Labyrinthine Review (FoofDeckman)
Labyrinthine was an inconsistently enjoyable experience. At first the genuine horror of walking through a dark maze-like map with creepy monsters roaming within its corridors was fun, but that feeling runs thin very quickly. Just when you think the horror of the game is based around its various monsters, you realize that you have limited lives that drain a lot quicker than what should be allowed. The thought of having to restart the past hour of progress in a maze bigger than the state of Delaware strikes fear in even the most brave of people. All of this in the back of your mind while desperately wandering the same looking corridors until you eventually stumble upon something you need, this is the real horror of Labyrinthine. The repetitive tedium of aimlessly wandering for over an hour is what kills this game more than anything else. I understand the point of it is to be challenging and I was never expecting a cake walk, but when the difficultly solely comes from navigating a maze while attempting to manage Labyrinthine's frustrating monsters that'll typically run quicker than you and will continuously lock onto you is not difficulty, it's simply bad and tedious game design. A lot of these enemies either don't have weaknesses or have ones that aren't telegraphed to player outside of random lore notes, THAT'S RIGHT, you have the potential to just skip crucial mechanics if you're not someone that reads every bit of lore found on every note in this game, and there's a staggering amount of them everywhere. There is little fun to be had in this game, and outside of the initial discovery phase of a new level, you will spend an hour or more banging your head against a wall to find way too many objects on a giant map with identical looking corridors, just to progress in the game. I've attempted to play this three different times, I can't express how much of a chance I gave this game, way more than other games similar to it, and every time it disappointed me and left me feeling like I never should have tried it to begin with. I played this with a buddy of mine, and we both uninstalled it directly after spending two and a half hours on level six desperately trying to fight the will of quitting midway through. Given this is the full release now, I can confidently say do not play it as I don't see it improving, I never want to look at another maze ever again.