Hi guys so I've always been intrigued by the Etrian Odyssey franchise but have no experience with the game what so ever. Etrian Odyssey IV & Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium GIrl are currently on sale at the moment and I was thinking of picking one of them up, which one should I get?

They have the same gameplay and share a lot of assets, but Millenium Girl has a far greater focus on story, so if you want that then that's the better one. If you don't care about story then 4 is better because you can create your own characters instead of using prebuilt ones.

I prefer EO4 personally. They're both fine, and Untold does have more story, but I feel like EO4 is more the true EO experience.

Actually Millennium Girl has a secondary mode in which you can use a custom party, but there's no doubt where the emphasis in the game lies.

I bought both during a previous sale, but haven't played either past the demo bit yet. Not sure when I'll get back to it, but I think I'll go through Untold first.

WIthout any spoilers what was your thoughts on the story? Was it decent enough that added to the EO experience or was it more of something they just threw in there? I'm kind of leaning towards IV still unsure though.

Start with IV. Untold is also a fine start and fine game in general, but IV is a more traditional game in the series even counting Untold's classic mode (Untold has a new skill system that they introduced very specifically to get over the class limitations in story mode). I'd also argue that Untold's story mode leaves something to be desired but that's another can of worms.

@i_stay_puft: It's nothing you haven't seen before. Serviceable and not bad for a first try at a narrative driven game.

I haven't actually played Untold yet. What I can say is that the main appeal of the EO series has always been on the dungeon crawling aspect, but until Untold, the narratives have been incredibly light. I've never heard people call the story in Untold bad or unnecessary. It's really more of an experiment, as the underlying game is actually a remake of the original Etrian Odyssey.

I put more than 70 hours into IV, and it was my game of the year. So get that one =)

Having beaten both, IV is the better game by far. Not much beats seeing the 5th stratum of the original game for the first time (man it was something when I first played it on the DS and the that music started playing), but IV simply has more interesting classes, a less obtuse sub-class system, better music, and a generally more interesting dungeon/overworld system.

@turambar: It's a shame Untold spoils the major plot twist incredibly early (or at the very least puts the pieces in front of you so blatantly there's almost no way to not have some vague idea of what's going on) because otherwise I fully recommend playing it over EO1.

Both are good but I liked EOIV a lot more.

IV is the better game, since it has 3 sequels worth of improvements and tweaks to the skill system. The classes in untold are straightforward by comparison.

Very good point, though I loved turning the meek Medic that EVERYONE knows is a support class (and doesn't even have a weapon in their portrait) into a frontline wrecker with the right skills and party members. Which is what got me hooked, you are running an adventuring party, not an individual, but you might as well be as far as needing to plan ahead for various synergies.

Thanks guys I went ahead and purchased Etrian Odyssey IV. Sounded like while they implemented some things from IV into Untold, IV was probably the experience to go for if you wanted to play an EO game. Having a blast so far from what I've played.