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).

Every time someone asks me what the name of this game is, I feel myself physically age as I say it.

Record of Lodoss War is a franchise that I was surprised to learn actually existed before playing this, turns out it's been around a while. I have absolutely no knowledge or prior experience of this series or the lore, I simply tried it out because a.) it was about to leave game pass, and b.) it was by Team Ladybug, who made Touhou Luna Nights, one of my favourite games of all time. So, with that in mind, I saw this not as an adaptation of the novels, but as a spiritual sequel to Luna Nights.

Unfortunately, this fails to meet the mark set by its predecessor. An emphasis on melee combat makes a change, but sadly there's zero depth to the melee - you just swing your sword (or similar weapon of choice) and do damage. Certain other substitutes such as boomerangs add in a little more to positioning and movement, but it's very standard. Fortunately, there's a great deal of depth in other areas to make up for it, but it never felt as fun as throwing projectiles in Luna Nights.

You do have a bow for ranged attacks, but naturally you have to stand still/move slowly while aiming it. It's mainly used for puzzle solving, but can make surprisingly light work of bosses. There's a great deal of bow types, though you're usually never doing yourself a favour by not using the one with the highest stats. Even the bow that heals you in return for doing less damage isn't really worth it over pure DPS.

The main big combat mechanic is the elemental spirit...switching...thing. You gain the power of two spirits - one is air, giving you a hover ability to manoeuvre around spikes and such, and then there's fire, which...stops you getting hurt by fire. Each of them has some kind of charge system: as you hurt enemies with one spirit, the other charges its level. At Level 2, it does more damage, and at Level 3, that spirit slowly heals you while equipped. That healing makes for a pretty interesting design choice, though one not as effective to me as Luna Nights' healing via grazing attacks. For experienced players, it probably trivialises the game.

The world design, just like Luna Nights, is basic. Very few branching paths, a generally linear progression, and barely hidden secrets. There's merit to exploring, but it always feels like a feature added out of necessity than as a selling point, putting far more emphasis on powering through hordes of enemies towards each boss.

The bosses are once again the highlight, and there's some good stuff in there. Switching spirits to mitigate elemental damage is particularly fun during these, although a few of these patterns are a little bit extreme for protagonist Deedlit's slow walking speed and limited acrobatics. She can do a quick backstep dodge, and jump around, but there's no way to move any faster that I could find. It's not a bad Belmont Strut, but please, Deed, maybe quicken the pace when you're dodging lightning fast attacks from an elven warrior. Or, god forbid, literal lightning attacks. They stun you for a lot of time. Not fun.

Graphics are great, there's some real solid spritework and backgrounds on display, even if the environments are uninspired and samey. There's an extensive amount of fun enemy designs, although they're usually just cannon fodder throughout, especially given that you level up as you go on. The music is pretty alright, but I have to admit that I can't remember a single track, and I literally beat it the same day I'm writing this.

There's a story in there somewhere too, but I'll be honest: this is completely incomprehensible nonsense, and follows the EXACT same structure and setup as Luna Nights, albeit with at least a different message. If you're at all interested in ever reading Lodoss War or watching the anime, I'm told this contains heavy spoilers, so do keep that in mind. Hardcore fans will probably at least enjoy seeing these characters in videogame form for the first time since....huh, there was an MMO in 2016. I was expecting the last one to be that Dreamcast game, but the more you know I guess. Anyways, uh, eat up Lodossheads.

Altogether this is a fine game, but as with Luna Nights, it's neither complicated nor is it long, clocking in at about 6 hours on average. It's very Symphony of the Night-inspired (or so I'm told, I haven't played it yet), so that might be a boon for Castlevania fans, but I would recommend Luna Nights over this anyday.

The main combat loop was fun, the spirit mechanic was pretty cool although the wind spirit was just way better because you can glide in the air with it so there's not much of a reason to choose fire unless the enemy is immune to wind or you want more damage. Weapon choices were decent and having a ranged weapon with the bow was cool.

The power progression felt good but the difficulty of the game didn't nearly match up with how strong you got especially with the bosses which was where I would expect a challenge. Most bosses took one to two attempts once you got the combat down so would've liked more difficulty there. The map exploration and design wasn't the strongest but does scratch the metroidvania itch so it gets a pass. Not a lot was there in terms of narrative or characters although I feel like that's not the main focus due to minimal cutscenes and dialogues. Art wise the pixel art is great and the soundtrack is solid. Overall, since the game doesn't take too long, it was a neat little detour.

Really great action-exploration game, brings up some stuff from the setting outside of the OVA adaptation towards the end that could definitely be considered spoilers if you haven't read the novels and are planning on doing so, but overall the story mostly takes the back seat and the game is incredibly well-made; the combat almost feels like SOTN+ as the base, with Deed handling very similarly to Alucard with some great ideas for quality of life features like being able to aim your weapon straight up, down, and diagonally which isn't very typical for the later 2D castlevanias but welcome nonetheless as the game is very much designed for it.
There's also the mechanic of there being two elements that you can swap between that imbue your attacks with it's properties while also allowing you to absorb enemy attacks or environmental hazards of that element to regenerate MP. Attacking with one element will increase the level of the other, up to 3. Somewhat similar to how weapons in Cave Story work, if you take damage then the level of your currently set element will go down; with each level gained you deal increased damage and at level 3 will also slowly regenerate your HP. Enemies can also be strong, weak, or even immune to one element which does a good job of tying the tabletop RPG elements of the source material into gameplay; there are even elements outside of the main two, however they're mainly used as quick gimmicks for some extra spice rather than core mechanics like wind and fire are. This extra dimension to the gameplay elevates the combat to the point that I think it really is going for metroidvania (as in, the exploration-focused castlevania games) but better, and I think it really excels there.
Unfortunately as is the case with many indie action-exploration games it doesn't quite deliver on the scale or nonlinearity that one might expect from a more ambitious game aiming for a Metroid or a Castlevania, but what is there for the world map is built quite well, even if it may be lacking in significant backtracking, Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth more than makes up for it's shortness with the character of it's 2D pixel art and animation and the fantastic soundtrack, with some of the most well thought-out combat design in any of the similar games within the "metroidvania" genre I have played.

