Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

[MadMaxHellfire]

"alright, you win, i'll play again the wasted hour of tribolations". but then i've been hit by a wave of retardation without limitation: this game saves states inside its own directory. you uninstall, you lose everything.
we have hit levels of retardation which shouldn't be possible.

 

[Hobo Elf]

So far the game isn't really doing anything for me. The maze design is aight and that's about it. The game really lets me down in character and party building and combat. Apart from the initial scaling choices you pick for your doods, there isn't anything else you seem to do with them. Covens feel like an almost pointless gimmick since to get the best gainz you just stack the same type of class in the same coven instead of making micro parties. During normal encounters I just use auto combat to resolve everything fast with regular attacks. Boss fights aren't really that far above random encounters in terms of strategy either. I'm not engaged by the combat, or the gameplay in general, at all. Pretty disappointing.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

because, as i already stated, the game loves to hide features behind 12 hours long grind walls. wallS.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Unless it's hiding something especially mechanical, I can't see how the game will add anything to make the gameplay less auto combat-y and party development actually deep.

 

[Reinhardt]

Ninja patch?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

it hides the whole game. trust me, its idiocy knows no bounds.

 

[Miner 2049er]

"alright, you win, i'll play again the wasted hour of tribolations". but then i've been hit by a wave of retardation without limitation: this game saves states inside its own directory. you uninstall, you lose everything.
we have hit levels of retardation which shouldn't be possible.

Welcome back to needle. Sombody could mail you the savegame folder. Then you could transfer the characters back to level 1, name them, make them yours.
With a little grinding you could continue, from where you were, because the dungeons will be accessible and you don't have to grind in the low XP dungeons. I have a savegame after the 5th dungeon (the one with the towers that took me 10 hours+ alone).

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

no way. i could accept to speed through the game if i could give myself a full squad of level 25-30 puppets as i had, but in this very moment i though also of all the equipment, items, armors, consumables... fuck this shit, this is retarded beyond human possibilities.

 

[Grauken]

Please show us on the paper doll where Labyrinth of Refrain touched you and caused this much butthurt, maybe we can go past your mental scars this way

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

what a fucking inbred retard XD what are you? a 4 years old double nigger from alabama? ignore list, you won't be missed.

 

[Miner 2049er]

Guys, have you been to Cobalt Campanula Subterra B6 at 22/7 ? The place where you can fish ? It's kind of tricky to get there. After fighting it for about half an hour the the game crashed. Is the reward worth the trouble ?

 

[Damned Registrations]

So far the game isn't really doing anything for me. The maze design is aight and that's about it. The game really lets me down in character and party building and combat. Apart from the initial scaling choices you pick for your doods, there isn't anything else you seem to do with them. Covens feel like an almost pointless gimmick since to get the best gainz you just stack the same type of class in the same coven instead of making micro parties. During normal encounters I just use auto combat to resolve everything fast with regular attacks. Boss fights aren't really that far above random encounters in terms of strategy either. I'm not engaged by the combat, or the gameplay in general, at all. Pretty disappointing.

Disappointing. Considering it's the obvious focus of the genre, dungeon blobbers seem to have pretty consistently shit, repetitive combat, even in boss fights. Maybe I'll play through Labyrinth of Touhou 1/2 again.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the focus of the game is clearly team tuning (that's why features are hidden, so you have to keep tuning and tuning and tuning every time something new comes out), you suffer all the grind only to watch your perfectly prepared team shred everything. it's a game for numbers crunchers.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I could get behind that, but is it really true? It sounds like it's generally easy enough you can just kinda half ass things and stuff will die for you regardless. The appeal of tuning your party in a game like Disgaea isn't that you roflstomp the story missions, it's that you go into the infinite dungeon and fight something twice (or more) your level for even crazier loot and watch your power explode. This seems more like you tune your party (or not) and then just slowly slog through a dungeon one shotting everything and killing a boss by using the same strategy that worked on every other boss.

