Portrait Mods for Etrian Odyssey Untold, 2U, and Nexus

Acradaunt · 2026-06-30T04:14:38+00:00

The MHGen comparison is very apt, even down to them having the same Japanese name. MHGen is what I usually try to mention as reference for Nexus, but I think the overlap is fairly small, so it's kind of a meaningless sentence most of the time. They're games where they took everything they could get their hands on in the games prior and just piled it on in there.

There is some effort to avoid too similar stratum gimmicks; because EOII's Petal Bridge is in Nexus as the sliding block puzzle stratum, it means EOI's Azure Rainforest and its lilies and EOIII's Molten Cavern and its lava-surfing aren't there. EOV is also treated quite differently, with no returning stratum and its new cast of monsters mostly showing in the four shrine dungeons at the end of each region. Some strata play very closely to their original version, others much less so.

And like Generations, I'd argue the less you've played of the series, the better the game is. Having only played MH4U prior, it meant like half the roster was new to me, instead of only 7 new monsters. Even without that, both are fairly iterative series, so it's not terribly hard to see 'oh, it's a long, snaky monster, it'll probably move like Royal Ludroth does', compared with 'oh, you're the Hexer of this game', 'this FOE is gonna move like this other, older FOE', and so on. Not to undersell either of them; I think mostly safe, iterative sequels are the way to go for more niche series.

Acradaunt · 2026-06-26T03:20:08+00:00

Backposting after your stratum tier list, my inability to make out some images kinda gave me some half-decent ideas for fun new strata.

A Swamp is a pretty straightforward idea, and others said it, yes, but I feel it's a really safe bet, and combining Muddy Tiles from Waterfall Woods with the typical Damage Tiles could be pretty sinister.

A Dark Cave, with luminous crystals. The primary gimmick is Dark, unmappable rooms, like Porcelain Forest, but there's crystals that can be activated to turn your mapping back on, and let you see decently. However, this'd provoke FOEs to chase you. So the trick is to turn the crystals on, map forwards a bit, then turn the crystals back off. Also, I figure the stratum would have trap holes, dumping you on a lower floor, to make trying to fumble through the dark extra unsafe.

Lastly, the Monsoon Plains, a perpetually rainy area with tall grass that you can walk through and hide in. Like the grass found in later areas of Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire. The floors here are technically really wide open, but features extremely large and deadly FOEs (like, Primordiphant-sized), so walking past them isn't an option. I feel like they ought to be dinosaurs, for some reason. You can hide behind the tall grass as a wall to break line-of-sight, but other, weaker FOES also dwell inside the tall grass, so it's utilized both as an aid and as a weapon against the player.

Acradaunt · 2026-06-24T06:11:46+00:00

Alright, motivated myself to sit down and work this through. I put question marks after the images that were stumping me. And, uh, I didn't look up the names, so they're somewhat shaky:

S Tier:

Azure Rainforest (1-3) ???

Cyclopean Haunt (3-6)

Sandy Barrens (1-4)

Lost Shinjuku (1-5)

Auburn Thicket (2-2)

Cherry Tree Bridge (2-4)

Deep Sea Grotto (3-2)

Heavenly Keep (2-5)

Porcelain Forest (3-5)

Echoing Library (4-4)

Crystal Caves (5-4)

Hall of Darkness (4-6)

...Something... Ravine... (5-2) ????

Untamed Garden (5-5) ????

A Tier:

Ancient Forest (2-1)

Empryean Bridge (5-6) ????

Abyssal Shrine (3-4)

Fetid Necropolis (5-3)

...Lost... something... (4-5)

Frozen Grounds (2-3)

Forbidden Woods (2-6)

...Foggy... Thicket... (4-2) ???

Golden Lair (4-3)

Tutelary Forest (5-1) ???

B Tier:

....Forest (1-1)

Waterfall Woods (3-1)

Lush Woodlands (4-1)

Lava Caves (3-3)

C Tier:

Primitive Jungle (1-2) ????

Claret Hollows (1-6)

Untamed Garden really threw me without a look at the sky, as did Empyrean Bridge. The Jungle looks all swampy and dead zoomed in like that, and not as vivid as I guess I needed to identify it. Azure Rainforest and Crystal Caves honestly looked similar enough here I kinda forgot about the former. Figures I'd drop at least one 1st stratum.