I think this game officially has the longest title of any game I've ever beaten. This is a Metroidvania heavily inspired by Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Let me stop and re-emphasize that. This game is almost a blatant rip off of SotN, to the point where I think Konami could take legal action. The character animations, level design, even the spritework and physics just screams SotN. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as SotN is a great game and it takes some of the best things from it. In addition to the traditional Metriodvania style, this game also has an Ikaruga-style immunity mechanic, where at the press of a button you can switch between fire and wind, which makes you invulnerable to that type of attack. The game is very fluid and controls very well. Where it loses points is the plot. I have honestly no idea what is going on in this game. None. Apparently this is part of some long running Japanese franchise which ranges into all sorts of media. The game just assumes you're familiar with all of that and drops you right into it. Frankly, from what I could make out this plot is not particularly complex; you're basically trapped in a dream running into various people the player character knows. All of the writing is basically the same, you entire a room, she goes "Oh my god , you're here too?", and then they proceed to fight if evil or give vague advice and vanish if good. Repeat ad nauseam. The upgrades also aren't as good as SotN. They actually give you lots of stuff early on, but later in the game the main way they prevent progression is simply a colored door where you need to find the right colored switch to open. Compare this to getting a new ability which grants access to new areas in most Metroidvanias, and it can be much less exciting.

I wrote in a review a while ago for A Girl and the Robot what a shallow copy of Ico it was and simply playing that instead was better than the unimaginative clone that came many years later. The thing is that wearing your inspiration on your sleeve isn't always a bad thing and in the case of Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (who named this? Were they trying to get a good scrabble score?) I think it's obvious Symphony of the Night references are somewhat to the game's credit for making it a fun little Metroidvania title. Having said that though the way the titular character Deedlit moves, her first few steps, her backdash leaving a ghostly shimmer, the long hair, She's almost a palette swap of Alucard from Castlevania. There is taking inspiration, then there is getting out tracing paper.

Still, it does bring some unique mechanics into the game on it's own merit. Deedlit can swap between two different elements regardless of the weapons she wields of fire and..wind?. This is used for both fighting enemies and finding their weakness as well as puzzles and bosses where being on the right element being hit by it allows you to escape unharmed as well as build up spell power. It's a cool little system that in some ways reminded me of aspects of Ikaruga. I wish they leaned into this mechanic a little harder though with more creative puzzles, platforming and bosses using it, maybe an extra element to boot rather than just the two. It's a clever interesting little system giving it a unique selling point, it's just kind of underbaked.

The rest of the game is a pretty standard affair of exploring and backtracking to unlock the map getting new weapons and armour and fighting bosses. Some of the bosses as mentioned above are genuinely pretty good fun, though you can abuse the elemental mechanic on some of them far too easily. There is a dragon that only throws fire at you you can be immune to in fire mode that constantly generates you mana so you just spam spells in his face whilst invincible for example. A few more require tricky changing of elements and timing between attacks to hit which I enjoyed far more and would have liked to see developed further for more memorable fights.

That's my issue generally actually, the elemental aspect could be better, the fights could be better, the map could be more interesting. It's a good game, I had fun with it but it feels like missed potential wrapped up in a completely nonsensical story for anyone not familiar with the manga or anime I presume.

I went into this game knowing next to nothing about what goes on in the greater Record of Lodoss War series, but that didn't stop me from having a hell of a time with a wonderfully-crafted, mechanically rich metroidvania game.

DIWL is at its best when making extensive use of its Ikaruga-like "polarity" mechanic, which allows Deedlit to swap between wind and fire elements to both absorb enemy attacks and exploit weaknesses. My only real gripe about the system is that it doesn't really get utilized until you're quite deep into the game, and once you really start getting the flow of switching to handle rooms with clever enemy formations, it's all but over. Bosses in particular shine bright, with one early encounter in particular driving the point home with style. I think the game could've benefited quite greatly from more keenly emphasizing that mechanic in general platforming challenges or traversal, but the promise was there and executed quite well.

Story, sound design and visuals are all top-notch. Despite having never touched any Record of Lodoss War media, the game doesn't really need a ton of prior information to enjoy; it manages to tell a pretty sentimental story over a pretty reasonably short runtime. If anything, I'm looking forward to checking out more of the series now that I've got a very (wonderfully wistful) taste of the world of Lodoss Island.

Easy recommend if you're a fan of metroidvania games. Runs about the length of a GBA Castlevania game -- titles I've also reviewed as part of the Castlevania Advance Collection :)

Somewhere inside hides
a compelling score of 10.
Fleshed out and built up.

Vibrant colors fall
like leaves enveloping the
labyrinth in charm.

Beckoned to explore,
find secrets, and discover
truth, this was heaven.

Yet an ending came
for which I was not prepared.
I still wanted more.

A second act was needed.
Perfection, just missed.