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There are inaccessible zones.


** [=B27F=] mostly consists of a wide open area, littered with invisible pitfalls that drop you into a large open dead-end of the next floor. Said next floor is littered with damage tiles and fast [=FOEs=] that can swoop in on your position and ambush you. The intended way to navigate the floor is by following the movement paths of the [=FOEs=], but this is easy to miss entirely or screw up for a while by killing them, and even with that knowledge some trial-and-error is inevitable, given that there's '''300''' pitfalls to navigate around! The remake staggers the pitfalls' locations, makes them visible, but also partially obscures them with a BlackoutBasement element to make the experience more fair.

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** [=B27F=] mostly consists of a wide open area, littered with invisible pitfalls that drop you into a large open dead-end of the next floor. Said next floor is littered with damage tiles and fast [=FOEs=] that can swoop in on your position and ambush you. The intended way to navigate the floor is by following the movement paths of the [=FOEs=], but this is easy to miss entirely or screw up for a while by killing them, and even with that knowledge some trial-and-error is inevitable, given that there's '''300''' (317 if including inaccessible zone) pitfalls to navigate around! The remake staggers the pitfalls' locations, makes them visible, but also partially obscures them with a BlackoutBasement element to make the experience more fair.
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** [=B27F=] mostly consists of a wide open area, littered with invisible pitfalls that drop you into a large open dead-end of the next floor. Said next floor is littered with damage tiles and fast [=FOEs=] that can swoop in on your position and ambush you. There's no convenient way to intuit the invisible pitfalls, so it's mostly trial and error; all in all it totals to close to '''300''' pitfalls to navigate around! The remake staggers the pitfalls' locations, makes them visible, but also partially obscures them with a BlackoutBasement element to make the experience more fair.

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** [=B27F=] mostly consists of a wide open area, littered with invisible pitfalls that drop you into a large open dead-end of the next floor. Said next floor is littered with damage tiles and fast [=FOEs=] that can swoop in on your position and ambush you. There's no convenient The intended way to intuit navigate the invisible pitfalls, so it's mostly trial floor is by following the movement paths of the [=FOEs=], but this is easy to miss entirely or screw up for a while by killing them, and error; all in all it totals to close to even with that knowledge some trial-and-error is inevitable, given that there's '''300''' pitfalls to navigate around! The remake staggers the pitfalls' locations, makes them visible, but also partially obscures them with a BlackoutBasement element to make the experience more fair.
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* [=B10F=] in the Molten Caves is a slog of a floor, owing to its ''massive'' amount of damage tiles and wide-open rooms full of Mother Dragons (which try to close in on the party while they're in battle unless it's nighttime). The huge central room housing the Hall of Conviction is also notorious for forcing players to trudge across an expanse of nothing to reach the various shortcuts leading down to parts of [=B11F=]. It's a small mercy that there aren't any damage tiles in the second half of the stratum.
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* [=B24F=] combines regions that disable auto-mapping with tiles that spin the player around and disorient them.

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* If the anti-mapping regions of the fifth stratum tested your patience enough, the sixth stratum pushes them to the limit. [=B22F=] is ''mostly'' anti-mapping regions and has pitfalls that drop you into [=B23F=] and force you to redo the previous segment. [=B24F=] combines mapless regions that disable auto-mapping with tiles a one-way door maze and ''tiles that spin the player around and you around'' to disorient them.
you.
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Golden Lair still seems to be a divisive labyrinth to this day.

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!!''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyIVLegendsOfTheTitan''
* The Golden Lair, the primary maze of the third land, is one of the most mechanically complex dungeons in the series. The main gimmick of the area is Ice Stakes, special gathering items taken from Chop points and used to break the burning scales blocking the way. Only two Ice Stakes can be obtained from each point every day without gathering skills, they melt upon leaving, and the scales respawn every day, making it easy to run out and have to leave until more shortcuts are unlocked. The heat from the scales doubles as damage tiles, meaning the dungeon drains health fairly fast as well. Each floor of the labyrinth contains a massive scale pile that cools the scales and freezes all water tiles when destroyed (though it respawns after a week, adding additional time pressure), making it easier to navigate but also making the Plated Chaser [=FOEs=] much more dangerous by allowing them to slide on the ice to reach you quickly. Lastly, even finding where to go can be confusing, as the dungeon is effectively split in two by its two entrances with both areas needing to be explored thoroughly. All of this on top of the increased strength of encounters means that it can be a very arduous dungeon until you beat the mid-boss and unlock subclassing. [[spoiler:It isn't any easier when revisited as part of opening the Forgotten Capital, with its hidden area sporting even harder scale/ice puzzles and some of the most lethal enemy formations in the game.]]
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* The fifth stratum, the Porcelain Forest, is where level design puts your mapping skills to the test. Several rooms [[BlackoutBasement disable auto-mapping]], forcing you to track your party's location manually -- woe betide the player who got caught in a random encounter and lost their bearings. The anti-mapping areas start benign but then begin to mix it with muddy tiles and FOE puzzles, and the warp gates from the previous floor have a tendency to undo your progress until you find the right one.

