Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

[Jasede]

Sure, I love them. Stone Soup is one of the more casual ones, but it's great for a quick romp.

 

[Nirvash]

Is it less tedious than Elminage Gothic and Sword City? I wouldn't mind some dungeon crawling but I don't want one that'll bog me down with teleport puzzles or slow exploration. I'd like something in a "faster than Etrian" pace, but with better itemization than Sword City. (Teleport puzzles, etc., have their place, but for now I just want to mindlessly explore dungeons and figure out good strategies against bosses while collecting gear.)

You can place down a warp at any time (up to 4), go to base for heal/save and then get back to the same point resuming exploration in like 8 seconds.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Is it less tedious than Elminage Gothic and Sword City? I wouldn't mind some dungeon crawling but I don't want one that'll bog me down with teleport puzzles or slow exploration. I'd like something in a "faster than Etrian" pace, but with better itemization than Sword City. (Teleport puzzles, etc., have their place, but for now I just want to mindlessly explore dungeons and figure out good strategies against bosses while collecting gear.)

You can place down a warp at any time (up to 4), go to base for heal/save and then get back to the same point resuming exploration in like 8 seconds.

Eww. So basically you may as well just go all out in every fight and never conserve health or mana because it's irrelevant and you can heal to full on a whim?

 

[Reinhardt]

Picked up my paused playtrough. Umbra dungeon where i stopped before is HUGE.
Still main reason i continue to play is our witch and her story. She's bitter, petty, manipulative just like any woman but she's also smart, has nice boobs and clear goal she's tryig to achieve by any means.

 

[Nirvash]

Is it less tedious than Elminage Gothic and Sword City? I wouldn't mind some dungeon crawling but I don't want one that'll bog me down with teleport puzzles or slow exploration. I'd like something in a "faster than Etrian" pace, but with better itemization than Sword City. (Teleport puzzles, etc., have their place, but for now I just want to mindlessly explore dungeons and figure out good strategies against bosses while collecting gear.)

You can place down a warp at any time (up to 4), go to base for heal/save and then get back to the same point resuming exploration in like 8 seconds.

Eww. So basically you may as well just go all out in every fight and never conserve health or mana because it's irrelevant and you can heal to full on a whim?

Yes and no, going back to base reset the "dungeon mana" giving you "% better loot". (also a resource)
There is also a "exp system" as you can build up extra exp for consecutive battles (up to 300% after 16).
Is this game is normal to get damaged alot and you can't heal by spells out of combat.

So exploration can be very safe, grind is not.
Still, half the maps got roaming megamonsters you are supposed to run from and maneuver around.

There is no game over, at wipe your mercs get damaged and repair can be alot of $$$, savescumming is a common thing.

 

[Reinhardt]

And now i'm in final game dungeon(not postgame). Time to grind. My party is still soul clarity 1.

 

[Reinhardt]

Game's main story is pretty easy overall and then SUDDENLY final boss. I was not prepared...

 

[Reinhardt]

So where is sikrit boss in melm?

 

[Nirvash]

Extra boss in troll dungeon? There is a secret real bottom floor, fall in the hole.
You also need the campanula bah bah pact to damage her.

 

[Reinhardt]

Found her. Had to google it. Well, i have to admit i couldn't have found her myself. I knew you can fall in holes to find secrets, but it's HOLES, not something you can jump over. You basically have to walk into it. Never fallen in one before in 50+ hours. So maybe i'm missing other secrets as well...

 

[Grauken]

Did you kill the boss monsters in the 6th (devon fish) and 7th (minotaur-like boss) level of the first dungeon?

 

[Reinhardt]

Of course. Unlike Melm boss they were not hidden. It was last missing black page so now i'm in the middle of postgame.
Still Furfur in Umbra was hardest boss so far.

 

[Darth Canoli]

This game got on my nerves.

First, i didn't want to play it but i couldn't resist the blobber-like design, then, it was good, almost addictive for a time.

First impression :

On the bright side

• It's fun
• You can speed up battles
• You can "stack" xp for xp boosts up to 3x
• The mana system adding to the drop rate
• The monsters that hunt you if you collect too much
• The art is nice, monster wise, not sure about the party members, it's ok, though
• The story is ok, sometimes funny
• The spell system is "original"

On the dark side

• The tutorial going on through the whole game is a pain, you unlock abilities very slowly
• You have to hold on a key to speed up battles (retarded mechanism, a PC game should have an option to check/uncheck )
• No characters development personalization
• Spell system involving pacts instead of linking spells to puppets / characters, it's alright but start to be a pain to manage.

Reaching the Towers of Umbra :

On the bright side :

• Boss fights everywhere
• The purple "mini-bosses" on every dungeons (they're all over the place in the towers)
  
• The sneaking part
• Breaking walls + whistle to attrack monsters.

On the dark side

• Non mappable parts are fun at first, then it gets boring, too many of them at this point
• Transferring souls is a pain to manage a "balanced" party, with the chore of managing luck, and you don't even have access to the last puppet yet ...
• The dead end, i lost one hour there because i didn't save and there wasn't any auto-save either and what for exactly ? I didn't even have a choice, it was the straw that broke the camel's back.
• Those towers are endless, many useless levels, started to get boring anyway.
• The random legendary items so if you're unlucky, you get shitty adjectives = worse stats boosts or even a luck penalty.
• Those legendary items which can be outmatched by common "sealed" items, retarded.

