I wanted to make a thread about this somewhere ;;; bc I haven't seen anyone else talking about it. But the Rising this year is actually a direct nod to another series of video games on the Nintendo DS called Etrian Odyssey, made by ATLUS!
They're pretty comparatively obscure, but EO is the father and king of all dungeon crawlers. Even the little mapping system over on the side is a simplified version of Etrian's in the Cheap Dungeon! The notes around are very reminiscent of the flavor text in Etrian Odyssey 4's sixth stratum: the Hall of Darkness.
I'm a huge nerd for EO so seeing this direct reference made my whole month... Also fun fact: one of the main developers of the Etrian franchise (Kazuya Niinou) is now a SE employe working on FFXIV!
They're pretty comparatively obscure, but EO is the father and king of all dungeon crawlers. Even the little mapping system over on the side is a simplified version of Etrian's in the Cheap Dungeon! The notes around are very reminiscent of the flavor text in Etrian Odyssey 4's sixth stratum: the Hall of Darkness.
I'm a huge nerd for EO so seeing this direct reference made my whole month... Also fun fact: one of the main developers of the Etrian franchise (Kazuya Niinou) is now a SE employe working on FFXIV!