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* The fifth stratum, the Porcelain Forest, is where level design puts your mapping skills to the test. Several rooms [[BlackoutBasement disable auto-mapping]], forcing you to track your party's location manually -- woe betide the player who got caught in a random encounter and lost their bearings. The stratum's final floor, right before the final RouteBoss, mixes the anti-mapping areas start benign but then begin to mix it with FOE puzzles and muddy tiles tiles, and FOE puzzles, and forces you to go through them multiple times if you happened to take the wrong warp gates from the previous floor have a tendency to undo your progress until gate that sets you find the right one. back to familiar territory.
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* [=B24F=] of ''The Drowned City'' combines [[BlackoutBasement regions that disable auto-mapping]] with tiles that spin the player around and disorient them.

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* [=B24F=] of ''The Drowned City'' combines [[BlackoutBasement regions that disable auto-mapping]] auto-mapping with tiles that spin the player around and disorient them.



!! ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyNexus

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!! ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyNexus''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyNexus''
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** [=B20F=], the finale of the Sandy Barrens and [[spoiler:the LastStand of the Forest Folk]], is a MarathonLevel to the point where the whole floor can charitably be called the stratum's boss. The boss itself, Iwaoropenelep, is visible at the start, but revives upon being killed until you kill over a ''dozen'' [=FOEs=] spread across the floor without leaving to rest at the inn[[note]]In the original game, only the Cruella/Diabolix [=FOEs=] need to be killed to stop Iwaoropenelep's revival, and killing the Hunters and Ogres just stuns it for a free preemptive strike: this is no longer the case in the ''Origins Collection'' remaster, where everyone must be killed[[/note]]. Even if the party can reliably kill the [=FOEs=] by this point, having to take them all on in one trip while crawling back to the healing spring on an earlier floor as needed adds a lot of stress. While there are no random encounters, the floor's interconnected corridors make it easy for one or more enemies to join in on a single fight if one is started in a bad spot, which becomes even worse when Iwaoropenelep starts moving through the maze after about half of them are killed. Even after defeating everything, there's still dealing with Iwaoropenelep itself, who's ThatOneBoss in its own right and can render all that hard work for naught if you don't backtrack and save at the Geomagnetic Pole. ''Untold'', to many's relief, overhauled the floor into a much less strenuous StealthBasedMission.
* The Claret Hollows, the BrutalBonusLevel, might as well be That One ''Stratum'' of the whole series because its floor design will push the player's patience to the limit. Not helping matters is that the first game has a very primitive mapping system so it's very difficult to construct a good map to help you through. You're likely to ''hit the icon cap'' while mapping the floors out.

