Review for Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk. Game for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, the video game was released on 23/06/2016 The version for PC came out on 21/09/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 21/09/2018 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 28/09/2017
Nippon Ichi Software is well known to JRPG lovers, given and considered the long list of titles that it can boast of having given birth over time, both in terms of development and publication. Unfortunately, however, many children had remained in their homeland without ever seeing the light of Western localization, at least until the stars and stripes branch, called NIS America, was born, which has crowned the dream of many of us fetishists of numbers and statistics.
While NIS's product list has steadily increased in number and experience over time, so has not been the quality. We must certainly light a candle for Disgaea, which has swelled the ranks of strategic JRPGs with good quality titles, and for Yomawari who strangely diverged from Nippon Ichi's obsession for role-playing games, giving us a Night Alone and Midnight Shadows that they carried on what little there was to do with PlayStation Vita.
After a The Longest Five Minutes that convinced us very little and an equally almost disappointing The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2, NIS tries again with Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk, released on September 18 on PlayStation 4, PS Vita (yes), Nintendo Switch and PC, another JRPG with the aesthetics and basic characteristics to which the software house has now accustomed us, but which seeks to renew itself and raise itself in quality.
Atypicality
In Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk we will play a book. No, you were not wrong to read and I am not on methamphetamine. Or at least I think.
The story begins with Dronya, aka Baba Yaga, a notorious and terrible witch who, together with her apprentice, Luca, moves to the small town of Refrain, as she is summoned by the local governor to investigate a mysterious well that appeared in the city from which she emanates. of the mighty miasma. Below the aforementioned well there is a series of interconnected labyrinths to form one of epochal and especially deadly dimensions.
Precisely for this reason, to explore it Dronya decides to use the Tractatus de Monstrum, a particularly powerful magical book that has acquired a soul, thus becoming a living being, and which is capable of creating and governing Puppets, or puppets. The puppets will be our actual battle pawns and there will be six different classes, all marked by certain characteristics (purely physical or magical, but with different variations), as in any good role-playing game.
The customization possibilities are huge and increases as you progress through the game. In addition to being able to vary (even if a little) the aesthetics of the characters, we are allowed to choose the nature, which determines the basic characteristics and the growth of the stat, in addition to the starting skills and much more. We will therefore be able to create two puppets of the same class, but completely different from each other as they level up.
Another peculiarity of Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is the number of party members. Unlike any other JRPG, in which we will be in command of a well-defined number of characters (ranging from four, maximum five or six, generally speaking), in the NIS title we will have increasing numbers of Puppet available as we continue in the game, up to more than a dozen. All this will be possible with the Coven system, literally pacts that our puppets can join and that we can deploy in battle. Conceptually, the Coven will fight, not so much the individual characters. There will be Coven which can also be associated with three puppets, creating an extremely varied and numerous party. You will therefore understand how the strategic possibilities increase dramatically.
Singularity
The exploration part of Refrain's dungeon is one of the funniest things about the title. NIS has destroyed any idea of level design with the inclusion of a single ability, the Wall Breaker with which you can literally tear down the walls of the dungeon to create shortcuts or to find secret rooms otherwise inaccessible. Of course, you will have to be willing to take long backtracking sessions, as several of the hidden areas of a floor will contain much stronger enemies than your current party and you will therefore have to make the bitter decision to return later. A backtracking that is not necessarily frustrating, but that can certainly annoy many.
The main problem with this "destruction" of level design is that it is not limited only to secondary roads that lead, perhaps, to hidden chests containing special equipment, but is often also used to continue the story. You will then find yourself turning for hours and hours on the same floors in search of that single wall that you have not yet demolished to find that single room that contains a single chest essential to continue the plot.
And while we're at it, let's talk about the plot. To carry it out you will have to carry out the tasks that Dronya will assign you, from finding a particular object to simple and pure exploration of the planes. Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk offers a story that is certainly not very original, but it casts a shadow of maturity and cynicism on it that will capture the attention. There is talk of death, of violence, there is also a scene of an attempted rape, even if you want to pass it lightly. In short, not the classic fairy tale full of colors and light.
A maturity that is also reflected on the main characters, especially on Dronya: mean, sour, snooty and arrogant, will not hesitate to punish Luca when he makes a mistake and, despite the game then wants to make us think again about her, she can easily be associated with a real Witch. Amiable in all respects, therefore.
In everything else, Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is packed, packed with elements and features. We will be able to unlock new skills for exploration by acquiring Mana in the dungeon, which can then be exchanged with Dronya who will give us her Witch Petitions (recurring in NIS games and present, for example, in The Witch and the Hundred Knight), with which we will be able to obtain many benefits, new growth possibilities for Puppets and much more. It is also true, however, that this mass of content is largely slammed in the face from the beginning, with a large amount of information that is rejected in the first hour of the game and which, we assure you, can be quite confusing.
Another small flaw of the title is the variety of enemies: in the dungeons there will always be the same four or five types, plus a final boss who often becomes midboss in subsequent dungeons. While they are all pretty cute and inspired, like the overall aesthetic of the title actually, having to spend several hours grinding the same sprites over and over again demeans the overall variety of the game a bit.
A little praise to the soundtrack and dubbing, available in both Japanese and English, with the latter really well done despite being a niche title. The subtitles are missing, as is the practice for games published by NIS America.
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is a JRPG that will satisfy all lovers of the genre, especially the fetishists of numbers and statistics. With a good exploratory component and a rather classic turn-based combat, the title of Nippon Ichi has been able to update and elevate some of its peculiarities, creating an interesting title from every point of view, although not free from defects. If the progression can sometimes seem difficult and always fight the same enemies a bit unnerving, the satisfactions will not be long in coming, also thanks to the development of a plot that is certainly not original, but interesting and dark. And remember that we are not talking about one of the fairy tales that Disney has accustomed us to: here the Little Mermaid becomes foam.
► Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is a JRPG type game developed by and published by NIS America for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, the video game was released on 23/06/2016 The version for PC came out on 21/09/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 21/09/2018 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 28/09/2017
