My most memorable event of Etrian Odyssey was everything to be blunt. Imagine my glee filled eyes as I turned on the game, was told to make characters from scratch (not even a single pregen!), allocate skill points, and (as a Pen and paper dungeonmaster of 10+ years) that there was mapping software included, then to be tossed into an old school dungeon crawl from the days gone by? I just marveled at it.

And to top things off, it was HARD.

The first battle I entered, entertained by the old school Wizardry style interface and attack animations, I lost. I had become so accustomed to "just press attack" (I'm looking at you Square-Enix) style battles, where the only combat situations that are hard are the hidden ones, that my party of newly created characters got a kick in the teeth, a fist in the sphincter, and a heaping spoonful of death... a game over screen with no auto res. No back in church with half your money gone. You are dead. Start over. Hope you saved before YOUR FIRST FIGHT!

Imagine my further surprise, as I carefully mapped all of my progress, when I encountered my first FOE. I thought I was doing good against the monsters, soundly beating them by using special attacks, gained by strategically assigning skill points. Well, this FOE will be no problem. I pull out my fighter's strongest attack and... 1 point of damage. 1! Back to the game over screen. I was terrified of those things from that point on. Even at level 70, the highest in the game, I was leery of the ones in the final levels of the dungeon. Faced with a final boss that is so hard it makes your brain hurt just to consider the next round.... and there is MORE after him? Usually, the post game dungeon is the hard part. Etrian Odyssey IS the post game dungeon.

So in the end, I got to make my own characters, map the dungeon, get the crap kicked out of me, and I loved every minute of it.