I have Thoughts on this game:
• The first of the three sections of the game (Alluna) is genuinely one of the best things I've played in a long time. A really touching story of bonding through trauma and societal oppression.
It's generally less dark than the other two sections of the game, but only because the darkness of its themes bubbles underneath the surface ominously, rather than being directly used for shock (something that can't always be said about the second section of the game). While presenting extremely likeable characters, this whole game segment is permeated by an almost constant fear and sense of dread, that is poignantly coupled with the slow reveal of the traumatic experiences its protagonists have gone through.
It'd almost be a hopeful little self-contained tale about women finding community even through their lingering trauma and a hostile world, if it wasn't for its incredibly dark ending that sets ups the rest of the game.
• Alluna is also perfectly paced. I was sceptical of the "play 30 minutes of a dungeon crawler to get 5 minutes of visual novel" structure, but, especially this section, and to a point the whole game, uses the odd dungeon crawler/visual novel dichotomy to dictate pace in really effective and poignant ways.
• The second section (Alstella) is... messier. This game touches on some extremely dark themes, including sexual assault, and while the first section does that subtly and in a way that supports the game's themes; the Alstella section does seem to fall in gratuitous territory in a couple of instances. While I still want to believe that most of the storytelling in Labyrinth of Galleria is done in good faith, a couple of moments are definitely mishandled/unnecessary.
• The grand overarching plot does eventually kinda fall into anime/visual novel tropes. Aside from the shift to high stakes Sci-Fi/Fantasy (which I don't hate but also don't find as effective as the timeless abstract fantasy tone of the Alluna section), there's just so much... minute exposition of things that don't really matter to the emotional core of the story? Storytelling with this amount of moving parts can work, but in this case it just seems to run against the main strength of the writing, which is characters. This also ends up tanking the pacing during the second third of the game, as there end up being very long stretches of game where nothing interesting/engaging happens.
• I believe an amount of odd/spurious details are there to connect this game to other games in the series and... I'm just so tired of lore? Can we just stop?
• The problem with this kind of grand plot is also that, out of necessity, it tends to always end in the same kind of story beats. The likeable and well-written characters give Galleria a strong emotional resonance throughout its whole length, but still, a lot of the Alstella and Grand Cathedral endings feel a bit... uninspired. I'm just not sure how many jrpg speeches about "a flawed but alive world is better than a perfect static one" I can still take. Especially because the rest of the game, is like, very good, and not about that stuff at all. But once you add world-creation powers in the mix you can't really go anywhere else.
• It can't be overstated that the character writing is honestly incredibly good. A lot of the trauma explored in it hits a bit too close to home tbh. But, yeah, it's really good stuff.
• One exception to this is the big villain of the game. A lot of her motivation just... didn't make a lot of sense nor had any real emotional payoff. I get what they were trying to do with her (and with one of the final reveals, which gives a justification to her often bizarrely misaligned plans), but I feel like maybe this game didn't really need a grandiose villain at all. As mentioned, all other characters are complex and compelling and very empathetically written, so I don't think that the forces causing conflict in the world necessarily needed to have a "face" for the core conflicts presented in the story to work.
• Most of the dungeon crawling is excellent. The combat is deliberately designed to have an auto-battle focus, with most abilities being passive or automatic triggers. This is not something I've seen before, and it works really well for a game that's 100+ hours long but doesn't want to be a purely mechanically focused experience.
• The focus on navigation is something less uncommon, but still very well realized. The wall-break mechanic being one of the first things the player unlocks is specifically a really clever move. A huge part of the game is a pseudo-tutorial, which slowly introduces all of the game's mechanics, but being able to explore non-linearly and reveal secrets by breaking walls, makes the exploration feel organic and way less guided than it would otherwise be.
• The art of some of the later unlocked Facets is... problematic? not great? I dunno, it's not really a main aspect of the game, and it's easily ignorable, so I don't want to spend too many words on it, but still, shit like that still kinda undermines the drama of the game for me.
• I love the soundtrack. It follows the usual Disgaea/Tenpai Sato vibes, but with a more dramatic twist. Specifically, the boss theme and the apartment theme are absolute bops.
• Oh! The framing device, wherein the player plays as a phantom who is summoned by the various witches in the game, and not as the witches themselves, is quite clever. It creates a sort of effective detachment from the story which plays well with the visual novel-dungeon crawler dichotomy. I'm also glad that it's mostly an aesthetic and it never really becomes a heavy plot element. It's just a neat aesthetic choice and I can get on board with that.
Ultimately Labyrinth of Galleria is honestly great. I spent a lot of time focusing on the negatives, but overall this is a very powerful story told in an extremely creative and well-crafted way. It had me in genuine tears in multiple instances, and as much as I'm a bit of a crybaby, that's still an impressive task for what could have otherwise been dismissed as "just another mechanically dense dungeon crawler". But at the same time, it Is difficult to ignore this game's many contradictions, which often end up undermining its drama. Playing it definitely requires a high tolerance for this kind of uneven media, and of course, the willingness to play a 100+ hours-long dungeon crawler, but I can say that if you can get through that, it is a very worthwhile experience.
