It's very pretty, but otherwise it's just a decent-to-middling Symphony of the Night clone. Not bad at all, but you can probably do better.

I'm basically bumping this up by half a star because I have some affection for the Lodoss franchise.

EDIT: Actually ended up liking this a bit more after beating it. The intro areas are really bland, but they eventually get more interesting. The fake Ikuraga mechanic allowing you to blast enemies with magic also becomes more satisfying as the game leans into it.

Que jogo gostosinho de jogar...história ok, jogabilidade muito boa e precisa, apresenta uma mecânica interessante envolvendo os espíritos e é bem curtinho (perfeito pra quem está com pouco tempo para jogar)
Mais um excelente Metroidvania!

Mas alguns jogos a gente só enxerga os problemas quando vai atrás da platina/1000G
Pensei em pegar os 1000G do jogo e desisti mesmo depois de pegar 100% do mapa...e por incrível que pareça, liberando todas áreas, matando todos inimigos e tudo mais, não consegui gold necessário pra comprar todas as armas (que são todas mais fracas que as que eu já tenho)
Ou seja, farmar pra nada! (no máximo facilitar o boss rush mode)
Sem paciência pra isso kkkk

This game is just Symphony of the Night but you play as a woman, ew!

Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is a Metroidvania, actually, it's more than that it's a Symphony of the Night-inspired game. You might say that these two mean the same thing but not all metroidvania plays like Symphony of the Night, like their previous game for example, Touhou Luna Nights. This game doesn't play or look anything like Symphony of the Night while Wonder Labyrinth actually takes many cues from SOTN like the same type of melee weapon, similar art style, similar walk animations, similar enemies, and this isn't a complaint by any means I actually support games taking cues from other, why bother being original when you can just improve on past works.

Other than that I have no complaints about the game, it's just a really well-made Metroidvania game that may be a bit short but it is always often to be expected with this type of game.
Should you play it? It's definitely a must-play and a hidden gem, I never hear many people talk about this game as much as Luna Nights.

incredible game with impeccable level design. everyone knows this game is inspired by SOTN but i appreciated how they were able to introduce new and unique mechanics to the gameplay. i also enjoyed how by the end of the game the boss battles get more "tactical" - it was really fun fighting the bosses and planning which power would be more appropriate for the moment/which item i should choose.
wasn't really a fan of the story and i think the UI for choosing your power/item gets unpractical displayed vertically when you have lots of items/powers. but yeah, it's a wonderful game and doing it 100% was really fun!

I have had Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth on my wishlist for quite some time. I've heard it's a pretty decent metroidvania/symphony of the night clone that while good is rather short. The whole game could be completed 100% in a single weekend. This is mainly why I had this one on my wishlist.

Graphically it looks like it came right out of a PS1 Castlevania game and has that look and charm to it. This would be the perfect new game to play if I only had a couple of days to play something new before a bigger title. Once it becomes cheap I am in.

So when it did, it was an wasy purchase. It's a fun albeit standard metroidvania game, with the classic map design and room completion look that many have copied from Castlevania. It's not hard by any means and completion feels like it moves at a brisk pace. There plenty of different enemy designs and bosses thrown throughout so I'm never fighting the same enemies again and again.

The story I didn't get anything out of. I think this game is based off an anime I"m not sure but no knowledge of it's source material is required. Heck it seems like it doesn't really add anything to it as far as I could tell.

I think if you go into this with the right expectations you can find some good short burst of fun. As long as the price is good. Record of Lodoss War was a tasty snack before I save room for a much bigger meal but in it's wait I'm not hungry.

Platinum Trophy #180

Definitely not Symphony of the Night with a moustache.

Joke aside, the game looks gorgeous, has a great soundtrack and a cool system somehow reminiscent of Ikaruga.

A bit too short though. The story also doesn't make much sense if you're not familiar with the anime I guess.

ELF GIRL GAMING
ELF GIRL GAMING
ELF GIRL GAMING
ELF GIRL GAMING
ELF GIRL GAMING
ELF GIRL GAMING
ELF GIRL GAMING
ELF GIRL GAMING
ELF GIRL GAMING
ELF GIRL GAMING

What a delightful little game, and a marked improvement over Luna Nights. There is, however, not a lot to say about this one. It's just a very solid, very enjoyable SOTN clone and that's about it. Plays and looks like SOTN, but very well-made with smooth combat that feels very familiar without feeling like a hollow ripoff, interesting and rewarding exploration with genuinely good equipment to be found in secret passages, as well as cool aesthetics and fantastic pixel animation. This one's not going to blow any minds as far as originality is concerned, but it's an easy must-play in the SOTN-style subcategory of metroidvanias. There's a flaw or two, of course, and some might argue that the game's length is one of them, but I find it refreshing that you can completely 100% this game in like a dozen hours and the short runtime allows me to not really care that maybe inventory management isn't ideal. Get in, enjoy some very solid metroidvania action, out before it gets old. Hope these guys make more, even bigger and better, metroidvanias!

