I’m old. My first system was an Atari 2600 VCS made back in 1977. I have come a long way with video games, traveled the good and the bad (and even survived the great collapse) gaming roads, and certainly seen some shit in my day. Take the CD-I, for example. No, seriously, take it and bury it next to E.T., as it needs to be underground and never seen again. Hotel Mario, seriously?
*AHEM*
My point is that I’ve seen games grow from nothing to pure art, and I know when a game is a good experience, and when one is bad. I honestly believe this game I’m reviewing, which you’re reading about right now, stands on both sides of that equation.
Labyrinth of the Demon King from developer J.R. Hudepohl is a throwback game of sorts with a fair amount of 90s survival horror/3D gaming thrown into the mix. This era of time featured visuals that were difficult to make out, which added to the ambience of the entire survival horror experience. This game features a finely tuned horror and revenge story with unsettling environments and creatures to help push it along.
Of course, not all that retro-style shines through, especially with the controls. The controls have issues that ripple the wrong way through the entire gameplay experience. I wish it didn’t, but sadly it does.
So, strike a torch, get your sword ready, and let’s figure out this labyrinth of a review.
Story
Sometimes you don’t need much of a push to get hooked on a game. Labyrinth of the Demon King doesn’t give much of a push, but it does enough to get you in the mood to take down some bad guys/demons. Vengeance can be a wonderful push sometimes. Ask George Miller for details.
The story of Labyrinth of the Demon King revolves around an underling who is seeking vengeance for the death of his lord. To achieve that satisfaction, the underling must take down mid-boss demons, find their way through a confusing and confining castle space, and somehow make it to the Demon King to try and settle the score.
As stories go, this one feels like a mixture of Onimusha and Resident Evil. The ancient Japanese backdrop helps to set the scene and present assumed weapon and action limitations. The latter adds the horror of faceless minions, praying girls with blackness in their eyes, and every sort of unmentionable horror that is indescribable for this time period. Combined, the story is brought to life and manages to plant an unsettling yet creative flag that attempts to represent the entire experience.
The story is a solid piece to the game. It’s simple, horrifying, and you never feel comfortable within it. I’ll take that type of narrative in my game anytime.
Darkness closing in, so cool
The gameplay of Labyrinth of the Demon King is a mixed bag of success. There are good parts to the game that are incredibly effective, as they dance beautifully with the story. There are not so good parts of the game that could have been improved, even if they were intentional in their design and execution.
On the good side, the game does a splendid job by making you feel claustrophobic with your surroundings by keeping the hallways and look-space tight and visually uncomfortable. All of this is helped by the game being built with a first-person perspective, which was the right choice to create all the above emotional effects. The limited view of the game from this perspective truly makes the experience never feel completely settled as you walk through the labyrinth’s dark corridors. Even with your successes, you’re just thinking about the next ‘thing’ that is hiding around the corner that you can’t see. That’s a fun rollercoaster ride.
To add to that experience, because you always want to turn the horror up to 11, the audio of the game walks with you everywhere, as you can hear all the creaks, moans, and unpleasant potential jump-scares. This is very Silent Hill, where you might prefer not to be tipped off with the monsters; rather, it’s more settling to just get jumpscared. Audio is used as a device to sell the atmosphere of the game. Having a restricted view mixed with horror-filled audio all around brings that story even further to life.
I adore that this game takes that wonderful mix of visual and audible terror and manages to create this magnified survival horror environment that truly does harken back to the…*resigned sigh* old days in the 90s.
Anyway, in addition to the feeling of the atmosphere and the immersive-ness the game brings to the table, the game’s puzzles help to sell all of it. The puzzles in the game, while nothing too wild, I’m talking about RE-types of puzzles, work well within the gameplay environment built for it. For example, you’ll be required to walk around, defeat enemies, and search for objects that can be placed in gates to unlock them. That’s pure RE at its finest. This type of puzzle gameplay does a solid job of extending the gameplay time and gives the player plenty of elbow room to get the shit scared out of them. In other words, it plays nicely with everything described above this paragraph.
While playing this game, I found this entire combination of gameplay elements to be gratifying. How they were designed and executed helped to sell this experience. They truly did.
