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Written by Patrick Orquia
Title: Labyrinth Legend
Developer: Shinobi Games
Publisher: NIS America
Genre: RPG, Action-Adventure, Hack-‘n-Slash
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: 18 January 2022
Price: $14.99
There have been lots of mobile games that made the jump to consoles, particularly to the Nintendo Switch. The Switch, being a hybrid home and handheld console, gives such games a new lease in life, if not a continuation of their success on smartphones.
Labyrinth Legend is such a game, having been released first on Android and iOS devices some years back. It is a dungeon crawling action-adventure game with procedurally-generated levels. Yes, there are probably hundreds of such games on the eShop. They are mostly fun and addicting to play, and with how the world goes on nowadays, people want to play games on the go. This game is really no exception.
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Right on the get go, Labyrinth Legend just screams indie mobile game. The title screen doesn’t promise a polished game, with poorly matching fonts and generic-looking images. The character animation kind of resembles the Flash games from the 2000s, which would probably work well enough on a mobile phone but on TV, it just looks dated. Even on the Switch screen, it really looks dated. It could be an artistic choice by the developers, but I doubt it. It is an indie game, after all, and indie developers, if they could get away with a game with the least amount of effort to produce, they would. The music, surprisingly enough, is quite good, with lots of catchy tunes for every stage in the game, ranging from somber to electronic, to metal-inspired. The music does not quite make up for the visuals, but at least, the developers made sure that the game sounded as good as it does.
In this game, you play as an adventurer who has to free the world of Kanata from the clasps of evil. Typical story, but the main star in this game is its overall gameplay. It is action adventure, so there would be lots of adventuring and plenty of action. At the start, you have to create a character, give it a name, choose its class, and appearance. It is not very nuanced, but least, you get to customize it a bit to suit your taste. You start at a village with different NPCs that you can talk to and some that would provide you additional resources and help you upgrade later on, and from there, you get to visit different stages that open up gradually the more stages you complete. Each stage consists of 5 levels, with an extra boss battle after on most stages. You get to fight different enemies, with each stage having its own biome type and corresponding set of enemies with a good amount of variety. Defeat them and you earn experience points plus loots, which could be coins or weapons (which could be swords, axes, bows, whips, boomerangs, etc., and even runes for elemental spells such as fire, lightning, or ice) or pieces of armor (which could be headgear, body armor, or boots). The equipment also varies in rank, rarity, and stat characteristics. Those with high ranks usually have additional boons, such as additional attack, defense, speed boost, etc. You are expected to constantly upgrade your gears so as to get a better chance of surviving each level. You can mix and match different gears to suit your play style, plus the look of the character changes on screen to reflect whatever equipment that you have equipped, albeit a bit pixelated to match the art style.
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By the way, in order for you to advance from one level to the next, you have to defeat the enemy that has the key that will unlock the gateway to the next level. You are not required to defeat every enemy before passing through the gateway, especially if the enemies have much higher level than you, but if you want to get more experience points and loots, feel free to do so. There is also not much consequence when you die. You get to keep everything that you have acquired, and you can continue on the level where you die. You can even retry the boss battles as much as you want. I wouldn’t blame you if you do, the boss battles in this game are quite good. The bosses may look intimidating and will hit you hard, but their attack patterns are easily recognizable and it should not take you a long time to defeat them once you do.
After beating a stage, you can either continue on to the next or go back to the village (aka hub world), where you can sell unwanted equipment, keep those that you like, upgrade your weapons, upgrade your armor, upgrade your stats, etc. The price for upgrades gradually increases as you progress, but you also get to earn more coins, since the difficulty level on the stages also increase the more you level up. If you get to beat a stage that has a higher recommended level requirement as you currently have, you get to earn more. The more you earn, the more you can buy upgrades. Rinse and repeat. And that what makes it addicting, which is a typical characteristic for mobile games which also translates well on Switch, with both platforms geared towards those want to play games on the go.
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Overall, Labyrinth Legend may not a must-play game on Switch but a decently good one nonetheless. The game can be completed in about 10 hours, plus you get some more post-game contents for you to continue playing. You can even play local multiplayer with your friends to tackle the game on higher difficulty levels if you want. There are other better gams on the eShop that will give you more bang for your buck but this game is not really a bad option. Maybe wait for a sale before giving it a go, but if you are a fan of this genre, you may enjoy playing it a lot. So, gear up and go through a big adventure, alone or with your friends, and be the next Labyrinth Legend.
REPLAY VALUE: High
PROS
- Minimalistic retro-inspired visuals albeit more on the bland side
- Surprisingly good music to elevate the rather bland visuals
- Very addicting gameplay and feedback loop
- Very high customization options
- Good variety of enemy types
- Lots of collectibles that can be used in upgrading equipment
- Good level design
- Cool boss battles
- Performs very well on Switch and suits well in handheld mode
- Fast loading time
- Good bang for your buck
CONS
- Looks dated
- Lacks overall polish, which makes its mobile platform origin rather very obvious
- Animation looks stiff and dated, which kind of resembles the Flash games from the 2000s
- NPCs in the village offer very few info and their lines of dialogue are as generic as you can get
- No online multiplayer
RATING: 4/5 labyrinthine adventures
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