Etrange Overlord on PS5

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a complete sucker for JRPGs, especially ones with a distinct look. So with that said, it is safe to say that Etrange Overlord had my attention immediately when I first found out about it.

The game opens with aristocrat Etrange von Rosenburg put to the guillotine for an unknown crime that is later revealed to be conspiring to assassinate the king. However, it is quickly made clear that she is completely innocent of this crime, but the current rules of Hell mean that just for being accused and executed, that is where she is sent.

What follows her arrival in Hell feels like something out of an isekai light novel where the protagonist is overpowered. Honestly, I don’t think there are any anime tropes Etrange Overlord doesn’t work in, but they only added to the overall endearing personality of the game.

It does add to the overall anime-ness that all character designs and portraits seen in menus are done by Shinichiro Otsuka, the character designer for the anime Re: Zero – Starting Life in Another World.
But despite being sent to the underworld, Etrange isn’t bothered or even upset at her current circumstances and is fully unfazed at the denizens of Hell trying their best to mete out the proper punishment in this land.

She is unshakeable and confident, and eager to seek out Hell’s overlord not to right her own injustice, but because she believes that ruling would be her ideal lifestyle. She enjoys sweets and tea, and she doesn’t quite have any aspirations other than getting them and being comfortable.

At its heart, Etrange Overlord is a musical game. No, I don’t mean it is any sort of rhythm game, but music is woven throughout. There are even cutscenes that are just song interludes, as if the whole story is a stage play. It’s ridiculous, but absolutely works every single time, and I loved it.

Through her nature, strength, and forceful will, she gathers a party of 15 others made up of people from her previous life and new demons that fall in line behind her. She starts to experience actual companionship, which she had never known before.

With all of this in mind, I expected Etrange Overlord to be far more of a JRPG than it ended up being. While there is a leveling system, it is tied only to completion/progression, whereas the gameplay itself is much more of an action game than anything.

What that boils down to is a lot of just mashing square to attack, as there aren’t really any other attacks/moves, unless you count the special attacks that require a semi-rare item to be usable. Even with how kind of basic the gameplay is, I still never found myself bored by the repetition.

I don’t know that I would call Etrange Overlord all that difficult, but there can be some tough parts. The game includes something called Sweets Mode that raises your HP and makes the game easier if you want a more relaxed time. I did use this just to test, but I don’t think it makes a difference between winning and losing.

The game is divided into multiple areas (across three regions) that all offer different locations (which is what the game/trophies call them, but that doesn’t feel right) for combat. You enter these levels (mostly represented as towers) and partake in some sort of combat in a relatively small battlefield, typically with a twist.

The majority of these levels are the defeat-all-enemies standard fare, but there is also point capture, resource collection, and even objective defense. All levels take what I always felt to be a maximum of five minutes, and I loved that because it keeps Etrange Overlord from overstaying its welcome.

These battlefields are also where music is further intertwined in the game, as each arena has these conveyor belt-like sections called lanes that look like staves on sheet music flow through or around the battlefield. These carry healing items, bombs, offensive/defensive enhancement items, and even items to trigger your special attacks.

The bite-sized nature of the levels gives you just enough without sinking the game into hopeless repetition, plus it gets you back to the story quicker, which I still think is the best part of the game. I never got bored with the combat, because I was excited to see what goofy anime-ness was coming next.

All 16 characters in the game are fully playable, and combat lets you bring four at a time and swap between them at will. That said, I really only defaulted to two: Etrange and Schwartz, a guy who wields an Uzi. It is specifically Earth-made, as Hell is connected to there as well, which I thought was an interesting story inclusion.

These are both range-based characters, which I think works much better with the flow of combat over the melee ones. Expecting players to run through and use the whole 16-character roster feels a little optimistic, as there aren’t any real incentives to do so.

Aside from the combat, there are also story locations that give you an idea of what is happening in the land that Etrange came from, or they add behind-the-scenes moments with the huge cast of characters. They aren’t very long scenes, but even the normal story sections aren’t that long.

There is an overworld to explore and traverse, but there isn’t much to do from one point to the next. Like everything else in Etrange Overlord, everything is short and accessible. You’re not trudging through massive landscapes just to get to one objective. Nope, everything is tightly condensed to get you to the next whatever faster.

I think the best part of Etrange Overlord is that it doesn’t ask a big time commitment. The story is fun and interesting (despite overflowing with tropes), but it goes by so quickly, with gameplay to match. There’s no real downtime, and no pointless distractions to keep you from straying. If you’re up for some silliness, this game doesn’t disappoint.