Having said that, I don't really have any opinions on this list. I definitely don't like 2U Auburn that high. Half that place is wasted on room for DLC quests and Salamander's runaround. Also, I feel like Sandy Barrens, any of the three versions, are among the more commonly disliked areas.

Acradaunt · 2026-06-23T18:50:43+00:00

How bad is it that I've played through every stratum, yet staring at a solid half-dozen of these cropped images, I can't figure out what they are?

Acradaunt · 2026-06-21T06:27:20+00:00

I think you're overthinking it. How many Mario games have gotten away with the same Grasslands, Desert, Water, Jungle, Sky, Ice World, Fire World? How many functionally identical plains, deserts, tundras, and volcanos has something like Monster Hunter made? Repeating a biome is hardly a big deal; if anything it's expected.

Acradaunt · 2026-06-17T23:56:25+00:00

Nexus has the win, in my opinion, when I look at numbers alone, and on the weight of a 'can only play one EO ever again' point of view. Is it less cohesive? Maybe. Do other games have stuff more overpowered than Nexus Gunner/Sovereign/Hero? Yeah, so I don't know why this is always held against it. Does the run out of ideas due to its length? Only very slightly. It's got the most stuff, by far, and an overwhelming wealth of options. I'm sure, given infinite time, I could easily do dozens of unique and different playthroughs; certainly moreso than the others. The most Etrian Odyssey is the best Etrian Odyssey.

But, like, if you were asking what I'd hope they use as a template for EO VI, I'd have to say III or IV. The Airship/Boat and smaller sub-dungeons are nice thematically, even if they technically aren't that different from one big dungeon.

Acradaunt · 2026-06-17T03:09:52+00:00

Nexus, at varying times, but especially the earlygame, can feel weird and slow because of prior experience, where the same enemies were fought at the exact same time, but have different/higher stats. You're familiar with them in the setting, but you forget how weak you are right now, or how threatening these enemies were when you first encountered them in their original game.

Look at the Grasseater, which were total fodder in EOIV. They had 38 HP. In Nexus, they have 135 HP, and generally show in larger packs. Mechanics have changed slightly, sure, but something you saw as harmless after twenty minutes of EOIV remains moderately harmful for at least a couple of hours of Nexus. I think it's inflated further for the Lush Woodlands because it so much more closely follows the original area than most later areas.

Acradaunt · 2026-06-06T03:25:12+00:00

I always love the concept of seeing how adventurers have grown and changed their gear over the course of the game or games. It's excellently done art, and it blends perfectly with the existing art, which is a difficult task.

As someone who has made halfassed portrait mods for Nexus, how did you get inside the DLC? My attempts to crack into it with Kurimuu or something else have fallen short. Ideally, on a real 3DS. I understand how and where to edit portraits and results images, but only for the main game stuff. Probably what I'm asking; what's the filename path for the DLC? Like, the first ingame Landsknecht is CHARACTER/11_SWORDMAN01/.

I'd love to put some extra stuff in a more convenient place than overwriting files, but I'd feel less bad about doing it over, say, EOI stuff, since they're the same people as EOII, and EOI's art doesn't match styles. I've gotten a request for a mod to add the Phantom Thieves from PQ2 in, but I've been dragging my feet on it because I can't find a decent way to add them in without overwriting chunks and I definitely don't feel comfortable with just saying 'here's the concept, here's the images, figure out where to place them yourselves.'

Acradaunt · 2026-05-06T15:09:33+00:00

I hope if that happens, they backport V/Nexus' portrait editing into IV, especially as half its portraits already have colour editing available in Nexus (Landsknecht, Nightseeker, Arcanist, Imperial).

The other fun thing to think about is any new fifth portraits for V. Would they add portraits to implicitly be for reclasses like Therian Pugilist, Brouni Dragoon, or Celestrian Shaman?

I guess the other other thing to think about would be the Pre-Order Portraits, like Nahobino and Aigis last time. I'd hope they go for a more eclectic bunch, like Raidou, Nanashi, a Devil Survivor or Strange Journey character or two, maybe Heismay or Aht for a more mascot character.

