Labyrinth of Touhou: An Interesting Take on DRPGs!
While I'm not totally done with the game, I am sitting in front of a few final challenges (Last boss of F29, the areas that unlocks on F30, and some 550+ floors of the Infinity Corridor), and I think I'm reaching around the end of my time with it, one way or another. So, as I do, I'll now write a review on it!
The Good!
You know, I REALLY liked the presentation of this thing quite a bit. It's odd to qualify a "Third Person" DRPG as one when I'm usually a bit more tight on the criteria, but there's no real question that, except for the fact that you're looking at it from above, this game is a DRPG at it's core.
Speaking of that 3rd person view, it enables some actually interesting dungeon puzzles, unlike what we normally get in the genre. It was probably a month or two ago when a dev popped in and asked about our opinions on how puzzles can work in DRPGs, and the general consensus is that you can't really get too complicated, because the view and tools of a DRPG simply don't allow the users to see enough to have a full grasp of the area to properly have complex puzzles, but the top down view of this game REALLY works, especially when the game later starts to put in fairly complex switch and push puzzles.
One thing I think think was absolutely amazing was the sheer QoL the game has; If You need to grind, there's just a button for it that instantly turns the encounter chance to max. Likewise, the game works on an encounter chance system rather than a pure encounter rate (Similar to Etrian Odyssey), which you have on screen and can know what's going to happen. Game Overs aren't punishing at all (Just throwing you back to the town), and if you are feeling overwhelmed, there's several different means throughout the game to just get stronger without "just grinding". There's so much more to it that I would basically just be listing game features; I genuinely mean this game took a decent stab at adding DRPG QoL in a way that only a fan game really can.
Finally, I actually kind of liked the story and characters. In a lot of fan games for Touhou, characters can be somewhat... misinterpreted, making them kinder or less rough around the edges than they really are, and this is another good one where the characters you meet are all different kinds of jerk. It makes the story, which is fairly mundane, fun to go through, because they don't just, say, wipe Reimu's laziness or aggressiveness out for the sake of making a good heroine.
The Neutral
I'm a bit disappointed by the music, but mostly just because it's not Touhou music. The music was chosen in a similar way that the developer of Crystal Project chose theirs, where they just went with freely available commercial music (Though, these are from a Japanese store, while Crystal Project's was a western one). The tracks aren't BAD or anything of the sort (I'd say they were actually well chosen and some of the tracks are actually incredible for their use case), but Touhou is a franchise with a deep connection to it's music, so not using those themes in some way is a bit disappointing.
I'm... not the biggest fan of the way boss fights are designed here. I'm not going to put this as a true negative, as I know this is a me thing, but when I'm given a game with an ensemble cast of characters and told to make my own team to conquer a dungeon, my mind tells me that I should be able to take any combination of these characters and, with the right strategy using their strengths, beat whatever comes at me. And... that's not the case. While most fights ARE designed to the degree that you can probably beat them with at worst a bit of tweaking to "your party", there are a few of them (In the early middle and the ones I'm dealing with now in the post game) that just feel like they can only be done with a specific set of units... or just massacred by being severely overleveled. It just kills the gameflow a bit.
The Bad...
Alright, the Infinity Corridor is the absolute best example of a procedurally generated DRPG dungeon I've seen, and it's still an absolute slog that's draining to go through. It's too much to do, too much to track (You have a limited number of steps per floor), and requires too much of a time sink in a single setting to get to where it could be worth it in terms of drops. I saw something where, to start getting the good stuff out of it, you're expected to do some 40+ floors in one sitting, which would not only take HOURS, but I can't see how one possibly could do it without chewing their own arm off in boredom.
The Post-Post Game (the Plus disk) does require a bit of a grind and timesink to make progress in regularly. I think it's supposed to be that you're supplementing your time going through the floors with trips to the Infinity Corridor, but.. well, see above. It does mean that every floor you kind of feel like you're truly diving into the hard stuff, but... yeah, it gets a bit tedious to not be able to just explore.
This is going to tie to the neutral point regarding bosses a bit, but I genuinely think the Bosses, and some of the systems in general, are a bit too complicated for how little information the game gives you. I genuinely don't think I could have made it anywhere near as far into the game as I did without a near constant reference being given to the Touhou Wiki section for this game (Kudos to them; that one is REALLY well put together). There are FAR too many bosses or systems in the game that just do things you can't possibly figure out what they're doing without looking it up.
I think I'm at 130 hours or so now (My steam time is useless for a "real" understanding; I somehow had a 30+ hour previous attempt on it where I only got as far as I got in 10 hours on my real playthrough, and I have no idea how), and like I mentioned in the opening, I have a boss on F29, the last part of F30 (Locked by the boss on F29), and most of the Infinity Corridor to do, and I'm... kinda nearing the end, as I'm not quite feeling like doing the grind that would be required for either of the two things I can actually do next. The game has an achievement for getting 256 hours in it, and while I'm probably not going to do that, I can see how you could get there.
All in all, I leave with some opposing feelings on it; On the one hand, in terms of sheer gameplay, there's a LOT to love here, with the dungeons being well done (I can't praise the puzzles enough, they were REALLY well done), character building being (While not my complete favorite) complex enough to give you stuff to just theory craft for hours (And with the QoL being that, for the most part, you don't lose time for trying and finding a build doesn't work), some really good music (Again, not Touhou, but still some good ear worms), and at times some bosses that were just amazing to figure out how to beat and how to make your team able to do it.
But it also has just some things that are absolutely AGGRAVATING to play in a way that just drains you; Bosses that just make no sense without referencing a guide (And with how many bosses there are, there's WAY too much of that), some opaque systems that ALSO require a guide, and the Infinity Corridor just... doesn't work in a way that's worth doing, but you're practically required to engage with even if you don't want to (As some of the systems in the game that are practically required for the rest of the game require progress in the IC to unlock).
So, I wholeheartedly recommend the game; Play it until you don't feel like it anymore. I think there's a lot to love, and a lot of clear passion and understanding of the genre's pain points, here, and I know some people probably heard some of my negatives and wondered why I felt that way about complex bosses or the like because it sounds amazing to them.
Looking to the future... We're looking at some of these indie DRPGs coming out this year, hopefully, but the only "big" title I'm aware of in the genre that's recent is Demon Kill Demon from Experience, which is questionable if we're going to get it here in the west (As I'm unsure if Mon-yu inspired any confidence from Aksys, and I don't know if anyone else would pick it up). I'd love it if PQube got Class of Heroes Finale out, though I haven't heard anything on that.