Labyrinth of Zangetsu - Switch, PS4, PC

[opa]

If you're like me and forgot to pre-order on amazon, you can still pre-order at target.
I wound up settling on the Switch version.

[opa]

Supposedly I'm getting my copy tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Anyone tried this out yet? If so, what are your impressions?

[opa]

I have it just haven't had time for games lately

[Ghegs]

Unlike many of the other DRPGs released in the last few years, this one seems to scale back on the extra features, gameplay mechanics, and bells 'n whistles, and just focuses on the basics.

I have about 7 hours into it now. It draws very heavily from the OG Wizardries as far as gameplay mechanics go. There's Good/Neutral/Evil -alignment, you can re-roll bonus points when creating a character (but without needing to create a completely new character while doing it, some quality of life improvement there), the classes are similar, spellcasters get a certain amount of times they can cast magic from each level of spells rather than having a MP pool...but there is automapping, and the game doesn't feel as punishing on the whole. No party wipes yet, but some of my characters have died, luckily I was able to revive them in the temple. That might not have a 100% guaranteed success rate.

I admit to save-scumming when after a particularly gruesome fight both my cleric and wizard had died, I had resurrected my cleric (for 5000 sen, quite a bit of money at that point), but the wizard's first resurrection failed, and only the second attempt (which costs 10 000 sen) brought her back. Then I go back to exploring, and soon the wizard gets KO'ed AGAIN. At that point I force-closed the game and re-loaded the save, which brought the party back to the entrance to the floor where I closed the game.

There's actually two different difficulty modes relating to this, selected at the start of the game with no way to change it afterwards. I was playing in Normal, but in the more difficult one the game doesn't save mid-dungeon at all, and if you wipe out, the party's bodies will remain where they fell, instead of being given the option to reload like in Normal. At least that's how I guess it will work, based on the game's descriptions.

I feel the UI could've done with some more work put into it. Many times the font size changes when a weapon's name or something is just too long for the field it's in, it just looks jarring and unprofessional. Maybe it wasn't a problem in the game's Japanese version, and this was the easiest way for them to solve it.

The biggest issue is that there doesn't seem to be any way of organizing, sorting, or filtering your inventory. You can have 36 items with the party and up to 999 items in the home base, but it's a mess when everything's just in the order you put them there. Very annoying when you want to figure out if you already have one of these weapons as a back up in home base or if you can sell it, or when you want to figure out if you need to buy more anti-poison potions for the trip.

Or it could be that there is an option for inventory management and I just haven't found it, because the game doesn't really tell these things. I found by accident that while in combat, pressing X (Switch version) activates a "speed-up mode" for combat, where the combat animations and resolutions happen much faster, very nice when fighting low-level enemies. While exploring, some enemy encounters are represented by black smoke, while others by red smoke. I've no idea what the difference is.

The game often drops frames here and there, at least on the Switch. In combat you can see the enemy's animations sometimes going jerky. And while exploring you can often see the walls re-draw themselves when you turn around. But these don't affect the gameplay since everything's turn based.

At first I wasn't sure about the art style, because while striking and stylish, especially in still images, it does limit to what you can do with it when everything's black and shades of gray, and it makes the environments samey. This forest is black, this cave is black...but there some splashes of red here and there, which does break it up.

But overall, I'm enjoying my time with the game.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Sweeeeet. For some reason, I thought it was more like Dungeon Master than Wizardry. That’s kinda awesome, though. I’ll probably go for the physical release.

[MrPopo]

Yeah, that's about what I expected given the earlier pedigree of having done Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls.

[Ghegs]

Just beat the game, it took me about 30 hours. Enjoyed my time with it overall, would recommend. Totally loved the penultimate area, that was dungeon-exploring greatness as far as I'm concerned.

Some reviews have said that the game's only for fans of the genre, but I don't really agree with that. It is a fairly basic DRPG without much extra fluff, and I think that makes it more approachable. It doesn't throw a gazillion mechanics and stats at the player like Labyrinths of Refrain and Galleria do, allowing the player to get a better handle of things and common DRPG tropes without being overwhelmed.

[prfsnl_gmr]

This game is discounted on Amazon right now. I ordered a copy this morning, and it arrived this afternoon. That’s kind of creepy, but it means they’re trying to clear these out. Now may be the time to go for it if you want a physical copy!