Shadow Tower is a very polished version of this game style From had been iterating on. It runs really well and looks better than the King's Field games up to this point, but I didn't find the gothic horror vibe with no real underlying story or lore to be quite as compelling.

The environments are all varied and identifiable and range through five major zones, each split into a number of discrete levels. Each of the zones is ruled over by a boss which you must defeat in order to challenge the King of Demons and complete the game. This is an even more straightforward dungeon crawl than King's Field was.
Smaller levels and lower draw distances add to the claustrophobic feel of the game and are probably what allow the more detailed environment art and enemy models. These environments are varied and make the levels interesting to explore, but don't seem to have much coherency in terms of the world itself. The layouts of the actual levels are intricate and mazelike, although the level design (along with the detail and size) makes things very navigable.
The layout here feels like you are meant to explore the tower in spurts, sallying out from safe areas even though the level design has a lot of back-gating (ascending out of the tower can be overly difficult or impossible) which unfortunately undermines this. It does add to the palpable sense of dread as you become more and more unsure of your path back to safety.

This is the first person melee combat we know from King's Field with some minor differences (including a solid framerate). You move and turn a bit faster and your initial attack range is abysmally low (later weapons mostly fix this problem, but it never feels quite permissive enough). Shadow Tower doesn't feel that good to play until you get a bit in and find a few weapons you like and some magic that works, at which point things smooth out. I never really reached the overpowered status that the end of King's Field games impart upon you, but I felt capable and strong by the end, though death can always come quickly if you aren't paying close enough attention.
Shadow Tower has a lot of magic options, but I didn't find them to be too interesting in the end. You collect rings as you play, each providing you with minor stat increases and the ability to cast a set of spells. Most of the spells are some variation on a projectile attack, the timing of which allow you to weave them between sword swings just like in past games. I didn't find much value in making specific choices about spells, and just kind of used them arbitrarily throughout the game (mostly forced by the resource system).

The most interesting thing in Shadow Tower is absolutely the resource system.
Every weapon, armor, and spell-casting ring has durability which wears down extremely quickly. It isn't uncommon for a ring to only provide six or seven spell casts, a weapon 15-20 swings before they break (temporarily) requiring you to swap to something else. These can all be fixed at special vendors that can use your hit points (their dialog implies they are using parts of your body, which is pretty metal) to repair all your stuff -- you constantly feel like you are making the choice between survival and offensive ability.
Weapons and equipment you don't need can be traded at other vendors for health and magic potions (both of which fill their respective pools to max and can also be found around the tower).
It really feels like you are making purposeful choices about which weapons you need and which you can afford to trade to fuel your hit points and (at least at the beginning of the game) which weapons you need to fix in order to progress and how much of your life you are willing to give up to do so.
Your health as the main resource is so interesting! Since everything in the game ties back to this (not least of which the exploration and combat itself) it is something you are constantly thinking about and further adds to the pervasive sense of horror this game is trying to provide.
Overall this is a very unique and cool system even though your inability to partially fix things can make things awkward and it largely falls away by the end of the game as your health pool and supply of potions become so large that they cease to really be a concern (at which point weapon degradation just becomes a minor annoyance as you switch weapons every few minutes).

This game is almost one hundred percent about the vibes, with no real discernable narrative or lore to be found. Similar to King's Field, you are following a group of soldiers into this dungeon, but there isn't really a motivating factor (the manual has a perfunctory justification about an inn-keeper you are saving/avenging and her cooking). You are in this tower because it is here and it has demons in it because it is evil. Some of the bosses, scant few NPCs, and wall messages hint at greater powers and demonic machinations, but it doesn't really come to much by the end, with the final cutscene being both unclear and unsatisfying.

Alongside the gameplay and combat, the thing I most like about From Software games is thinking about the Why of it all and Shadow Tower just isn't so interested in providing that part of it. I still had fun with the game (it is among the better versions so far of this heavy, purposeful, first-person combat From is perfecting), but it didn't hit for me as hard as King's Field II or any of the suite of Soulsborne games that are in From's future.

inner monologue: okay, you can do this, just tell everyone how important this game was to you in your formative years and how it represents a kind of nostalgia for a time past that you'll never reclaim; that this game, in essence, represents the hopefulness of youth

...rei.... titty big

inner monologue: goddammit that's it, i'm outta here

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.