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App Army Assemble: Labyrinth Legend - Is this ARPG a good game to get lost in?

We ask the App Army

App Army Assemble: Labyrinth Legend - Is this ARPG a good game to get lost in?

Labyrinth Legend is a retro-styled action RPG from indie developer Sasuke Shimoyama. It involves a tonne of dungeon crawling and a whole lot of looting. We decided to send our App Army into its procedurally generated labyrinths to see how they found it.

Here's what they said:

Eric Lee

Labyrinth Legend is a fun little slasher RPG. I've spent the better part of the last 6 hours with it and will share some of my thoughts. The game starts off with a title screen that transitions into a story sequence that puts forth a very general, short and trite storyline. Take it in here because it's about all the story I've run across aside from the handful of NPCs in the village. So if a story-rich adventure is your thing you can safely move on now.

If, however, you want to run around and slash at some baddies whilst basking in the glow of loot then by all means continue. It's not going to be Borderlands level loot mania but it offers a very fun and addictive quest to gain better weapons/armour and upgrade them at the home base. All weapons attack differently and lend themselves to a vast range of options in terms of how you play your character and run around the battlefield.

Monsters and bosses offer the same level of nuance that make each dungeon feel just different enough to keep it from getting too repetitive. And even the bosses will attack slightly differently when you choose to "continue" after dying. I was able to replay the first dungeon on a harder level and sure enough, the big bad guy at the end had a different attack pattern than the first run through on easy.

I've managed through 6 different dungeons (to LVL 26 thus far) and have seen many variations on several of the stock monsters. It is fun trying to learn the attack patterns and figure out the best way to take down the bosses. The attacks on the monsters are visceral and the coin/health drops can be very satisfying as well.

Given what I have mentioned above the game can still descend into a button masher that can get a touch repetitive at times. With the lack of a meaty story, this will wear some players to the brink of putting the game down.

Hands down my biggest heartburn with this title is the head-scratching controls. I always try to play a game with a controller (Nimbus) above all else. This game, for some reason, allows you to move the character with the controller but then forces you to mash the right side of the screen to make an attack or defend yourself.

None of the controller buttons works. It's downright silly and maddening. Playing only on the touchscreen reduces the fidelity of the movement controls and loses some of the magic. For $2.99 to remove ads though you can do infinitely worse on the app store. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a nostalgic slasher romp.

Patrick Garlotte

Immediately Labyrinth Legend evokes the simplistic arcade fun of a game from the 16-bit era. The pixel art is attractive and the gameplay is quick. The gameplay loop itself, however, is quite shallow. With some refinement of its mechanics and just a bit of polish, this could go from a mediocre game to a good one. Unfortunately in its current state, it falls a bit short.

Naail Zahid

Honestly speaking, this game feels pre-alpha to me. There are glitches and errors happening left and right, and the game doesn't display full screen on my Galaxy Note 10 (which is 1080p).

To iterate, I've had my character spawn on parts of a floor that should be a wall and I've had to exit and restart a dungeon multiple times for this reason. On top of that, there is no difficulty whatsoever, I smashed through every single enemy in the game for 3 hours straight just by tapping the attack button.

There's no story to speak of, and the animations look like they came out of RPG maker.
It might be a fun time-waster on a subway ride home, and for 2.99, it's not asking for much to remove ads, but don't go expecting a hit with this one. It's as lame as early iPhone mobile titles have ever been.

Also, there is very little in terms of sounds and music. Most repeat and start to get on my nerves, but maybe others might find the music more tolerable. I should mention the fact that this game didn't work with any of my controllers, which include Moga, 8bitdo, Dualshock 4 and an iPega controller.

To top that off, the on-screen controls are really positioned awkwardly for attack and defending. Again, it's probably because the game wasn't displaying properly on my phone, but it felt off to me regardless.

Muhammad Khalid Hassan

To begin the review the first thing to comes o my mind is it's story elements. The story in this game is as usual used in some other RPGs; an ancient demon attacked some peaceful place & now the place is overrun by demons. Now we need a hero to conquer the evil etc.

What I like about this game is its soundtrack. You will find it heart soothing. Graphics are OK for a retro-inspired RPG, not that great but not so bad either.

Next, I want to talk about some problems which are visible to me. Grammatical mistakes are a thing and you will find some grammatical errors in the dialogue of some characters there, which I think can be bearable, after all, they aren't native English people. Controls, on the other hand, seem a disappointment to me. Controls cover over some parts of the display, that's pretty annoying for me. Maybe they can adjust the controls by lowering them into a smaller margin.

One thing I would like to mention here that, this game is like a shadow of Evoland 1 for me!
I found similarities with the soundtrack of Evoland 1 & story mode is quite same.
If you're an Evoland fan you will like it too! Other than that this game is pretty enjoyable to play. The story mode is captivating, the soundtrack is awesome & graphics aren't that bad!

Michael Purdy

This game reminds me of old SNES games like soul blazer. Graphics are simple and clean, if not a little bland. The gameplay is fun. There are some weird things I noticed like being able to walk through boxes. The attack animation (swinging your sword) looks really awkward. Made me think of how it looked to swing your sword in 3D dot game heroes. Controls are nice and responsive.

Overall the game is a fun diversion. There is room for improvement, though.

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Mark Abukoff

There is really very little to highlight this game. The music was so annoying that I turned the sound off quickly. There is very little story to make me want to advance beyond simply finishing the labyrinth/dungeon. Controls are simple but too close together, so several times I found myself shooting arrows when I wanted to swing the sword. Despite the fact that a full inventory (and inability to pick up new objects) is pretty much a staple of games like this, the inventory in this game seems so small that I couldn’t gather everything in the first dungeon.