Conclusion :

It's fun for a while and i appreciate the effort but it wasn't translated into a PC game, devs are lazy and they just copy paste their consoletards mechanism which isn't what i expect from a PC game.
Overall it's good, specially since it's their first Blobber but it doesn't match my personal taste, i din't like Disgaea 1 either (the only one i played), at first, it was good, the story was bad / so-so, the navigating outside of combat part terrible and the infinite item world retarded (99 levels on some items, seriously ?)

Well, i can hope they try again, learn from the classics and try something for the PC audience.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I am just near the end... and I found a lot of subliminal phallic images, like in the good old Walt Disney's movies...

Free your mind and look at a certain distance...

 

[Kruno]

I SEE A PENIS!

 

[Darth Canoli]

You see want you want to see, i guess.

I forgot to mention this game loading screen / time management is amazing :

• It's short
• You load the game, then you load a dungeon and then, even if is has 10 huge level, you don't load anything anymore, not even when you come back to the city
• You can spend hours playing without seeing a single loading screen until you go to another dungeon.

That's pure incline !

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Yes. And it has a lot of QoL features, some of them cleverly integrated in the gameplay (the way you can save the game and create shortcut, how experience can be boosted, the creation/recreation and the control of the characters, etc.)

 

[Emmanuel2]

I got the wizardry itch lately and I didn't like my time with the Etrian Odyssey's, so I decided to start the game but with a handicap like always, by solo-ing the entirety of it for my first playthrough (aka no NG+ cheese). And that there's noone AFAIK that has a documented (text or video) of a solo playthrough in the English community and the JP ones help fuck-all.

So far, the game is pretty good and difficulty-wise isn't too unmanageable even on Nightmare difficulty.

I also found quickly that like in NIS' Disgaea series, levels don't matter that much and stats/builds are king. So being a level 99 with shit base stats (soul clarity 1) and a build that doesn't synergize with the equipment, is going to be pretty bad.

Don't know how far I am in the game after beating this boss, but it was dealing 1.5k damage on Nightmare.

 

[Reinhardt]

I need to pick it up. Stopped somewhere in post-game because i had no free time at the moment and then found i don't remember what i'm doing. Maybe i'll lower difficulty and just finish it to watch happy ending.

 

[Jinn]

I'm very interested in this, but have held off because of comments stating how the game is far too easy.

Emmanuel2, can you do a little more indepth with your experience with the difficulty? You say it's manageable on Nightmare, but does it still offer a nice challenge?

 

[Emmanuel2]

can you do a little more indepth with your experience with the difficulty?

Overall: What I found was so far it was somewhat steam roll easy but had some spikes here and there. Though it felt like doing some deliberate grinding with a decent party will break the game, at least for the story content. On the flip side solo perspective, grinding is pretty much required.

Some of my solo-ing experiences so far:

• If focused on AVD tanking, you can ignore alot of things altogether. Just dodges everything: AoEs, status effects, charges, etc. I never had to utilize stuns, donums, etc. and only had to reinforce for offence. Items are still a must though.
• Monsters hit really hard and can take a little bit more punishment in Nightmare. Trolls on the 3rd dungeon hit for 500 damage of my 1500 health, and they get 2 turns per round.
• Synthesis opened up more options for building towards whatever and felt it somewhat essential for solo-ing the rest of the game at the time it unlocks. I'd figure a decent party filled with random synthesized equipment would steamroll through everything.
• Dungeons are bland-ish and are mostly walking halls so far save for the very few special tiles, reminds me of EO and SoSC's approach. So regarding delving difficulty, it's not hard at all.
• Gore system will make or break the game for some people, you can get one shot from a 15 damage crit. Sporting a team filled with members on Despair and on Nightmare difficulty will most probably make the game a lot more harder.

 

[karoliner]

https://gematsu.com/2019/03/labyrin...galleria-announced-for-ps4-switch-and-ps-vita

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk followup Labyrinth of Galleria announced for PS4, Switch, and PS Vita
Due out on July 25 in Japan.

The latest issue of Dengeki PlayStation reveals Labyrinth of Galleria: Coven of Dusk, a followup to the dungeon RPG Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk. It will launch on July 25 in Japan for 7,200 yen on PlayStation 4 and Switch, and 6,200 yen on PS Vita. A limited edition will also be available for 9,200 yen and 8,200 yen, respectively.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is directed by Tatsyua Izumi, who also wrote the scenario; character design is by Takehito Harada; and music is composed by Tenpei Sato.
Announced characters include the protagonist (an exorcism lamp?), someone named Eureka, the witch Madam Malta, and Madam Malta’s granddaughter Perico.

The development team is made up of staff that worked on the first game, and Emi Evans is back for the music. The game itself is described as more of a successor than it is a sequel.

Nippon Ichi Software launched a countdown website last week counting down to the game’s official announcement. It ends in two days.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

It's such a slog...
I am at the fairy dungeon, and STILL it feels like there are 0 options with regards to covens.
Every battle feels like fast pressing enter than holding enter...
I also don't get how formations are working. The only formations I can use are all in and flee, despite me qualifying for others.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Started again to go the "true ending". I don't know if it is a game bug, but ...

Spoiler

I think I have beated the optional superboss in Verdant Phenom – Fallrealm/Gem, but it left no black page.

Am I missing something? Goggling around I haven't found anything.

 

[Jermu]

Labyrinth of Galleria coming early 2023