Big numbers, massive monsters, massive dungeons and massive anime… character sprites. Labyrinth Of Refrain: Coven Of Dusk is precisely what you’d anticipate from Disgaea studio Nippon Ichi Software taking over the Wizardry-styled dungeon crawler style. It’s an RPG about extra – big events of player-made characters with honking nice stat sheets, exploring an enormous grid-based dungeon in traditional first-person type. All with even much less creative restraint than traditional – not like the Disgaea collection, this one carries a ‘Mature’ score in America. Below, a particularly anime launch trailer.
Having loved a number of Disgaea games, I’d usually describe Nippon Ichi as ‘horny for stats’, however judging by what I’ve seen of Labyrinth Of Refrain, they’re simply far too excited for all the pieces. While the framework of the game may be very conventional, impressed by early party-based dungeon crawls, it feels just like the studio are pushing each boundary they’ll. Nippon Ichi are an outfit that has by no means heard of the phrases ‘minimalist’ or ‘restraint’, and that holds an odd kind of enchantment in itself.
Labyrinth Of Refrain is the story of a witch trying to find the key on the coronary heart of a deep dungeon, as you do. She offers expendable puppets life (so it’s okay in the event that they die) and sends them to discover it on her behalf, finishing quests for the city with a purpose to fund additional expeditions. While puppet designs vary from ‘adorable’ to ‘wildly sexualised’ (as you possibly can see in this trailer here), the designs on the monsters appear way more attention-grabbing, particularly the bosses. Some enemy sprites are large, extending even past the display’s bounds, making their assaults slightly intimidating.
I admit that I like Nippon Ichi’s in-house type. Disgaea artist Takehito Harada and composer Tenpei Sato and have clearly gone full ham on Labyrinth of Refrain’s cartoon gothic world. Years of web publicity have immunised me in opposition to anime extra, and I my eyes gentle up on the min-maxing prospects after I see its partitions of statistics. Initial critiques appear largely optimistic, with simplistic dungeon design being a typical criticism, whereas its complicated fight techniques are praised. It’s only a pity that the UK value is so bizarrely excessive – I would simply lease the Switch model.
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven Of Dusk is out now on Steam and Humble for £50/€50/$50, which isn’t how alternate charges work. At all.
