Labyrinth of Zangetsu gives
Labyrinth of Zangetsu is a dungeon crawler that incorporates old JRPG mechanics that offer it the potential to stand on its own above the rest. Developed by Japanese game development studio, Acquire, the same developer who brought us the renowned 2.5D RPG that is Octopath Traveler, has partnered up with Kaeru Panda Inc. To bring new life to a classic genre with a rather interesting twist.
While mainly dealing with mobile games, Kaeru Panda Inc took a big leap of faith to go bigger by teaming up with Aqcuire. Labyrinth of Zangetsu is a beautifully designed game that is similar in design and theme to the old JRPG games we used to play, featuring all hand-drawn artwork in a Japanese ink-wash painting style, purely instrumental music to match, and a compelling story. However, this game has a few issues that will need to be fixed before it can take a top spot in the Hall of Fame.
In Labyrinth of Zangetsu, the world you live in is being threatened by the Ink of Ruin. The only remaining bastion of safety is known as Tokinokuni, while it is protected by Zangetsu barriers, it won’t last forever. You are tasked with a training order to create a party of conscripts containing both humans and otherworldly creatures, and these will be known as Blightbane. Your only mission is to rise up against the ink causing the massive blight and bring light back to the sacred lands.
You’ll be tasked with gathering people from both human and otherworldly creatures to unite against the Ink for the sake of saving the land both good and evil live on. Their enemy, the Ink of Ruin, doesn’t discriminate between races and alignments and instead sees everybody and everything as an obstacle on its path to darken the lands. Although, before you can officially begin saving the land, you’ll need to prove yourself in the Fort of Trials.
Your epic quest in Labyrinth of Zangetsu begins with an introduction through a beautiful cinematic, once again showcasing the brilliant art style of the game. Though there are sadly no voiceovers for cinematics, the art style and music make up for it. After that, you’ll have the honour of conscripting your own party, though this is where things become a little hairy.
Your party is your lifeline in the game; if that’s gone, it’s basically game over. You’ll need to pay close attention when creating your conscripts, as they’ll need to balance each other out. You’ll have the option to create new conscripts from scratch, or you can use the pre-set conscripts.
Making a team of new conscripts is advisable as it will allow you to have control of party members’ race, stats and classes. The races you’ll be able to choose from are Human, Cavegram, Dwarf, Elf, Nekomata, and Half-Oni. However, each race has its own starting stats that make them unique and can make them better suited to the classes giving you an advantage in-game
After choosing your conscript’s race, you’ll be given a randomly rolled amount of Bonus Points that you can assign to the available stats in-game – Strength (Str), Charisma (Cha), Dexterity (Dex), Vitality (Vit), and Spirit (Spi). Each attribute has a different effect on different parts of your conscript, like strength melee damage, intelligence for dark magic potency, vitality for health, and charisma for other checks.
Although, keep in mind that your Bonus Points will also be the biggest factor in the classes your conscript has access to. Having more Bonus Points means you’ll have more options to choose from. Though if you have the patience for it, you can reroll your bonus points for a chance at getting a higher starting amount and access to more classes at the same time.
After picking our race, we get to choose our classes, disappointing that some classes aren’t obtainable even with high bonus points. With a very high roll, you have access to classes like Thief, Cleric, Wizard, Samurai, Warrior, and Monk Classes. For the rest of the classes, you’ll only be able to reach with further progression. Each class gives stat boosts to conscripts slightly but is still useful. For each class, we are also given a passive, like the thief being the only class to disarm chests and open them without having to use brute force to get in
As mentioned before, you’ll need a balanced party, the typical composition for a balanced party is 1 Warrior, 1 Samurai, 1 Cleric, 2 Wizards, and 1 Thief. Although you can freely build any type of party to suit your playstyle, a team of all wizards is fine too. However, it will also change how difficult it can get if you don’t know what to expect. You’ll have to keep in mind the stats differences for each race and the class bonuses when you’re building your party, as the ink beasts all have their weakness, and we don’t know these weaknesses until we fight to test out our attacks and skills.
Once you’ve got your crazy team of conscripts ready and willing to save the day, you’ll have to go through the Fort of Trials. The Fort is your first taste of battle against Ink creatures, but also the tutorial for Labyrinth of Zangetsu, the Fort of Trials, can be a bit tedious, but you’ll be rewarded with experience points and some very useful starting items after that. The Fort of Trials has a secondary purpose though, and you can use it to test out new conscripts and find what works for you.