So, what happened to sour some of my opinion about it? Let’s talk.
Swing and a whack
On the not-so-great side of the tracks, the game captures the clunkiness of early 90s 3D-gaming perfectly, which is not a good thing at all. When I departed the 90s and spiraled towards a dual-analogue stick world, I didn’t want to look back. You should appreciate the past, but never live in it. True story. Trust Kylo Ren on this matter.
In all seriousness, the game has some slow-moving mechanics that don’t react well with enemy attacks or, even worse, surprise enemy attacks. You’ll feel the latter right out of the gate, so expect it. Anyway, swinging a sword, or any other object for that matter, and/or kicking means that you will have a nearly quarter-second delay in reaction and actual action. While I love a little Dark Souls clunkiness in my horror survival coffee, I don’t like it too strong, and this tasted too strong.
I can’t get behind having any sort of delay in button pushing and character reaction. I left that behind with the first NFL 2K game on the Sega Dreamcast during online play. There was a two-second delay due to its initial 56K baud modem, and it was miserable.
During my time with Labyrinth of the Demon King, I often found myself pushing R2 to swing my sword and then seeing it get cancelled, or completely missed, because the enemy reacted faster. I ended up getting kicked around more than not with enemies simply because I couldn’t get the timing right. Everything felt slow, and that generally equaled my death.
Just as difficult as the offensive response, the defensive response was slow as well. Pushing L2 to defend against an attack helps to stun an enemy and open them for attack. But you can’t keep the defense/block too long, as your character will nonchalantly and slowly lower their defense. This means your blocking must be precise, or it simply won’t work. Timing is everything with attacks in this game.
To add an extra obstacle in both offensive and defensive processes, the game divides how you must react to a well-armed enemy, as well as an enemy that can just kick or punch. The former can be enormously unfair, as you must get that defense and offense right. Sometimes an enemy will come at you with an object and have blazing speed from swing one to swing two, which is nearly impossible to block if you don’t hit your cues right.
If the enemy isn’t armed and just using kicks and punches, then the blocking is completely useless, and you must defend yourself by avoiding the enemy’s punch/kick, while countering how you see fit. To make this process even more difficult, you will encounter enemies shorter than you, who require an entirely new way of using offense and defense.
All these are frustrating gameplay mechanics that can’t be hidden behind the veil of a Dark Souls’ intention. They’re not helped by limited stamina for both, which means your reactions could be even slower. Again, very Dark Souls.
Ultimately, the mechanics of the game just feel off, which makes approaching fights feel off. Having played this game for multiple days, I never found a groove with either offense or defense. I wanted so badly to find that groove so that I could enjoy the puzzles, the creepy atmosphere, and the awesome story, but the mechanics for fighting and defending felt too much like experimental 90s 3D-gaming controls, and it’s hard to go back to those once the nectar of modern gaming has been tasted.
Overall, I think that Labyrinth of the Demon King was a missed opportunity because of the controls. Everything else was on point.
Where do we go from here?
Well, if you go into Labyrinth of the Demon King knowing that the controls are going to fight you a bit, maybe even frustrate you, then you will more than likely be prepared for the outcome. I’m sure Dark Souls fanatics will take kindly to this game’s shortcomings, seeing it as a challenge rather than a fault.
On my side of the tracks, I just couldn’t settle into the gameplay because of the mechanics. This game has everything in the world going for it to bring a retro-driven 90s 3D-gaming experience to life. It has the story, as well as the horror and survival aspects, down perfectly. Because of these huge positives, it kicked up some old feelings that begged me to keep the lights on in my office as I played it. But the controls just felt too off to keep that feeling consistent during gameplay.
Anyway, take it for what it is and make sure to understand what you’re getting in the long run. Labyrinth of the Demon King has a lot more positives on paper than negatives, but it certainly needs some mechanics tightened and quickened to make this a truly wonderful experience.
On that note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Labyrinth of the Demon King from developer J.R. Hudepohl harkens back to a simpler survival horror time and recreates most of the right elements that reflect that era and genre. While it’s strong in story, atmosphere, and creepiness, it falls short with its mechanics.