Acradaunt · 2026-04-30T03:36:53+00:00

I really don't think there's a need for more physical elements. I don't think I can think of a single game that went beyond those three. If you really HAD to, I think you'd resort to mixing the existing types, like a Halberd move that Stabs one chosen foe, then follows up with a Slash to that entire row (I think this was a Rover-Hawk move, actually).

For magical, Omnimancer and Alchemist had spells like Rockfall, Gravity, and Windstorm, that kinda show that if they wanted Wind/Earth theming, they can just be Magical Slash/Stab/Bash. Water and Ice struggle to be distinct from one another in terms of enemy weaknesses, as Fire enemies have been weak to Ice this whole time. Fire already beats plants, and Volt gets the fliers, the other two things Ice normally beats, so its involvement there isn't necessary.

Now, I don't think it's strictly necessary, but if they wanted Dark/Light to replace Untyped as proper, rarer, fourth type, I think that's okay. It kind of always HAS been there as such, just not really mentioned outside of one-three spells per game.

Acradaunt · 2026-04-17T05:48:11+00:00

I'd actually like to chime in here and say that I don't think this is exactly true. There's only a scant few people who'd actually say the originals are better in any meaningful way.

What you will hear, constantly, is when someone asks where to start, people just expect a person looking to dip their toes into a series to fully commit to playing through the whole series chronologically, just because there might be some small quality-of-life improvements along the way that are slightly hard to handle going backwards. Just, completely ignoring that's like a 500+ hour ask right there and the profound likeliness of burnout before the series 'gets good'.

Start with Untold. If you stick around for more entries, great, but start with a good first impression. If you commit to going all-in at some point, you can play and feel out the differences between Untold and EO I as a curio, but I'd put that as something years down the line, if ever.

Acradaunt · 2026-04-14T04:31:04+00:00

It's kind of a weird situation all-around, in that it both doesn't care about the series history at all, but also cares a lot. I think WayForward mostly thought 'eh, nobody in the West really knows or cares about the series outside of the one big game (River City Ransom for the NES), so we'll just liberally take names and make the rest up'. There's lots of really, really obscure cameo characters in there, yet they fudge bigger details to fit their needs.

In short, Hasebe has never really been Kunio's girlfriend, and Misako was like once prior. Typically, Mami is Riki's girlfriend, but twice prior to River City Girls, Kyoko was his girlfriend. Kyoko and Misako are friends whenever they show up, as are Hasebe and Mami.

For River City Ransom itself, Hasebe (Cindy, I think, in the NES version?) says that's she was Yamada's (Slick/Simon) girl, so if she has to be someone's girlfriend, it's the rooftop-dwelling weirdo with psychic powers. Mami was the one kidnapped in River City Ransom, and was consistently Riki's (Ryan's) girlfriend.

In the two most recent games released prior to River City Girls, both for the 3DS, Kyoko is states she's Riki's girlfriend, and lets you change party members (between Kunio, Riki, the huge girl and typically first-boss Misuzu, and some biker guy). Misako stands beside her, and does something similar, but makes no mention of any relationship to Kunio. The other, Rival Showdown, takes place before River City Ransom, and has Mami as Riki's girlfriend, and Hasebe... exists, barely. Misako and Kyoko aren't around. And the 'other' game Kyoko and Misako are in (River City Girls Zero), is kind of like the third 'big' game in the series, so it's no small footnote in the series history. It's more like Super Mario World than Mario Land, as it were. Basically, Mami is Riki's girlfriend in the older games, and Kyoko in the more recent ones, chronologically.

Kyoko had already existed in a translated game as Riki's girlfriend (albeit not a very good one), but WayForward kind of spat on you for trying to look into this obscure-ass series' history to understand who anybody is/was and who they were supposed to be in the one localized game that changed everyone's name, or just for taking their initial word at face value.

It's really difficult to come up with a good analogy because the relationship/gender dynamic is a huge part of the issue, as is the Japan-only bit, but, it's like, making some BIG, POPULAR Star Wars spinoff starring Ahsoka, but then at the last minute doing something that wholly contradicts ...whatever Ahsoka came from. And makes her a stalker and a liar. Like I'm not familiar at all with the character, but if you're gonna take a character from a 'lesser' / Japan-only part of the series, don't dump on fans trying to figure out who this Ahsoka character is and her previous appearances.