All these little things add up to frustration that kills the fun that this simple little game could provide. A better-executed version with better controls and more of a story could be a great little RPG. As it is, it’s not necessarily a waste of space on my phone, but I wouldn’t really want to spend money on it.

Matt ARen

Labyrinth Legend is a top-down dungeon crawler, reminiscent of late generation 8 bit and early 16-bit console games. Minimal story is provided, a basic tale of an isolated town connected to a giant labyrinth that many heroes have gone too, but none have returned from.

The graphics are serviceable, somewhere between what old school 8 bit and 16-bit machines were capable of. The colour palettes are simple and pleasant, with enough variety between labyrinth levels. The music and sound effects are complimentary, but nothing stands out as particularly good or bad. The controls are simple and responsive, easily mastered.

The gameplay is the major draw here, as Labyrinth is a really satisfying hack and slash, the kind we rarely see anymore. Your character has multiple weapons with various effects available, spell casting abilities, upgrade amulets, and weapon skills. Experimenting with weapon, ability, and upgrade combinations is fun and adds to the replay value.

There is no P2W option here, you’ll have to grind this one out to buy new skills and upgrade weapons, but that makes it more rewarding in the end. I recommend Labyrinth to anyone who likes old school slashers and would encourage most others to try it. It’s not a flashy game, but the developer got the important parts right, and that’s what matters.

Brian Wigington

It is basically an action roguelike/dungeon crawler with 16bit Zelda style Combat. The levels of the dungeon are randomly generated if I'm not mistaken allowing good replay value. I rather enjoyed the music even though it's a bit repetitive.

There is a decent short tutorial to get you used to the Combat though I felt the controls were a little cramped and that the game didn't quite fill the screen properly. Hopefully, these items will be tweaked in the future. There is a shield/guard system used with the combat that allows a touch of strategy when fighting. Sometimes shielding yourself and waiting for the moment to unleash your flurry of attacks pays off.

There is a ton of loot with random stats including armour pieces, boomerangs, bows, and swords. The town has NPCs selling items and potions for your journey. There also seems to be NPCs with quests or tasks to take on. I am hoping the devs add more content and polish the game since it is a great initial effort.

I played about 6 levels into the dungeon before dying due to my neglect of the shield ability. With my lessons learned, I am eager to dive back in and hunt for more loot. I can safely recommend this purchase since for a few bucks you're getting a lot of content in a premium game. Additional updates will only make it better.

Steve Clarke

Labyrinth Legend is a fairly generic top-down retro hack and slash RPG, reminiscent of the early Zeldas.

It ran fine on my iPhone 7 plus (13.3.1) and while I can't say I didn't enjoy playing I hardly enjoyed myself either. Much like the gameplay, the graphics are nothing to write home about. I did enjoy the music though, I can see how it could get repetitive but I thought it was catchy and well-composed.

It's not something I would buy personally but if you're stuck for a game and want to while away a rainy afternoon you may find Labyrinth Legend's a worthwhile distraction until the clouds clear.

Jt Hernandez

A lot of people have been calling this rogue-like, but considering you keep everything after death, I'd just call this an overhead 2D adventure RPG.

The graphics and music seem pretty generic assets, but at least some thought and effort seem to have gone into the gameplay. There are 5 different melee weapons and 5 different ranged weapons, and each has a little different attack action like sword swings, spear thrusts, whip circles, and boomerang returns. Weapons and other equipment can have little bonus effects, but unfortunately, it's never clear what those do. How is a curse a bonus? Do fire runes do more damage against ice ghosts? The buttons do have some dead spaces, so I often thought I should be attacking but it looks like it was trying to shield instead.

There's a pet that can follow you around too, but it doesn't seem to defend you or attack your enemies. They do collect items for you, I guess. Monsters each have some unique programming too, some set to throw things while running away from you, while others run to you and attack.

Overall, this is not a bad game, but not a great game either. Combat is pretty repetitive despite all the attempts on making things unique. There is no story to drive my interest, either. I just keep wondering if maybe there's more going for it, but 30 levels in and I haven't found it.

Roman Valerio

Labyrinth Legend is as "indie" as it can get. And in this case, by "indie" I mean that sort of niche games, which as a rule are always distinguished by huge blocks of text with the plainest font possible, heavily pixelated graphics, very fiddly controls and the plot based entirely on an eternal conflict between good and evil.

I am really lost for words with this one as it didn't click with me at all. If you want to play a better version of this game or probably even the source of its inspiration, I would advise you to look up both Evoland games, which are far more superior and play worthy titles.

In order to meet my quota of words for this write-up to count as a review, I'll probably say the following: after being around for almost 12 years App Store has transformed into a huge labyrinth of games and apps, mostly bad ones, but there are true gems as well. With this said you should never settle for some mediocre games, look harder and you'll be rewarded. And now my sermon is over.

Oksana Ryan

This dungeon-based game is slow to start but picks up speed as the character moves from level to level. The enemies are colourful and varied, there are coins to be collected and weapons to pick up. There is a village at the beginning of the game before you enter the labyrinth and you can return to this village throughout the game to use your coins in a shop there to upgrade items.

I liked the graphics, the music was annoying and was soon turned off, and the gameplay was simple one-finger drag and tap, although at times I found it difficult to manoeuvre the character around quickly enough to avoid the enemies, especially as I tried to move forward. That said, it didn’t really spoil my enjoyment of the game or stop me moving through the levels

All in all, not a bad game and I shall certainly be continuing to play to the end.

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The App Army is Pocket Gamer's lovely community of mobile game experts. As often as possible, we ask them for their thoughts on the latest games and share them with you.

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Stephen Gregson-Wood
Stephen Gregson-Wood
Stephen brings both a love of games and a very formal-sounding journalism qualification to the Pocket Gamer team.