Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Dungeon crawlers can be a tough genre to broach if you don’t have a long-seeded nostalgia for them. Contemporary series like Legend of Grimrock and Etrian Odyssey keep the old-school first-person dungeon exploring experience alive, but they can still be a love it or hate it kind of experience. I assumed that same feeling would apply to my time with Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society – a first-person DRPG boasting Nippon Ichi art, weird vibes, and incredibly dense gameplay systems – but I ended up sinking countless hours into it and never getting bored, which is probably a first for me when it comes to these kinds of games.

Part of this is absolutely because the aesthetic and style of the game is just so up my alley. I’ll eat up anything that iconic Nippon Ichi Software artist Takehito Harada is involved with, and his unmistakable brand of vivid anime-style artwork shines stronger than ever here. Every NPC, character, and party member has an incredible look to them that manages to blend JRPG sensibilities with a more grounded, Western touch, which ties perfectly into the more rustic and down-to-earth setting of the game.

You play as Eureka, a plucky and airheaded heiress who responds to a job posting involving searching for lost items. When she arrives at a mysterious manor and ends up as the assistant to a witch named Marta and a mysterious green specter called Fantie, she’s quickly absorbed in a world of curses and mystery that constantly kept me engaged.

The story beats, at first, feel like nothing more than light set dressing to justify the why and where of your dungeon crawling. Almost immediately, though, the game gives off hints of something bigger bubbling behind the scenes – there’s an atmosphere that makes it