Only the party leader is directly controlled by the player, while the other characters follow along, attacking enemies and providing support.

manages to destroy a fortress, it will stop its attempt at reaching the town, and return to the bottom floor of the dungeon.

The game was directed by Yukari Yokoro and Seiichiro Nagahata, and produced by Shigeo Komori.

Another factor in choosing the Gunner was that it already was a popular class in the Etrian Odyssey series, and had been made into figurines in Japan.

According to an interview with Atlus USA localization editor Nich Maragos and PR manager John Hardin, this was "kind of a hassle" because of the risk of having to redo localization work as the developers make changes to the game, but ultimately worth it since they could release the game in English much sooner than had they waited for development to finish.

In addition to new compositions, the soundtrack also includes arranged music from previous Etrian Odyssey games.

[17] The first print of the Japanese release came bundled with a copy of an Etrian Mystery Dungeon themed issue of Marukatsu Super Famicom—a Japanese video game magazine that had not been in print since its final issue 23 years previously—titled Marukatsu Super Famicom 2015 Revival Edition, including 52 pages of information and artwork related to the game, as well as a soundtrack CD with six songs from the game.

[18][19] Players of the North American version were able to get five pieces of downloadable content for free during the first month following the game's release.