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** * [=B20F=], the finale of the Sandy Barrens and [[spoiler:the LastStand of the Forest Folk]], is a MarathonLevel to the point where the whole floor can charitably be called the stratum's boss. The boss itself, Iwaoropenelep, is visible at the start, but revives upon being killed until you kill over a ''dozen'' [=FOEs=] spread across the floor without leaving to rest at the inn[[note]]In the original game, only the Cruella/Diabolix [=FOEs=] need to be killed to stop Iwaoropenelep's revival, and killing the Hunters and Ogres just stuns it for a free preemptive strike: this is no longer the case in the ''Origins Collection'' remaster, where everyone must be killed[[/note]]. Even if the party can reliably kill the [=FOEs=] by this point, having to take them all on in one trip while crawling back to the healing spring on an earlier floor as needed adds a lot of stress. While there are no random encounters, the floor's interconnected corridors make it easy for one or more enemies to join in on a single fight if one is started in a bad spot, which becomes even worse when Iwaoropenelep starts moving through the maze after about half of them are killed. Even after defeating everything, there's still dealing with Iwaoropenelep itself, who's ThatOneBoss in its own right and can render all that hard work for naught if you don't backtrack and save at the Geomagnetic Pole. ''Untold'', to many's relief, overhauled the floor into a much less strenuous StealthBasedMission.
* The Claret Hollows, the BrutalBonusLevel, Hollows is a BrutalBonusLevel and might as well be That One ''Stratum'' of the whole series because its floor design will push the player's patience to the limit. Not helping matters is that the first game has a very primitive mapping system so it's very difficult to construct a good map to help you through. You're likely to ''hit the icon cap'' while mapping the floors out.
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Naturally, a dungeon crawler infamous for being NintendoHard is going to have levels that really irritate players.

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!! ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyI'' and ''The Millennium Girl''
* The Primitive Jungle isn't looked upon fondly by most players. The enemies that populate the stratum use ailments a lot more often, and this stratum introduces damage tiles, putting a lot of strain on your Medic's TP or mandating a good supply of healing items to traverse. But above all, it's a ''bland'' change of scenery, as the jungle has just as much greenery as the [[GreenHillZone Emerald Grove]], just darker.
** [=B20F=], the finale of the Sandy Barrens and [[spoiler:the LastStand of the Forest Folk]], is a MarathonLevel to the point where the whole floor can charitably be called the stratum's boss. The boss itself, Iwaoropenelep, is visible at the start, but revives upon being killed until you kill over a ''dozen'' [=FOEs=] spread across the floor without leaving to rest at the inn[[note]]In the original game, only the Cruella/Diabolix [=FOEs=] need to be killed to stop Iwaoropenelep's revival, and killing the Hunters and Ogres just stuns it for a free preemptive strike: this is no longer the case in the ''Origins Collection'' remaster, where everyone must be killed[[/note]]. Even if the party can reliably kill the [=FOEs=] by this point, having to take them all on in one trip while crawling back to the healing spring on an earlier floor as needed adds a lot of stress. While there are no random encounters, the floor's interconnected corridors make it easy for one or more enemies to join in on a single fight if one is started in a bad spot, which becomes even worse when Iwaoropenelep starts moving through the maze after about half of them are killed. Even after defeating everything, there's still dealing with Iwaoropenelep itself, who's ThatOneBoss in its own right and can render all that hard work for naught if you don't backtrack and save at the Geomagnetic Pole. ''Untold'', to many's relief, overhauled the floor into a much less strenuous StealthBasedMission.
* The Claret Hollows, the BrutalBonusLevel, might as well be That One ''Stratum'' of the whole series because its floor design will push the player's patience to the limit. Not helping matters is that the first game has a very primitive mapping system so it's very difficult to construct a good map to help you through. You're likely to ''hit the icon cap'' while mapping the floors out.
** [=B26F=] is rife with one-way passageways that lock you into a dead end that leads into a warp that returns you to the beginning. Its parallel in ''The Millennium Girl'' reduces the number of duds.
** [=B27F=] mostly consists of a wide open area, littered with invisible pitfalls that drop you into a large open dead-end of the next floor. Said next floor is littered with damage tiles and fast [=FOEs=] that can swoop in on your position and ambush you. There's no convenient way to intuit the invisible pitfalls, so it's mostly trial and error; all in all it totals to close to '''300''' pitfalls to navigate around! The remake staggers the pitfalls' locations, makes them visible, but also partially obscures them with a BlackoutBasement element to make the experience more fair.
** [=B29F=] is ''the'' most tedious teleporter maze, perhaps in the entire series. With more warps and destinations than your icon cap can handle, you will easily find yourself lost and driven [[MeaningfulName Half-Mad From Self-Doubt]]. Again, its parallel in the remake only slightly simplifies the maze.
** To top it all off, in the original, the only shortcut in the stratum is ''[[CheckpointStarvation right at the very end]]'', linking the beginning of the stratum to the doors to the ultimate {{Superboss}}, so if you're making any return trips you ''must'' traverse the floors in their entirety. Mercifully, the remake adds shortcuts in each floor to shorten your return trips, in addition to the whole Floor Jump mechanic letting you focus on mapping out new ground.

!! ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyIIHeroesOfLagaard'' and ''The Fafnir Knight''
* [=B3F=] of Ginnungagap in ''The Fafnir Knight''. When you enter for the first time, you're forced to undergo a trial to the very end. You are unable to use Ariadne Threads to escape the floor (they'll instead take you to the beginning of the floor), and the the F.O.E. of the floor is utterly relentless, chasing you down and preventing you from escaping if it engages you in a battle [[note]]It actually is possible to escape from it, but only if you try when its eye is closed[[/note]]. Thankfully, saves are disabled, so you can't become permanently stuck in it, but the alternative of losing your progress still stings a lot.

!! ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyIIITheDrownedCity''
* The fifth stratum, the Porcelain Forest, is where level design puts your mapping skills to the test. Several rooms [[BlackoutBasement disable auto-mapping]], forcing you to track your party's location manually -- woe betide the player who got caught in a random encounter and lost their bearings. The anti-mapping areas start benign but then begin to mix it with muddy tiles and FOE puzzles, and the warp gates from the previous floor have a tendency to undo your progress until you find the right one.
* [=B24F=] of ''The Drowned City'' combines [[BlackoutBasement regions that disable auto-mapping]] with tiles that spin the player around and disorient them.

!! ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyVBeyondTheMyth''
* [=25F=] is the epitome of the rather annoying anti-gravity mechanic of the 5th Stratum. For context, there are switches throughout the stratum that cause your party to levitate, and while they are in this state, moving will cause you to keep moving in that direction until you hit something, such as a wall, door, or an FOE; functionally, it's like applying FrictionlessIce to the entire dungeon, except it also lets you cross the pits in the floor. [=25F=] in particular requires you to trigger a switch and go through multiple FOE-infested rooms, and the rooms are big and difficult to map when your movement options are so limited. Eventually you hit a second gravity switch, the second one in the entire floor (whereas previous floors have switches at more frequent intervals), to land back on the floor and have to backtrack through all of those rooms full of [=FOEs=] just to make your way to the FinalBoss.
* [=29F=] is not just any teleporter maze -- it's a teleporter maze that sends the player ''all the way back'' through the unexplored parts of the earlier floors and back up again, traversing rooms with [=FOEs=] that frustrate a player trying to thoroughly fill out their map. [[CheckpointStarvation Shortcuts that speed up return trips are scarce]], and from time to time there will be certain teleporters positioned to send the player back to already-explored regions of the map if they enter it from the wrong angle, wasting a lot of time returning to where they left off. [[spoiler:To top it off, near the end is a door with a teleporter placed directly behind it that sets the player back by a good amount, and if they forgot to unlock a shortcut not too far away, well...]]

!! ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyNexus
* The main dungeons of ''Nexus'' draw from previous strata in the series but don't overstay their welcome. The side dungeons may be only one floor long, but they tend to feature annoying gimmicks that discourage exploration when they're immediately unlocked:
** The Giant's Ruin can get very irritating because of the deliberately inflated encounter rate. Not helping matters is that this is done to set up FOE gimmicks, as they are statues that will not move or engage in battle until the player already is in battle, but can still block chokepoints at the wrong times. Also, damage tiles there are ''guaranteed'' to initiate a battle. To make matters worse, the random monsters have markedly more HP than any non-FOE enemy you've fought up until that point, which gives those statues more time to catch up to you.
** The Blossom Bridge in throws some extremely confusing floating platform puzzles at you that can take hours of frustration to figure out, assuming you don't just [[MoonLogicPuzzle give up trying to figure out the logic behind each puzzle]]. It also has Big Moths, who can generate a swift GameOver by using Confusion Dust to spread Panic to your party so that they can quickly kill themselves while being unable to evade the enemies' attacks.
** The Illusory Woods makes for a rather rude awakening in the transition to the ''Nexus'' postgame. Before you even start, the game warns you to make sure you have Ariadne Threads on hand. That's because the [=FOEs=] here can chase you everywhere and can even ''pass through walls''. Once one of them has been alerted to your presence there's no escaping it except by returning to town. To make matters worse, the place is infested with DemonicSpiders that give the FOE more time to close in on you.

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