Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth is a profuse amalgamation of Persona's psychology and Etrian Odyssey's methodology. Just like—maybe a little too like—Shadow of the Labyrinth, it covers a lot ground without exploring a new direction. Emblematic of its eight-year-old hardware, New Cinema Labyrinth is battle-tested, secure, and incapable of surprise.
Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth has the prestigious honor of being the final retail release for Nintendo’s venerable 3DS hardware. As such, it is allowed indulgences abnormal of more active platforms. It incorporates characters and themes from Persona, a Shin Megami Tensei spinoff that has never appeared on a Nintendo system. It operates through the dungeon crawling paradigm of Etrian Odyssey, a wildly esoteric series exclusive to (and perfect for) the DS and 3DS platforms. Its combination of the two would be impressive had Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth not already performed the same trick in 2014. New Cinema Labyrinth is an assurance of Quality Content without any visible interest in being an Original Game.
The Phantom Thieves stole everyone’s hearts in the 2017 PlayStation 4 exclusive, Persona 5. Having joined Persona’s repository of players, the cast can now be conscripted into a variety of canonical and capering spin-offs. Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, for example, combined and matured Persona 3 and Persona 4’s cast and advanced the storyline. Shadow of the Labyrinth and a trio of dancing games, meanwhile, induced a dream scenario and fan fiction’d a mash-up of beloved Persona 3 and Persona 4 characters. Original additions Zen and Rei showed growth, but the existing the Persona squad was defined by lateral movement. It was simply cool that everyone was in one place.
New Cinema Labyrinth runs with the same Persona-spanning theme. While exploring Mementos, sometime after Akechi finally joins the Phantom Thieves but before the story ends, the gang winds up being transported to an out-of-time movie theater. It’s occupied by a woman, Nagi, and a shy girl who’s simply there, Hikari. Nagi and Hikari are confined to the theater and, while they do not join the active party, represent the only character momentum in New Cinema Labyrinth’s crawling narrative. Their ephemeral presence in Persona’s extended universe is the only tangible story.
The Phantom Thieves, meanwhile, operate in line with the established rules of each character. Makoto is authoritative to a giddying fault. Ryuji is hot headed but loyal. Morgana gets dunked on constantly and returns the favor sometimes. The whole cast has already conquered personal conflict as Persona 5’s confidants, leaving New Cinema Labyrinth to feed off the scraps of their existing personalities. Hanging out with and getting caught in the banter of a cast I genuinely love is a nice, fun time. It is also absent of forward progress. Characters are only re-experienced, not grown.
Spoken dialogue excludes the English language. New Cinema Labyrinth is only dubbed in its narrative Japanese. I am not opposed to reading subtitles (I’m playing Sega’s Judgement right now and refuse to use its localized voice work) but these voices are not how I know these characters. Tones are similar, but it’s all off. I understand the logistical and financial realities of getting everyone back on the same project for a dream game on an abandoned platform, but it’s still disappointing. I miss the characters as I know them.
New Cinema Labyrinth unloads its 28-strong cast at regular intervals. The opening dungeon, Kamoshidaman, initially operates with a curtailed roster. Haru and Makoto are held hostage by the titular villain, cutting the available players down to the remaining Persona 5 cast. Soon Persona 3 Portable’s female protagonist (the first time she’s appeared since 2010) pops up. Junessic Land introduces the Persona 4 Investigation Team. The third dungeon, A.I.G.I.S, brings in the SEES squad from Persona 3. The fourth and final dungeon allows the player the complete freedom to mix them all together. With three navigators and twenty-five potential party members, narrowing it down to an active roster of five may prove difficult.
There is quite a bit of room to customize each character, even within their default “class.” The Velvet Room, that somber bastion of persona fusion typically restricted to the player-character, opens up with all of its hosts to all of Persona’s characters. Everyone can pair a chosen persona to their default persona, opening up a wide range of skills. This robs characters of some of their identity in battle, but the overlap doesn’t damage the finished product. In the end I had a stable of a dozen favorites that I cycled in and out of my active roster based entirely around how much I liked the characters.