Okay, actually, I will add one major complaint: this game is way too easy. I cheesed almost all of the bosses on my first attempt by just keeping one of my spirit skills at level 3 and using it exclusively to heal, which makes sense if you try the game, while using the boss attacks to refill my magic and constantly spamming magic attacks. It's kind of a joke how easily this game design can be completely broken with obvious tactics. I don't personally hate easy games, though, so it didn't take away much for me and I'm just noting it in case someone reads this. I actually really enjoyed that this game and dev team is focused on opportunities and not limitations. In a post-Dark Souls world, it feels like every game is obsessed with punishment and this game just lets you do cool shit without being too concerned about difficulty. I like it.

Seems like I can't even complain about this one without turning that paragraph into a positive, so I guess that means I very much enjoyed this game. I can muster one final complaint, though; if you care about story, but haven't seen the anime, you will have no clue what's going on. This game is a sidestory for fans of the anime and it does not concern itself one bit with explaining itself to people who haven't seen it. This is not one of those side stories you can enjoy without knowing the main story because it's nothing but what seem to be callbacks and references and the story does not stand on its own. I guess Deedlit was in love with some dude named Parn, he died and this game is basically her dealing with his death? Luckily for me, I couldn't care less about the plot in a game like this, so it didn't matter for me, but story hounds beware. I'll just end this paragraph, and the review, by repeating that this game is great and any metroidvania fan, especially SOTN fans, should play it immediately.

Firstly, that's a terrible name. Second, I had no idea this game was part of an actual IP. Apparently Record of Lodoss War is a popular japanese d&d campaign media.

This is my 2nd team ladybug game. They seem to have a formula for metroidvania games that is pretty obvious when you compare touhou luna nights and this. The games are still like distinct, but they also are both so obviously different flavors of the same gameplay. Overall they focus much more on the "vania" part of metroidvania. This style of game isn't a huge appeal for me, but it's still fun

I think i prefer touhou luna nights, that had better bossfights,music and more interesting enviornments.
The best part about Deedlit in Wonder labyrinth is the core mechanic of switching between two different elements. This is pretty rad. It's cool how killing with one element will charge up the other. This mechanic is kind of like the color switching in ikaruga, where you can absorb attacks of an element but want often want the opposite element of an enemy to be good at hurting them.
I enjoyed how you get the ability to hover really early on, it felt kind of sweet for that to be the starting point of 'vania movement.

This game is really generous with healing. That's both negative in how it hurts boss fights but also a positive because I'm not exactly a fan of retrying boss fights. {Generally i prefer games with high difficulty/low punishment}

The bow & arrow puzzles in the environment were hot garbage

Every area has some colored doors which you can open. Sometimes an area will have doors that are opened by a future area or bonus rooms out of reach with your current movement. It's kind of boring to trek back over to these once you get whatever key progress. Like it just feels like a waste of my time. It's not a meaningfully challenge to look at your map and remember you had some small inaccesible bits of previous areas. Most other metroidvanias i've played do this much better.

My biggest problem with the structure of the game is that it's linear, you just freely explore each level (and sometimes do minimal backtracking to previous areas to pick up more bonuses). To me that isn't worth calling a metroidvania. Yeah you get new abilities that "open up paths in the world", but it's really just a sequence of finishing each level to unlock the ability to go into the next area (which is directly connected to the previous). The world design also felt very pick a pathy, which was annoying.

The story did absolutely nothing for me. Maybe i'd like it better if i was familiar with the IP? Current take is that it's a complete waste of time

Here's a mildly amusing anecdote: About two years ago I played Team Ladybug’s previous game, Touhou Luna Nights, and gave it a 4.0 on [Glitchwave]. The thing of it is, I remember nearly nothing about the game. Maybe I’m getting old or maybe there’s too much chloride in the tap water or maybe I’ve played too many metroidvanias over the past few years, but my recollection of this supposedly 4-out-of-5 game was so fuzzy that for a while I was 100% conflating it with Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight in my head. With the help of YouTube I managed to jog my memory, but even after that refresher I struggled to recall exactly why I’d been so enthusiastic about it. (Too bad I wasn’t writing reviews back then!)

Having finished Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, though, I absolutely understand both why I savored Touhou Luna Nights as well as why it didn’t stick in my memory. Because Team Ladybug have struck once again, delivering a beautiful, perfectly paced Metroidvania – one that manages to hang just a tier below the best in its genre despite a haphazard story and a lack of real standout elements.

There’s a map to fill. Enemies to kill. Experience points to gain. Items to collect. Bosses to conquer. Team Ladybug have borrowed many elements from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, fusing them together with detailed animations, lovely parallax-scrolling effects, and silky smooth combat – which isn’t to say that it’s a mere clone. One notable difference lays in the level design. The layout of the labyrinth, though not particularly inspired, always kept pushing me moving forward. Yet on the other hand, when I wanted to return to a previous area for a second look, a fast-travel point was never far away. Team Ladybug have even made key improvements to the UI since their previous game, adding features like a minimap in the corner of the screen.

