Lapis x Labyrinth review: All about the bling-bling | Technobubble

Lapis x Labyrinth is the kind of game that puts a stupid smile on my face.

It’s not a big-budget Triple-A game with slick, production values or an army of devs working on it. I’m not sure if it even counts as a Double-A title. That being said, there’s just something about it that pushes the right switches in my gaming-addled brain.

Maybe it’s the fact that I cut my gamer teeth during the 8-bit era when side-scrollers with simple yet addictive gameplay were king. Perhaps it’s my affection for adorable little “chibi” or scrunched-up characters (also known as “super-deformed” or SD in Japanese otaku parlance). Whatever it is, I like it. And that made me play Lapis x Labyrinth a lot more than I thought I would, despite its imperfections. It’s the kind of game where I found myself saying “one more game” until one turns into two, three, four and five more games. Next thing you know, an hour has passed and you realize that lunch was two hours ago.

It’s a testament to the addictive twitch action mechanics that underscore Lapis x Labyrinth. At its heart, the game is a dungeon crawler based on exploring various levels of a labyrinth for all sorts of plunder and treasure. Its engaging combat combined with a unique feverish perk that you can trigger over and over, however, helps set it apart from the more typical games of the genre.

You start out in a dying village that has obviously seen better days. Once thriving with visitors eager to find the Golden Tree, the town went through a steady decline as adventurer after adventurer failed to find the Golden Forest’s legendary attraction. In a desperate attempt to revive the village’s lagging fortunes, its mayor makes one final plea to the adventurers’ guild to send people over to explore its labyrinth. This is where your party comes in.

As the only adventurers to respond to the struggling town’s call, it falls on you to successfully challenge the labyrinth and raise the village’s profile once more. At your disposal are a ragtag bunch of characters that you can pick and choose from. The characters represent eight classes, each with their own unique fighting styles and abilities:

• Hunter: A highly mobile melee fighter armed with daggers.
• Necromancer: A mid-range magic user armed with a scythe.
• Shielder: A defensive character armed with an axe and sturdy shield.
• Maid: A fighter armed with a pan. Seriously. Excellent at inflicting status effects on foes.
• Gunner: Uses twin pistols to attack enemies from range.
• Witch: A magic caster that uses different elements.
• Destroyer: A slow melee fighter that uses a large sword with high attack power.
• Bishop: A spear user that can heal.

By the way, I’d just like to say that I absolutely love these characters’ design. Some have compared the look to MapleStory, though it’s a style that's not exactly unusual if you've been consuming a lot of Japanese media over the years. I especially love some of the expressions that the characters make, which add to the game’s overall charm (Yes, I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff). Animations like the maid hiding inside a large cauldron, for example, are also pretty hilarious. It shows that the game's artists spent a lot of time to craft the characters and give them personality. The fact that these characters don’t really get dialogue means most of their personality quirks are pretty much conveyed through their animations, which makes those expressions even more important.

One unique mechanic for the game is how you can pick up to four party members to bring to the labyrinth and stack them up. This mechanic, which is called “dango” after Japanese mochi rice dumplings on a stick, allows you to use several combinations to leverage the various characters’ abilities. It’s basically a walking, slashing, nuking totem pole of cuteness. It also lets you tap into your inner mad scientist to come up with all sorts of configurations. You can combine, say, a Hunter with a Bishop, Shielder and Necromancer to create a great all-around party with nice mobility. The Hunter, for example, can use its up attack to add extra range at the end of your multiple air jumps, allowing you to reach places that are higher or farther away. The Shielder, meanwhile, can create different shield zones that can repel or negate enemy attacks. The Bishop, while also a fast melee attacker, can use skills for healing as well. The Necromancer, on the other hand, can release homing missiles and area-of effect-spells. Finding all sorts of effective combinations with the various characters is one of the fun parts of Lapis x Labyrinth’s gameplay. It’s also important to keep your dango formation intact during battles. Strong attacks can expel members, for example, while having an ally lose all their HP takes them out of commission. Losing members from the dango stack weakens your overall stats so you’ll definitely want to keep everyone alive for the best chance at success.

The action mechanics, meanwhile, are easily one of the game’s strong points. Fighting with the characters feels smooth and intuitive, and I really enjoyed the game’s hack-and-slash experience. From the hunter's fast-and-furious melee to the Witch's flashy spell-based combat, I found each of the classes to be a blast to play. I would actually love to see a regular side-scrolling action game based on these mechanics a la Dragon’s Crown, especially given how impressive some of the bosses look. The core ocmbat is that good.

In addition to the regular action, one unique aspect of Lapis x Labyrinth is its Fever Mode. Fill up the fever gauge by attacking enemies and chaining kills and you will enter a state where killing foes and smacking special blocks and breakable objects release a ton of gems on screen. It’s like Puzzle Fighter meets a slot machine, complete with casino-type sound effects.

You’ll want to enter this mode as frequently as you can during your labyrinth excursions for several reasons. One is that your party members are invincible in fever mode. Another is that you get fever gifts that grant you several buffs and bonuses that last throughout that particular run. These range from increased damage and defense to more gold drops. Combined with the excellent combat mechanics, you’ll eventually find yourself getting in a groove where you blaze through the labyrinth levels quickly while in fever mode while a plethora of gems rain all over the screen. It’s a big part of what makes the game fun.