New Cinema Labyrinth uses its movies-gone-awry thesis to reinforce Persona’s standard themes. The gang must enter a feature film and right explicit the wrongs of the ensuing narrative. This leads to the confrontation of self-doubt, the lingering effects of alienation, and the nature of free will. It’s deeper than a typical black-white-story, but safely within the series’ wheelhouse. Individual character moments—the good stuff where characters from different Persona games play off each other—are mostly confined to Special Screenings. These are New Cinema Labyrinth‘s side-quests where a specific squad is reinserted into a sliver of a dungeon and given a direct challenge. The rewards are unique characters-teaming-up Unison Attacks. While not a replacement for genuine character development, Special Screenings are a chance to enjoy fan service and an apt suggestion for roster experimentation.
The mechanical side of New Cinema Labyrinth lies with dungeon operation. Movement is conducted through a first-person point of view and performed by moving one square at a time. Dungeons are sprawling, multi-floored labyrinths broken down into different rooms rife with doors, shortcuts, and treasures. Enemies come in the form of random battles and menacing FOE’s (Film Obscurite Entendus, in this specific parlance). The former should be engaged and fought whenever possible to build New Cinema Labyrinth’s merciless grind. The latter function as puzzles—they move when the player moves—and (if you’re me!) should usually be avoided until you’re significantly over-leveled. Each massive dungeon concludes with a final, thematically-tied boss.
Round-based battles are faithful spin on classic Persona mechanics. The skills behind each persona are a mixture of elemental spells, buffs and debuffs, or HP-sacrificing physical attacks. Enemies are almost always weak to one specific element. Experimentation (or Googling it, I guess) pinpoints that element and New Cinema Labyrinth always remembers when it’s declared a weakness. Exploiting a weakness will knock the enemy down, which cancels their turn, and reduce the MP or HP cost of your next turn to 0. Knocking every enemy down grants an all-out cartoon-brawl attack. Efficiency is always the goal. New Cinema Labyrinth always rewards smart play over performances of raw power. This methodology has always allowed Persona to stand out from its peers.
Like Etrian Odyssey, New Cinema Labyrinth’s divisive hook comes with its dungeon-mapping ultimatum. The bottom screen of the 3DS is consumed by a grid-based dungeon layout. Players are expected to use the provided tools and their stylus to fill in traversable space, outline hard walls, use markers for treasure and shortcuts, and denote exists. Some auto-mapping is available, but you you’re supposed to enjoy the process of doing it all yourself. Dungeons aren’t one-and-done affairs, and you’ll often find yourself revisiting them to show an FOE who’s boss, grind out under leveled characters, or observe the respawning treasures. It’s important to be as meticulous as possible.
The first time I played one of these games, I was skeptical of this process. I thought we had left the pencil-and-paper 80’s and 90’s and we were supposed to be in the future and it was absurd that the game wasn’t doing all of this for me. I played ball, however, and grew to love the esoteric charm of the entire process. A sense of ownership comes with doing it right (and a reward is always available for mapping 100% of a floor). These maps are a product of my own hard work, and while the navigation puzzles inside of them weren’t necessarily taxing, I was satisfied that I neatly labeled every switch, shortcut, and stairwell. It’s a process and a performance that, unfortunately, I can’t imagine existing on any other hardware platform. It’s valuable.
New Cinema Labyrinth is proud to reference its influence and thoroughly unconcerned if it’s alienating anyone else. “It’s like Etrian Odyssey mixed with Persona,” depending on who is listening, either explains everything or means nothing. It’s an eccentric product that existed once and, somehow, gets to exist again. What else is there to say about a game that works so hard to appease an incredibly specific audience on a platform left idling by its manufacturer? It’s Avengers if Avengers were a collection of distressed high school kids afflicted with supernatural and regular social problems. Persona was sensitive before the word twee entered the lexicon. I’m glad when it gets to exist, even in a form as weird as New Cinema Labyrinth.
Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth is a profuse amalgamation of Persona’s psychology and Etrian Odyssey’s methodology. Just like—maybe a little too like—Shadow of the Labyrinth, it covers a lot ground without exploring a new direction. Emblematic of its eight-year-old hardware, New Cinema Labyrinth is battle-tested, secure, and incapable of surprise.