I wonder if the game’s greatest sin is that it doesn’t provide enough friction for the player. Rushing around the map and bumping into new bosses every 20 to 30 minutes keeps the game feeling fresh, but it also makes every new encounter less memorable than the last. The game has a few impressive setpieces, like a pair of battles with dragons, but both of these appear in the first half of the game. The tension level flattens out early, when ideally it should build and build and build instead.

There is at least one innovative feature here, however, that as far as I know hasn’t been used in a Metroidvania before. That feature is elemental switching. The game’s namesake and protagonist, Deedlit, can switch between Fire and Wind at will. Certain obstacles can only be overcome by switching between the two, and many enemies are more vulnerable to one element than the other.

Complicating matters further is that both elements have power levels. When an element is charged up to level three, it confers attack bonuses and also allows you to slowly regain health while you have it equipped – a trick that comes in handy during boss fights. How do you charge up to level three, you ask? You do it by attacking with the other element, so attacking with Wind charges Fire and vice versa. In practice, this means you’ll find yourself frequently bouncing between the two, trying to keep both topped up in order to maximize your damage output and health regeneration. Personally, I found this system extremely engaging, and by the end of the game my finger was constantly clicking the right bumper, ever seeking a little boost.

Will this game stick more firmly in my memory than Team Ladybug’s previous offering? Only time will tell, though I certainly hope it will. It honestly has even made me interested in checking out the manga that it’s based on. High fantasy, Japan-style? Sign me up.

Un metroidvania "light", basé sur l'univers de Lodoss. Alors je ne connais pas vraiment cette franchise, j'ai vu quelques bouts de l'anime quand j'étais gamin (ça devait être diffusé sur Game One je pense), donc je vais directement évacuer la partie scénario : je n'ai pas compris grand chose lors de ma partie. Toutefois, je suis aller lire quelques explications sur internet et je pense que pour quelqu'un qui aime la série, le jeu est écrit sous un angle intéressant.

J'avais mis le jeu en wishlist il y a pas mal de temps car j'adore le pixel art qui le compose. Je le trouve vraiment magnifique : les persos sont beaux, bien animés, il y a plein d'effets visuels pour donner de la patate, même les décors, bien que peu variés, sont plutôt jolis.

Comme je le disais plus haut, il s'agit d'un metroidvania light : le jeu ne dure que quelques heures (il m'en a fallu 5 pour voir le générique en ayant exploré 91% de la map), il n'y a pas beaucoup de secrets, ni d'incitatifs à y retourner (il y a bien un boss rush, un mini jeu de gambling et un mini jeu de tir à l'arc).

Le gameplay est assez classique, dans le sens où on explore la map, on débloque des nouveaux chemins via l'acquisition de nouvelles compétences ou de "clés" d'accès, on tue les monstres sur le chemin, on change d'armes, on affronte les boss. Par contre le système de combat est un peu plus complexe que ce à quoi on est habitués dans ce genre de jeux. Notre arme de corps à corps ainsi que notre arc sont "enchantés" par l'esprit du vent et l'esprit du feu, et on change à la volée entre les 2. Chaque ennemi est plus ou moins résistant à ces enchantements, sachant qu'en plus cela nous confère une immunité à ce même élément. Il faut donc constamment switcher entre les 2 éléments au gré des résistances ennemies et des éléments que eux-mêmes utilisent. Pensez un peu Ikaruga.
De plus, chaque élément monte de niveau, de 1 à 3, à mesure qu'on tue des ennemis avec l'autre esprit (en gros, si je tue des ennemis en ayant équipé l'esprit vent, j'améliore mon esprit feu). Et si on se fait toucher, alors on perd du niveau. Plus le niveau est élevé, plus on fait de dégâts, et en plus, une fois niveau 3, on bénéficie d'un regen passif de vie.

Sur le papier l'idée est sympa, mais malheureusement je l'ai trouvée sous exploitée ingame. Je pense que le problème vient du fait qu'il n'est pas facile de switcher d'élément en pleine action tout en continuant d'attaquer et en évitant les attaques auxquelles on ne peut être immunisé. Du coup, je pense que les développeurs ont eu le même constat, et ont décidé de ne pas trop s'appuyer sur cette mécanique de switch pour absorber les attaques durant les combats, mais l'ont plutôt mise en avant lors de l'exploration et des (légères) phases de plates-formes.

À part ça le jeu est tout de même assez simple (en partie grâce à - ou à cause de - la regen auto lorsqu'un élément est au niveau max), surtout qu'on a également accès à pas mal d'armes ou de magies pour cheeser à distance (arcs, boomerang, magie avec auto aim...).

L'un dans l'autre j'ai quand même passé un très bon moment, bien aidé par le fait que j'étais dans le bon état d'esprit (à savoir que je voulais un jeu pas trop prise de tête), et que le jeu a su s'arrêter quand il le fallait (oui, j'aime quand mes jeux ne durent pas 3 plombes sans raison).