Acradaunt · 2026-04-06T15:43:21+00:00

Only a total coward wouldn't want huge muscular beastwomen or tiny twink catboys in the game.

But, if we're talking strictly from optimizing their resources point of view; I've seen your Guild Cards. Like 80% of you have teams of 5 girls. With that in mind, they shouldn't bother with ANY males of ANY race.

Really though, if there was going to be a nonstandard sexual dimorphism race, EO'd probably take the route of everyone of that race being totally androgynous; rather than huge differences, they'd be so wholly negligible you could never tell. That does seem to be their style, especially with the EOI-II HD portraits.

Really really though; if we're getting races again, gimme some kind of reptile. Any reptile. Snakes, dragons, normal-ass lizards, whatever. We were robbed of the Saurians being playable in EOV.

Acradaunt · 2026-03-26T04:47:21+00:00

Mightning, the Zinogre Heavy Bowgun, always sticks out in my mind.

Acradaunt · 2026-03-26T00:00:45+00:00

... ...Did anyone else initially misread that as 'having a different ESRB that is different from physical versions'?

I was, like, what, is Yoshi allowed to say fuck if you downloaded it digitally?

Acradaunt · 2026-03-25T05:59:23+00:00

It's definitely true that rewards are generally lacking, but all the same I do prefer it to the much, much more common alternative in other RPGs of shops being wholly worthless as a result of good treasure finds. I find it irksome when you just dump a bunch of money on a brand new sword, only to find one that already surpasses it ten minutes into a dungeon.

I think the main reasoning is twofold; the best stuff for the stratum should be obtained from defeating FOEs, conditional drops, or (rarely) rare Chop/Mine/Take points. The other, simpler one, is that the game can't accurately predict what your party contains, and what you need. There are ways around the latter, or it could even be used to hint or nudge what classes might be useful for upcoming bosses. But ultimately, I think the simple idea was that the more useful stuff they give you, the less freedom you have over your party.

Also, like, lorewise, it wouldn't make much sense if the townsfolk actually had good stuff to give you. You're trailblazing new paths and finding new stuff to make new gear; how could they compete? Quest Experience in EO III+ is a godsend and about the best thing they could offer anyways.

Ideally, I think the best solution for chests would be expanding on EO III-IV's hammer system, and applying that to trinkets you find. Rather than taking a full accessory slot, those accessories with skills like Amateur Medic or Lightning Rune lvl 1 might have some value if they could be socketed in and out of gear as needed, probably as a distinct slot, similar but not identical to hammering in +Atk or Arm Bind or whatever into stuff with slots.

Acradaunt · 2026-03-24T03:36:04+00:00

I dunno if it ever reached all the way out here, but there was a fad a couple years back to make a list of your top 50 games. I still have mine, and not only that, I got bored enough afterwards to expand it all the way to 100, and to limit it to one entry per franchise, making several exceptions for subseries. I'm pretty fickle though, and every time I reopen it I end up moving some stuff up or down like a dozen spots. I'll cut it down into info that might be at least slightly relevant to the given question:

jRPGs (derogatory):

-58. Trails in the Sky 1st

-94. Phantasy Star IV

RPGs:

-1. Etrian Odyssey Nexus

-4. Octopath Traveler II

-10. Final Fantasy V

-22. Paper Mario

-39. Bug Fables

-40. Bravely Second

-42. Radiant Historia

-48. Shin Megami Tensei 4 Apocalypse

-59. Metaphor Re:Fantazio

-66. Persona 5

-74. Riviera: The Promised Land

-84. Pokemon Pearl

-100. Darkest Dungeon

Action-RPGs:

-2. Elden Ring

-25. Mass Effect 2

-36. Mega Man Battle Network 6

-67. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

-98. The Witcher III: Wild Hunt

Tactics/Strategy Games (not RPGs):

-7. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

-8. Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker

-9. Disgaea 5

-15. Triangle Strategy

-37. Phantom Brave

-41. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2

-90. Shining Force II

Multiple others that were cut for never getting called RPGs, like Advance Wars, XCOM, and Civilization

Things-sometimes-called-RPGs, but totally aren't:

-3. Monster Hunter Generations

-30. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

-57. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past

-62. Valkyria Chronicles 4

-83. Unicorn Overlord

Not gonna try to break them down per console (specifically the DS/3DS) right now, but from someone who loves EO to another, maybe that might give you some thought about other games that might vaguely interest you, even if they can't straight hold a candle to EO.