 

[Grauken]

Hobo Elf isn't really wrong, the first three dungeons were pretty easy and only the boss of the third has given me any trouble. I still enjoy the game, it has a certain addictiveness to it and gives you lots of options, but so far none of these options feel like must-do's, where you really have to fine-tune your party to a high degree to advance at all, it just makes life somewhat easier, but you could also just grind your way through the game and don't give too much attention to any of them (e.g. I've ignored item synthesis for the most part)

That said, I love the visuals, the different themes for each dungeon, the varied level design, the story is amusing and keeps me much better entertained than the one in Mary Skelter did

The only thing I really don't like is that spells are tied to covens, not characters, and I just like having mages with an ever-growing spellbook in my dungeon crawlers

 

[Reinhardt]

the story is amusing and keeps me much better entertained than the one in Mary Skelter did

Well, our witch is much better character than cardboard schoolboy.

 

[PocketMine]

the story is amusing and keeps me much better entertained than the one in Mary Skelter did

Well, our witch is much better character than cardboard schoolboy.

dont want to spoil it but story doesnt even start unfolding until you get to 5th dungeon.

I could get behind that, but is it really true? It sounds like it's generally easy enough you can just kinda half ass things and stuff will die for you regardless. The appeal of tuning your party in a game like Disgaea isn't that you roflstomp the story missions, it's that you go into the infinite dungeon and fight something twice (or more) your level for even crazier loot and watch your power explode. This seems more like you tune your party (or not) and then just slowly slog through a dungeon one shotting everything and killing a boss by using the same strategy that worked on every other boss.

Early game is ez. I guess you could use the same strat on all normal bosses but you would have to grind alot of levels above needed to fight them. For example alot of early bosses use melee or melee abilities. Late game and optional use AOE spells. This will make guardian tanks much less usefull as no matter who the boss targeted all your chars get hit. Its better to have smaller number of high avoidance characters that can dodge those spells then tanks unable to guard all the damage and spend most of time reviving KOed chars instead of fighting boss.

Bosses have different weaknesses i only beat one of optional bosses because he was weak to poison. Half of my char were freshly soul transfered low level chars but i was bit bored while grinding xp for them nearby went to fight him just for fun. One of my chars had high +% poison on sword. Poison only sticked 3 times during fight doing 22+k dmg for several turns each time just enough until i run out of revives and left only with my best tank and best avoidance char standing in the end.

Edit: Forgot to add im now in final dungeon but i heard there is atleast one post game dungeon and more after that so maybe its similar to Disgea in post game content.

 

[fantadomat]

Is the black screen patched yet? I stopped playing after the second black screen.

 

[Themadcow]

Looking on the Playstation Indonesia store (because they're cheap) I note that there's a Vita version of this game that was released in 2016 but only appears to be in Japanese. Still, Vita would be bloody ideal for this.

Since it's been translated for PS4, Switch and PC versions I'd have hoped an EN version of the Vita game would be fairly easy...

 

[Grauken]

The Vita is dead, has been for a quite a while

 

[Themadcow]

The Vita is dead, has been for a quite a while

And yet new games still get released for it. You'd have thought a digital release of an existing and already translated game would make sense.

 

[Grauken]

Not when you have to account for testing, certification, marketing, etc., not worth it

 

[PocketMine]

Is the black screen patched yet? I stopped playing after the second black screen.

There is a beta patch available on steam reportedly that fixes blackscreen bug. Personaly i never got blackscreen.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

How to play this game? I ve played for couple of hours, on page 5 right now (dungeon 3, 4 chars). Jus got break wall spell.
The game feels a bit restrictive. Like you don't chose anything while leveling up, the dungeon exploration is a bit meh. Like all is very standart, just corridors, random treasure and random loot. Doesn't feel handcrafted as might and magic or grimoire dungeon.
I really want to enjoy it and think it might be great but I need a piece of advice.

 

[Jasede]

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.)

 

[hackncrazy]

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.)

Totally off topic, but do you like roguelikes?

Because your description made me play a bit of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup in my head.