• The first of the three sections of the game (Alluna) is genuinely one of the best things I've played in a long time. A really touching story of bonding through trauma and societal oppression.
It's generally less dark than the other two sections of the game, but only because the darkness of its themes bubbles underneath the surface ominously, rather than being directly used for shock (something that can't always be said about the second section of the game). While presenting extremely likeable characters, this whole game segment is permeated by an almost constant fear and sense of dread, that is poignantly coupled with the slow reveal of the traumatic experiences its protagonists have gone through.
It'd almost be a hopeful little self-contained tale about women finding community even through their lingering trauma and a hostile world, if it wasn't for its incredibly dark ending that sets ups the rest of the game.
• Alluna is also perfectly paced. I was sceptical of the "play 30 minutes of a dungeon crawler to get 5 minutes of visual novel" structure, but, especially this section, and to a point the whole game, uses the odd dungeon crawler/visual novel dichotomy to dictate pace in really effective and poignant ways.
• The second section (Alstella) is... messier. This game touches on some extremely dark themes, including sexual assault, and while the first section does that subtly and in a way that supports the game's themes; the Alstella section does seem to fall in gratuitous territory in a couple of instances. While I still want to believe that most of the storytelling in Labyrinth of Galleria is done in good faith, a couple of moments are definitely mishandled/unnecessary.
• The grand overarching plot does eventually kinda fall into anime/visual novel tropes. Aside from the shift to high stakes Sci-Fi/Fantasy (which I don't hate but also don't find as effective as the timeless abstract fantasy tone of the Alluna section), there's just so much... minute exposition of things that don't really matter to the emotional core of the story? Storytelling with this amount of moving parts can work, but in this case it just seems to run against the main strength of the writing, which is characters. This also ends up tanking the pacing during the second third of the game, as there end up being very long stretches of game where nothing interesting/engaging happens.
• I believe an amount of odd/spurious details are there to connect this game to other games in the series and... I'm just so tired of lore? Can we just stop?
• The problem with this kind of grand plot is also that, out of necessity, it tends to always end in the same kind of story beats. The likeable and well-written characters give Galleria a strong emotional resonance throughout its whole length, but still, a lot of the Alstella and Grand Cathedral endings feel a bit... uninspired. I'm just not sure how many jrpg speeches about "a flawed but alive world is better than a perfect static one" I can still take. Especially because the rest of the game, is like, very good, and not about that stuff at all. But once you add world-creation powers in the mix you can't really go anywhere else.
• It can't be overstated that the character writing is honestly incredibly good. A lot of the trauma explored in it hits a bit too close to home tbh. But, yeah, it's really good stuff.
• One exception to this is the big villain of the game. A lot of her motivation just... didn't make a lot of sense nor had any real emotional payoff. I get what they were trying to do with her (and with one of the final reveals, which gives a justification to her often bizarrely misaligned plans), but I feel like maybe this game didn't really need a grandiose villain at all. As mentioned, all other characters are complex and compelling and very empathetically written, so I don't think that the forces causing conflict in the world necessarily needed to have a "face" for the core conflicts presented in the story to work.
• Most of the dungeon crawling is excellent. The combat is deliberately designed to have an auto-battle focus, with most abilities being passive or automatic triggers. This is not something I've seen before, and it works really well for a game that's 100+ hours long but doesn't want to be a purely mechanically focused experience.
• The focus on navigation is something less uncommon, but still very well realized. The wall-break mechanic being one of the first things the player unlocks is specifically a really clever move. A huge part of the game is a pseudo-tutorial, which slowly introduces all of the game's mechanics, but being able to explore non-linearly and reveal secrets by breaking walls, makes the exploration feel organic and way less guided than it would otherwise be.
• The art of some of the later unlocked Facets is... problematic? not great? I dunno, it's not really a main aspect of the game, and it's easily ignorable, so I don't want to spend too many words on it, but still, shit like that still kinda undermines the drama of the game for me.
• I love the soundtrack. It follows the usual Disgaea/Tenpai Sato vibes, but with a more dramatic twist. Specifically, the boss theme and the apartment theme are absolute bops.
• Oh! The framing device, wherein the player plays as a phantom who is summoned by the various witches in the game, and not as the witches themselves, is quite clever. It creates a sort of effective detachment from the story which plays well with the visual novel-dungeon crawler dichotomy. I'm also glad that it's mostly an aesthetic and it never really becomes a heavy plot element. It's just a neat aesthetic choice and I can get on board with that.
Ultimately Labyrinth of Galleria is honestly great. I spent a lot of time focusing on the negatives, but overall this is a very powerful story told in an extremely creative and well-crafted way. It had me in genuine tears in multiple instances, and as much as I'm a bit of a crybaby, that's still an impressive task for what could have otherwise been dismissed as "just another mechanically dense dungeon crawler". But at the same time, it Is difficult to ignore this game's many contradictions, which often end up undermining its drama. Playing it definitely requires a high tolerance for this kind of uneven media, and of course, the willingness to play a 100+ hours-long dungeon crawler, but I can say that if you can get through that, it is a very worthwhile experience.