25/11/2018

Labyrinth of Refrain Demo: Second helping, please!!!


And third, fourth and fifth, for that matter. It should surprise absolutely no one that I love that game to pieces. I mean, we're talking about a first-person dungeon crawler here; so it's absolutely not surprising that I spent six hours straight playing the demo and that I let out a genuine cry of dismay when the message notifying me that said demo was over popped up on my Switch's screen.


Those six hours were spent exploring and roaming a mere three floors, and not entirely at that; this makes me think that LoR has the potential to be a FPDC of massive proportions. Also, the fact that I didn't feel a shred of boredom during those six hours spent on a mere three floors makes me think that LoR has the potential to be a very engrossing FPDC indeed. In fact, I don't just think that: I know it. No other FPDC I've played boasts such a perfect balance between exploration, team building, farming and combat, making for an incredibly addictive gameplay experience.


Exploration: Oh, the thrill! Complex and stimulating dungeon layouts, large floors, puzzles, and last but not least, hidden areas up the wazoo: LoR offers everything a FPDC aficionado could wish for. Oh, and you can break walls. Break. Walls. I cannot find words to explain how exhilarating it is to carve yourself a shortcut or to uncover brand-new areas by punching your way through walls. 



Team building: Say goodbye to the solo run temptation! LoR is one of those games that gives the same amount of XP to all party members regardless of their numbers, which means that I can indulge in team building without a second though. And since there's no equipment galore and all pieces of gear can be equipped by all classes (albeit weapon efficiency varies greatly between classes), I don't have to bother with nightmarish levels of micromanagement. Sure, the game makes things a bit more complicated than necessary by slapping all sorts of fancy concepts on top of its (very traditional) gameplay mechanics, like many recent FPDCs; but it doesn't take long to make sense of LoR's terminology, especially when you have a couple of FPDCs under your belt.



Farming: I just revised my opinion on farming: I don't dislike it overall, I dislike it only when it's poorly handled. Which is so not the case in LoR. Heck, this game elevates farming to an art and to an ungodly obsession. On top of the obligatory monster drops, you can gather mana, which is used as a currency of sorts and serves various interesting purposes (oh, how I love sucking mana from the dungeon's dirty walls); even better, you can get your greedy hands on all sorts of lovely loot, from neat pieces of gear to rare items. Oh, and the game resets the mana and loot points every time you exit the dungeon and kindly shows you where all those treasures are lying. To say that I could hardly resist the lure of said treasures when I roamed is very much an understatement, and impromtu farming sessions made a good chunk of those six hours I spent playing LoR's demo.



Combat: It's your standard turn-based fare, with a couple of clever twists the main and best one being that encounters are not random. You can see enemies on the screen, just like FOES in Etrian Odyssey; and if you maneuver well, you can approach them from the back or the side and take them by surprise, which makes fights much faster and smoother. This also means that you're free to make a beeline for foes or to run away from them, depending on your goals of the moment. Another neat twist is that the game kindly lets you know when your attacks and weapons are effective or ineffective against a foe, just like any good old Pokemon game. Also, battles flow fast and are usually over in a couple of turns, which only makes you greedier for the next battle. 


What else? The soundtrack is lush, the art is gorgeous, the story is deliciously wacky, and main character Dronya is such a complete b*tch that it become hilarious. I need that game in my life, and I need copious amounts of it. Here's my plan laid thereupon for you, dear fellow gamers: first, I'm going to purchase the Vita version of LoR for collecting purposes, before it becomes prohibitely rare and expensive; then, I'll purchase the Switch version, play it to death and sell it once I'm done, after which I'll turn to the Vita version when I want to replay the game. Such a perfectly designed plan, which will allow me to play LoR right now and not struggle with japanese to do so! 


This post marks the end of my Demo Runs. The whole endeavour was not as fructuous as I had hoped; but one final purchase out of seven demos is better than nothing, I guess. Still, it was entertaining: I could be fully honest with my feelings about those demos and drop them in a flash if they failed to please, knowing that I had gotten them for free. No sunk cost fallacy here, baby! I think I'll try my hands at demos more often from now on, especially given how expensive Switch games are. I hope you enjoyed those Demo Runs as much as me, dear fellow gamers; as usual, thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

2 comments:

  1. Glad to hear you enjoyed it! It's really unfortunate that this never came West on Vita. I might pick up a Switch down the road, but it would have been great to have this and DT2-2 as a swan-song for the system

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    1. Welcome! I just really, really cannot fathom why the original Vita version of Labyrinth of Refrain was not localized by NIS America. I mean, it was developed by NIS themselves! So NIS America took the trouble to localize Demon Gaze and Demon Gaze 2, two games coming from a different developer, but they didn't bother localizing what is basically an in-house game? I have to admit that I'd really like to know the rationale between that most puzzling of decisions.

      DT2-2 would definitely have been a welcome arrival on our shores. Of course, given that it was released in 2017 in Japan and that niche Vita games keep being localized, there's still a faint hope that it will come to us. If I had to trust one single publisher for late localizations, that would definitely be Atlus; so, fingers crossed!

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