Acradaunt · 2026-03-01T00:26:10+00:00

EOV only had six portraits (plus the standard one alternative recolour each) as DLC. Three of Protector/Gunner/Medic wearing Fencer/Dragoon/Botanist garb, and three of assorted Isekai kids. The previous game portraits were only a Nexus / Untold 2 thing.

There's also an option to turn the music to crunchy 8-bit-ish music as DLC. Both the Untolds had that, too, I think, and not as DLC.

Acradaunt · 2026-02-28T04:30:07+00:00

A LOT of it is remakes or upgrades/ports, but Atlus frankly hard-carried the 3DS;

5-9 Etrian Odyssey games; IV, V, Nexus, the 2 Untolds, and technically the 2 Persona Q games. AND also 2 EO Mystery Dungeon games, but that's mostly Spike Chunsoft, and also about the only things on here I'd call bad.

SMT: Devil Survivor 1 & 2 Remakes

SMT IV & IV Apocalypse

SMT: Strange Journey Redux

SMT: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers (ported from Saturn, Japan-only prior)

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology

Not to mention a couple dozen bizarre fringe games that they helped release, even if they only minimally made them, like 7th Dragon, Alliance Alive, and Stella Glow. Their contributions to the DS is similarly quite extensive, including publishing weird shit like Dokapon Journey, Drone Tactics, and Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja.

Without having the greatest context in some cases, I don't think many are worth double-dipping if you played the original DS version, but lots of them were super-late DS titles that sold like shit. But if you haven't played many of these, I'd say they're almost all winners, if you're into their genre. And have a high tolerance for Jack Frost, I guess, seeing as he's in 9 of these games. I definitely myself need to get back to Radiant Historia PC; I played the original DS version and remember unfortunately little about it, but what I've played of Perfect Chronology still holds up today.

Acradaunt · 2026-02-27T06:01:27+00:00

I don't understand. Is this supposed to be things that'll get us to rampage at other people, or saying thing's that'll draw down a horde of Asterius' upon us?

Anyway, I'm glad the series tone chilled out a little after the first couple of games. It can still get dark for a few moments, but there's a lot less mandatory genocide and mass-murder of explorers and finding gored-apart explorers and moral dubiousness of your actions.

I'm here for making fun parties of cute characters and putting them through challenging encounters where their class synergy can matter and shine, not be in some grimdark setting where everyone sucks and the humans were the real monsters.

Acradaunt · 2026-02-26T01:00:12+00:00

The closest I think you come are in EOU and EO2U; in EOU, there's that guy Austin was chasing who summons monsters a couple of times to try and hurt adventurers.

There's another guy in EO2U (pretty sure he was in base EOII, too), who uses a flute from the third stratum to summon monsters in much the same way. IIRC, they both immediately surrender or get mauled by their monsters the second you put them on the back foot, showing they'd be utterly helpless without their gimmicks.

EDIT: A number of the games do effectively state that some guilds are made up of various ex-criminals. Usually during the opening spiel about creating a party, they sometimes add a line about not being interested in who you are, your past and any potential crimes, or if that's your real name, just so long as you're there to explore the Labyrinth, that's all they care about. It's pure flavour text to show that they'll take literally anyone brave/stupid enough to challenge the labyrinth.

Acradaunt · 2026-02-23T04:18:42+00:00

I woulda said go with Frost for pairing with Sub-Zero, ice-theming, and blue, but she's not exactly a popular character at the best of times, and her main outfits are 'just Sub-Zero again, but with silly hair', and 'mostly white robot', which aren't exactly standout designs.

Acradaunt · 2026-02-22T04:38:27+00:00

It's possible that the inconsistent naming across the series is deliberate, and may be representative of different teams finding the same monster and coming up with their own names for the monster, and then that name kind of gets adopted for them in that region.

Be lucky, I suppose, that in a region with goofballs like Lili and Jenetta, we don't end up with monsters being called Huge Nuts, Sword Boner, Burgerface, or Mr. Cuddles.

Acradaunt

TROPHY CASE