Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth

[HandsomeDead]

This came out last year sometime and I've only just come across it and I'm a little mad it took me this long to find it because this is a very tasty version of my jam,

 

The title is wild so I've been having a little look at where the game came from and Record Lodoss of War looks to be a series of books that are dramatised versions of real table top RPG games in Japan.  Deedlit is a prominent character, a rogue-ish elf lady and Wonder Labyrinth is I suppose a quest in the RPG.  They took this stuff and made a Castlevania game, pretty much.

 

But it's a really fun one.  The exploring does take more of a backseat and is pretty linear comparatively but the attention is more on the combat and there are so many weird systems in here I find it glorious.  Standard melee attacks are very familiar with quite a lot of weapons to find with varying degrees of attack speed, range and power.  You have a separate bow where you can adjust angles and shoot in different directions.  You have spells that have many different forms of area of effect damage as well as been element based with enemies having strengths and weaknesses.  But the really weird one is having two elemental spirits that you switch between to do either fire or wind damage as well as giving you extra mobility abilities; the wind one giving you extra air mobility, essentially letting you levitate, and the fire spirit that gives your slide more distance and invincibility frames.  Lots to play with.

 

Also in that spirit switching is some Ikaruga, or more fitting to this, Mousmarque's Outlander.  And maybe it's here that things don't quite work as well as it could.  It's mostly just because it's hard to read visually.  Those games have art to compliment and really draw your eye to that mechanic but here it can be hard to quickly recognise the situation you're in so you do have to be cognisant of the spirit you're rocking.  And the game is pretty fast and during the bosses the attack patterns can get intense but when you're in the zone it feels so good.  Another aspect, yes there's more, you level up the other spirit to the one you currently have equipped and lose a level to the one you're holding when you take a hit and you max out at level three, and when you're at level three you do more damage and also slowly regain health, which is good because enemies hurt really bad.

 

It's a fascinating set of mechanics which gives the game a pretty intense pace.  Maybe it's more stuff than needed but it's a fun puzzle to solve.

 

The rest of the stuff is serviceable at best and feels like it could have been level based and the open map not adding a whole lot but not taking anything away either.  The frequent fast travel points stop backtracking from being too much of a problem.  And it has some gorgeous pixel art and the music is also a good rendition of that Castlevania style.  It's one of those games that wears it's inspiration on its sleeve a lot but it's such an interesting take I've been low key blown away by it.  It takes a lot of complex mechanics but still feels so slick to play.  I'm playing it on Gamepass and if you have any interest in these kinds of games its definitely worth a look.

[spatular]

Tried this a few weeks ago, seems like a cool game but just too difficult for me, the first boss requires you to use all the skills youve got, and i couldnt do it. Before that its quite easy, and so maybe it could have been improved by making you use/teaching you about the abilities a bit better before the first boss, and like HD ^ says it needs to show which mode youre in better.

[HandsomeDead]

Yeah, that's something I forgot to bring up is that there is a disparity between regular gameplay and boss fights, especially early on.