Once you collect a certain number of seals in a stage, you can access the gate that leads to either the next area or boss. Part of each run is deciding just how many seals you should get and how much of each floor you should fully explore before heading to the gate as this can affect your final score. At the same time, you don’t want to dally around too much as a powerful enemy that can’t be defeated ends up being summoned to chase you if you run out of time. At the end of each run, you will then be given a certain amount of points based on your performance. These points can be used to unlock various treasure chests, which can hold all sorts of loot and gear of differing rarity. The loot basically serves as the carrot at the end of the stick for making you challenge and rechallenge Lapis x Labyrinth’s various levels until you get the stuff you want. The higher your final grade for a level, the more points you get so the difficulty in Lapis x Labyrinth does not come from finishing the levels themselves but doing so with the most kill chains and fever states, etc., in order to get the highest grades that you can. This can be challenging in later stages as the game introduces foes and obstacles designed to end that kill chain. These include annoying monsters that are able to shoot projectiles from afar as well as deadly hazards and traps, for example.

As you unlock more areas, you will also get access to new services in town. These include an exchange shop for items and increasing your equips, a foundry or blacksmith for strengthening and upgrading your gear, a lunch shop for buying bento meals to help you in your dungeon crawling, and a dojo for strengthening your characters.

Dungeon design, on the other hand, is a bit of a mixed bag. The game does a good job with introducing you to its dungeon mechanics by starting out with basic designs before progressing to more challenging layouts designed to confuse your sense of direction or stymie you with hazards and traps. Lapis x Labyrinth also likes to ease players into its new areas by starting out with single-level courses before throwing you into two-level courses, three-level courses and so forth. While you get different settings such as forest, desert, cavern and the like, the stages tend to start blurring together after playing for an extended time. Enemy variety and gimmicks like quicksand add some diversity but I started getting a feeling of sameness midway through. I’m not sure if it’s because the game cycles through a select number of alternative areas for each stage to add a sense of randomness but this might be one of those times when having a specific curated level for each stage would be better in order to make each one stand out more. The fact that you’re racing against a timer adds to that feeling of sameness as you’re rushing so much that you can’t fully appreciate and explore every stage as much as you’d like. I enjoy how the timer makes things more hectic but it also makes the levels feel the same at some point as you typically end up following the arrow to the gate once you're down to less than a minute left.

Another big issue is that changing your party loadout can be a bit of a pain. I’m not sure if I’m missing something but simply changing one member will unequip everyone's weapons and armor. You can designate certain weapons as favorites to make them easier to find but it would be better to have an option to save specific loadouts for each character. Granted, you’re expected to frequently change your gear as better ones drop but if you’re the type who likes to try out different classes, character switching and re-equipping can be cumbersome.

While I like how the grind is implemented overall, it can start feeling a bit grindy as you get midway through the game. As someone who counts some grindy games among my personal favorites, I’m not opposed to the mechanic as long as it's not implemented in a way that feels like a tedious minimum-wage job. In Lapis x Labyrinth's case, it's implemented pretty well and is especially great at first when you don’t have much stuff yet and every drop feels like something shiny and new. There were times, though when I’d get weapons in later stages that aren’t as good as some I’ve gotten earlier in the game and I start feeling like I’m not progressing at all. Part of it is RNG, of course, and the grind honestly doesn't feel bad for the most part. But with eight class types, it’s easy to get into a rut where you keep getting nice drops for one class and just trash drops for a certain class that you really like.

Also, unlike The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince — which boasts excellent storytelling — or even The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2, the narrative feels a bit tacked on for Lapis x Labyrinth. I felt like this was a good opportunity to employ Nippon Ichi’s kooky narrative style from the Disgaea series (or even the Lapis x Labyrinth "So You Want to Be an Adventurer" trailer. Whoever did that deserves a raise). It’s just one of the challenges you face when you don’t have an overarching protagonist for the game given that this title is designed more to spotlight custom characters like the Etrian Odyssey series.

While its downsides hold back Lapis x Labyrinth from reaching its full potential, its excellent core foundation still makes the game a fun romp. I love Lapis x Labyrinth’s action combat and simply adore its buttery hand-drawn visuals and cute character designs. Add a more forgiving approach such as the lack of permadeath seen in some roguelikes and you've got a more chill experience that isn't as stressful as other games in the genre. If you like dungeon crawlers and love the fast-paced 2D action of classic games, you'll definitely want to take a bite out of this yummy dumpling.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Adorable chibi characters stacked on top of each other like Japanese dango? Fast-paced, old-school 2D action with buttery animation and colorful visuals? Sign me up! Lapis x Labyrinth is a charming dungeon crawler that combines loot-based action with modern hand-drawn visuals that old-school gamers will appreciate. While the story feels tacked on and the grind can wear you down if the RNG gods decide not to smile upon you, Lapis x Labyrinth still checks off a lot of boxes that fans of hectic side-scrolling action appreciate. Check it out if you’re itching for some 2D looting action.

• Rating: 7.5 out of 10 (Good)
• Cost: $49.99-$59.99; PS4, Switch
• https://nisamerica.com/games/lapis-labyrinth/

Jason Hidalgo covers business and technology for the Reno Gazette Journal, and also reviews video games as part of his Technobubble features. Follow him on Twitter @jasonhidalgo. Like this content? Support local journalism with an RGJ digital subscription.