Fatal Labyrinth Review

      I was excited to hear that there was a rogue-like on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (although I think this game was only on Mega Drive. I'm playing a few of the games on the collection now, and I just beat Fatal Labyrinth.

       The only other rogue-like I've played for any length of time is Shiren the Wanderer, which is an incredible game. I would probably give it a perfect score were I to review it on this site. Fatal Labyrinth certainly follows many of the rogue-like tropes I'm familiar with from Shiren. The game is a turn-based dungeon crawler that takes place on a grid. Unlike Shiren, you can't move diagonally. If you've never played a game like this, the turn-based system is pretty cool. You move or take an action as if you are playing a real-time game, but after your action, every enemy on the screen takes an action too, and then it is your turn again. This all happens so fast that if you are just walking around, it looks and feels like a real-time game. You are faster than most enemies in the game, so you usually get to move a few times for each of their moves, although in combat they attack just as fast as you.

       On the PS3 port of this game, you move with the direction buttons, pick up items with square, and open the menu with X. You close the menu with circle. Square also causes you to skip a turn, which is extremely useful to help yourself get into position during fights. This game uses the “bump to attack” system that many rogue-likes use; in order to attack an enemy, you just press the direction button toward the enemy when you are standing by one.

       So you walk around the dungeon levels looking for the staircase that will take you up to the next level. Your goal is to get to the top of the castle and retrieve a mystical goblet or something. Along the way, you'll find tons of gear and loot. You can find and equip weapons and armor, and find potions, one-time-use magic staves, and one-time-use magic scrolls. Almost everything you find starts out unidentified. For example, you might find a potion called “pink potion,” and you won't know what it does until you drink it. There are a few items that hurt you, so it can be an adventure trying different items out. Once you use something once, if you find another like one, the description will be filled in since you know what it does. There are staffs that shoot magic at enemies, scrolls that confuse enemies, and a ton of other effects (almost all of which I was familiar with from playing Shiren).

       You'll also encounter a bunch of different enemy types, such as slow-moving and weak slimes, ninjas that throw suriken at you from far away, wizards that put various curses on you, and snails that hold you in place so you can't retreat. Again, almost every type of enemy is straight out of Shiren (and, I guess, straight out of Rogue or other rogue-likes). The have really cool sprites for the most part. The art in general is pretty cool. Different weapons and armor even appear on your character when you equip them.

       There are 30 randomly generated levels to get through, and unlike a traditional rogue-like, if you die, you can continue from every 5^th level. Usually rogue-likes have straight-up permadeath. Permadeath is a staple of rogue-likes, so it's a bit weird that it's absent here. But I must admit I loved being able to continue the few times I died on my run through. That's mostly because the game isn't really engaging enough to be playing it over and over from the beginning, but more on that later.

       For a rogue-like, Fatal Labyrinth is very easy. I think I only died 2-3 times, and I didn't have that many life-threatening situations come up. Most rogue-likes are pretty darn hard. This one is certainly beatable, even if it did have permadeath, which it doesn't.

       There are a few big cons to this game. The music is good, but it is on a loop, and that loop is about 15 seconds long, so it gets old fast, and it only changes every 10 floors or so. The game is also really clunky. Going into the menu is a pain as whenever you exit the menu, you exit all the way out. Since you often have more than one thing you need to do in the menu, this means you are frustrated and inconvenienced almost constantly. For example, if you find a ring, you have to go into the menu to equip it, and then go into the menu again to look at it's description to see what it does. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but you'll be in and out of the menu constantly, so the time wasted really adds up. The menu also has all your items split up into different categories, meaning you have to scroll through different icons just to look at your stuff. Shiren just had all your items in one sortable inventory, which works infinetely better than Labyrinth's system. There is also no way to turn in place, so in order to change direction, you must take a step in the direction you want to go. This really hampers your tactics and makes long-range weapons almost useless. By the time you take a step toward an enemy so that you are pointed at them, they have taken a step toward you too, and the rooms are so small you are probably now standing next to each other. Because melee weapons are more powerful, that means you should just use your melee weapon at that point.

       I would say that Fatal Labyrinth is a good beginner rogue-like because it is so easily beatable and it doesn't really have permadeath, but the truth is it's so clunky that it would probably frustrate people unfamiliar with the genre. Beginners would be much better off playing something with an infinetely better interface, like Shiren. Veterans should also look elsewhere, as there isn't much to the game beyond very basic rogue-like tropes and a terrible interface. That means that the game is really for no one. It was ok to quickly blast through it though. That's why it's a mediocre game, tier 3.