You’ve finished the tutorial and now you’re ready for the world. You’ll be taken to the City of Ido to explore your number one stop for everything you’ll need to buy. The City of Ido is also a rest point where you can restore your party’s health and buy what you need before heading back out into the wilds. Ido might not have much to offer, but it’s more than enough for you to get ready for the next adventure, like the Trading Post and Template.
The one place in Ido where you’ll likely spend more money than most is the Trading Post. Sadly, it will only ever stock basic gear and weapons to get you started, but you’ll always need consumables like medicine or torches. You’ll need to carry a decent stockpile of supplies, especially healing items, since your cleric is still quite limited on spells for healing or status effect negation.
The other place you can visit in Ido would be the Temple; here, you can bring back conscripts who died in battle or purify them if they’ve been corrupted. Resurrection comes with a fairly steep price but also a catch; your conscript’s alignment determines the chance of the resurrection being successful. Purification is incredibly important in Labyrinth of Zangetsu because while the status effect holds, it will lower your conscript’s max health until it is purified.
Now you’ll get to brave your main objective of saving the land. What makes Labyrinth of Zangetsu so attractive is the dungeon mechanic that we so rarely see in other games. You can make use of a mini-map and a full-size map to keep track of where you are and where you’re heading. Though you explore, you’ll reveal blocks around you as well, revealing more of the map as you go.
While you’re out adventuring, you’ll find blocks with a strange mist inside them. This fog is what adds a certain risk to exploring because they hide enemy encounters. Unlike any average JRPG that will randomly throw you into an encounter, you’ll instead somewhat be able to prepare before starting the battle.
However, you won’t know what you’ll encounter until you take the plunge and start the fight. Channelling your inner Rambo might get you good results at first, but it can also prove disastrous. If you don’t want to fight, then your next option is to try sneaking past the mist, though sneaking still runs on chance and can sometimes be unsuccessful.
Still carrying on with the JRPG mechanics, character speed is a big factor to consider in combat. Speed will determine when your conscripts can attack, but the same goes for the enemies you encounter. While in an encounter, you’ll have several actions to choose from, such as – Attack, Repeat, Equipment, Reorder, and Run. The attack will let you individually choose which conscript gets to do what action, such as simply attacking, casting magic, using skills or using items. However, you can also choose Parry, which raises your conscript’s defence for the turn.
Every class in Labyrinth of Zangetsu has its skills and magic to use, but you do start off with barely enough to get by until your conscripts level up and gain new abilities to level the playing field in battle. Though there is a massive imbalance in this regard. Classes that rely on skills can be incredibly powerful and aren’t as limited as their magical counterparts. Whereas magical classes are incredibly limited on spell usage because each tier of magic they have access to will also have a set number of uses. This becomes very clear and unfair to the cleric, whose only duty is to heal and boost your party.
Aside from the enemy encounters, your conscripts will also notify you if they sense or see anything out of place ahead of you. What this means is that you can search for things around you to reveal new paths, gear, traps, or even hidden enemy encounters. To survive in the labyrinths, you’ll need to keep your eyes open for these oddities.
Labyrinth of Zangetsu is created using an amazing hand-drawn Japanese ink-wash art style built on 2.5D aspects. The Town of Ido has a diverse colour scheme that shows there’s a lot of life and vibrance when compared to the Ink ravaged labyrinths you’ll have to brave. That same contrast in colour also builds onto the atmosphere for the game as a whole. However, the sprite generation for the enemy encounter does need some work, as you’ll sometimes come across an enemy beast that’s extremely tiny compared to the rest.
Even though Labyrinth of Zangetsu doesn’t have any voice acting or over the top sound effects, the traditional instrumental music makes up for that and more. The music in Labyrinth of Zangetsu plays a big part in the atmosphere and immersion of the gameplay, with several shifts in mood and tone indicated by the music as well. Though a bit more work on sound effects would help this game stand out.
*Update: In the previous version of this review, we had mentioned a game-breaking bug that has since been patched and so this review and rating has been adjusted accordingly. We apologise to Kaeru Panda Inc for the misunderstanding and any damage caused.
