the game features a more straightforward example of the trope by giving your characters Master Titles after they reach level 20. This unlocks additional skills that complement the base class' skills, usually specializing them into one of two roles. For example, Warlocks (the Squishy Wizard of the party) can opt to diversify their attack options outside of the standard Fire, Ice, Lightning spells, or further specialize in their base repertoire to increase its damage. The chosen Mastery also provides a scaling stat boost to suit the character for their specialty. Executing a Skill Point Reset on the character removes their title, allowing you to set it to the other title available if you change your mind.
• Revisiting the Roots: After the third game added seafaring on a separate series of maps and the fourth game introduced an overworld that the player can explore, as well as the Untold games that retell the first two games with characters that have canon personalities and dialogue and the spinoff Etrian Mystery Dungeon, EOV ditches a lot of these elements and goes back to focusing on the "scale a 30-floor dungeon with a guild of player-created blank-slate adventurers" format.
• Royal Rapier: Fencers are trained to excel at combat with rapiers. With such weapons, they're capable of performing follow-up attacks that endorse the offense of their fellows during battle.
• Scary Scorpions: There's a species of FOE in the second stratum (Jagged Reach) called Glaring Stinger, which is modeled like a purple-colored scorpions with golden stinging tails. However, their front limbs are shaped like crustacean pincers instead of arachnid ones.
• Schizo Tech: Once your party reaches the Yggdrasil's fifth stratum, the Untamed Garden, what they'll actually explore is a terraformed ecosystem that lies well beyond the planet's atmosphere (the "sky" is outer space, from which pink-colored moons can be seen), and is equipped with devices that turn off gravity; and instead of staircases, teleporters are used to access the floors. The sixth stratum, the Empyreal Bridge, isn't even on the Yggdrasil but in outer space proper, navigated through by color-coded teleporters; and Arken explains that she's part of a race of interstellar aliens who used to protect many worlds in the galaxy (the one serving as the game's setting is Mars, not Earth) before being exterminated by the Star Devourer. All of this contrasts with the primitive tech you've seen in the city of Iorys as well as the first four strata.
• Sequel Non-Entity: None of the enemies, bosses, classes or supporting characters return in this game, nor do they get a nod or mention. Not even classic opponents like the Hex trio of pumpkin-headed FOE or the Elemental Dragons are exempt. There's a reason for that, but it's not revealed until the true ending of the game.
• Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Fencers who take the Phantom Duelist title can learn the Lightweight passive skill, which gives them a bonus to evasion based on how many armor slots they leave empty.
• Slain in Their Sleep: Harbingers have a skill called Fatal Reap that inflicts modest physical damage with a chance of a One-Hit Kill. The damage and instant-kill chance increase dramatically if used on a sleeping enemy.
• Space Zone: The Empyreal Bridge, located well above the Yggdrasil of Arcania, even beyond the planet's atmosphere. It's filled with teleporters that take explorers to different parts of the stratum (where they're taken to depends on each teleporter's color), many forms of alien wildlife, and a Superboss capable of supermassive destruction.
• Square Race, Round Class: The game has multiple races of adventurers, with each race having 2 or 4 classes native to them. You can change a character's class, keeping their race and race-native traits (race skills and stat distributions) in the process, at the cost of five levels. You are free to have a Celestrian (an elf-like humanoid whose stats favor magic) attempt to be a Dragoon (an Earthlain-native Stone Wall class) or an Earthlain (an ordinary human known more for physical abilities than holding a lot of mana) try to be a Botanist (a Brouni-native class focused on spamming healing and Status Effects) if you really want to.
• Superboss: In absence of the elemental dragons, the game has a new trio of superbosses that have the same role of raising your level cap: Dryad in Tutelary Forest, the Zombie Dragon in Fetid Necropolis, and Lamia in Lucent Hollows. The Primordiphant is a little different, first appearing in the main story as an obstacle to be avoided, but by the postgame you would be strong enough to defeat it.
• Super Move Portrait Attack: When a Union Skill is used, all participants' portraits flash on the screen momentarily before the skill animation takes place.
