Lapis x Labyrinth goes above and beyond when it comes down to the whole 2D beat-’em-up genre. If you’re anyway familiar with the NIS company, you know you’re in for a weird experience – by western standards. An experience hard to explain because it’s quite unique and probably a bit niche too.
A town called malice
The setting for Lapis x Labyrinth is one of a desolate town which used to thrive on the likes of adventurers from everywhere. Sadly the adventurers stopped showing interest in the labyrinth and as such, the town’s economy and community fell apart. The mayor of the town decides to revive the interest in the labyrinth by inviting some new adventures with the promise of great finds inside the labyrinth. You play as the leader of a party of 4 adventurers who will explore the labyrinth. With each successful run down one of the labyrinth’s levels, the city breaths fresh air. This blooming of the city is a nice way to mask the opening of new shops later in the game. As the city becomes more lively, newer adventurers enter which can than be used to swap out your current band of looting adventurers.
Some role-playing spice
Lapis x Labyrinth is a 2D beat-’em-up with some original twists. Instead of one character, they went with 4 adventures instead of one. Don’t worry, in Lapis x Labyrinth your 4 characters act as one. The adventures are presented with a leader at the bottom and the heads of the 3 others stacked above the leader’s head. The bottom character is the only one active. Switching between these characters is done with the push of a button. Some situations might ask for a more defensive approach where you’ll make your shielder the active character. Other situations might need a heavy hitter or a supporting character to heal the party. Finding the right combination and using them well, makes for a more compelling experience. After each successful level, you’ll gain class specific gear to buff out your characters which adds some mild RPG flavor to the game.
Collecting treasure
Adventurers who risk their lives in enemy filled labyrinths are often only in it for the treasures. In Lapis x Labyrinth theirs plenty of treasure to be found. The levels are filled with loot boxes and colorful gems are found bursting out of defeated enemies. The amount of treasure you’ll see flying around might actually give some people an epileptic seizure. Just look at the screenshots to see I’m not exaggerating at all. Dropping enemies left and right without getting hurt will even grant you more rare treasure. Indicated by a treasure bonus counter. After each level, you are presented with the results of your looting. Even a bad run can grant you cool loot but only a flawless run grants you the really good stuff. To get such a flawless run will take some perseverance and quick thinking abilities.
Smash mechanics
Each character in Lapis x Labyrinth has multiple specific moves. Executing these moves feels very much like playing a Smash Brothers game. Normal attacks are performed with the use of a single button. The direction in which you point your attack changes the move. Special attacks work in the same way. This makes the fighting feel very intuitive and easy to pick up. You don’t need to learn lists of combos for this one. Combining moves in such a way that they all connect as efficiently as possible is preferred but one can easily get away with mindless button-mashing too. Since your jumping with four characters at once you can perform a sort of quadruple jump. Timing this right can get you to reach that pesky flying enemy above you.
I hope you like counters
Traversing the maze-like levels filled with thousands of enemies in all sizes will feel busy without a doubt. The addition of multiple counters on the screen makes it a bit too much in my opinion. There are counters for each character, an “ex counter”, a maze counter, a treasure combo counter, … which all clutter up the screen. Since the battles offer so much mayhem on the screen, there really isn’t time to look at these counters. All in all these additions might look spectacular to anyone who looks at these screenshots but while playing they just clutter up the screen.
Conclusion
Lapis x Labyrinth looks and sounds great. The powertrip you get when slashing a horde of enemies is great but despite all the additional tweaks, it does get repetitive way too soon. A good story might save such a game but since the story is utterly bland, this game couldn’t grab my attention for long enough to keep playing. The initial few levels felt great which means there was certainly potential but the repetitiveness of the levels made me lose interest way too fast. The switching of different characters mechanic wasn’t worked out properly enough to really make a big enough difference. In the explosive chaos of a battle, I resorted more than anything else to button mashing instead of the tactical thinking the game intended, simply because it felt easier.