• Technicolor Toxin: While the standard poison ailment is portrayed with color green in-battle, as has been the case in the rest of the series, the toxic puddles found in Fetid Necropolis are colored intense purple. During day, these puddles have to be avoided due to their harmful effects, but during night they dry up and their areas are safe to walk on. Similar puddles are found much later in Empyreal Bridge, but those remain active 24/7.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The True Final Boss has a skill called Full Burst which requires all his body parts to work and inflict several hits of massive, untyped damage. Unfortunately, it starts the fight with all of them active, requiring you to quickly destroy or disable at least one part or using an Union Skill to live through it. Said attack does destroy all parts though, giving you some breathing room.
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle:
  • The higher floors of the first stratum (Tutelary Forest) have ancient statues that are connected to toggleable pillars. The connection isn't global, since each statue controls two pillars (one that is erected and is being looked at by the statue, and one that is buried and is placed at the left or right of the statue); but by touching the statue, you'll make it turn 90 degrees into the side where the buried pillar lies, making it rise; meanwhile, because the other pillar isn't being looked at by the statue anymore, it'll descend into the ground and pave a previously-obstructed way. There are multiple statues (each with their associated pair of pillars) on the fourth and fifth floors of the stratum (as well as the hidden part of the third), so you have to figure out how to advance by making the statues look at certain directions and open new ways.
  • In the fifth stratum (Untamed Garden), there are several devices that disable the gravity of the whole area, and it's only necessary to touch one of them to trigger this effect. In the absence of gravity, your character party can hover rapidly across the rooms, bypassing gaps and pits; as a downside, you cannot stop moving at the current direction until you hit a wall (effectively replicating the effect of Frictionless Ice), and there are areas that can only be accessed by detouring along the way, so eventually you'll have to restore gravity. Most importantly, the behavior and motion patterns of the local FOE will change depending on whether or not gravity is active, so you'll need to think sharply to take advantage of the two forms of the stratum and successfully navigate through it and reach the Final Boss.
• Uncommon Time: The battle theme of the Empyreal Bridge uses 5/4.
• Underground Level: The Lucent Hollows is a cerulean crystal cave filled with rocks that can be shattered with a special pickaxe that is crafted by the game's resident shopkeeper (he requires a material found in this very place for that, though). The stratum also has large crystals that transport the explorers from one spot to another.
• Unwanted Revival: Played for Laughs with adventurers with the "Sassy" voice set, who don't take kindly to being brought back to life.
  "Sassy" Adventurer: I didn't ask for this.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Untamed Garden, which is a half-natural, half-artificial forest located well beyond the planet's atmosphere. It is the homeland of the Eternal Tyrant, the most powerful monster in Yggdrasil and the world.
• Vocal Dissonance: There are no restrictions on portrait^note Each class has two male portraits and two female potraits-voice combinations. As such, it is entirely possible to create an elderly man character with the voice of a young girl, among other silly possibilities.
• Wham Shot:
  • The fifth stratum is introduced with a cutscene longer than the rest. It first shows the party taking an elevator that rises high into the skies, and once you examine the stratum's environment you realize it's a giant biodome in Arcania's stratosphere.
  • After you clear the sixth stratum, the post-credits cutscene reveals that the next planet Arken is traveling to is our Earth, punctuated with the first game's title screen theme.
• Wolfpack Boss: A Mini-Boss version with the Crazed Stingers, fought in a sidequest unlocked near the end of the game. They're enclosed in a small area of the first floor of Jagged Reach and, while looking similar to the Glaring Stingers (F.O.E.), they're more enduring and powerful. After defeating one or more, you may leave the room so they resume their positions and sight patterns. But you have to defeat all of them without leaving the floor, or else they'll respawn and you'll have to start over.
• Wrap Around: The Untamed Garden has this in the west and east edges, as the place consists of a terraformed forest lying well beyond the planet's stratosphere. You literally are looping around the floors' areas - it's a large-scale cylindrical surface.

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