Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls Tweet

18th June 2011

Wizardry Labyrinth of Lost souls

Positive sides

Very old-fashioned dungeon crawler with zero modern amenities
Challenging combat right from the very beginning of the game
Tough to put down because you always want to see what’s around the next corner.

Negative sides

Very old-fashioned dungeon crawler with zero modern amenities
No automap feature.

Labyrinth of Lost Souls, an old-fashioned dungeon crawler for the PlayStation Network so true to its roots that it lacks an automap feature and just about every other amenity of a modern role-playing game. This slavish attention to detail is both the biggest strength and the biggest weakness of the game. Developer Acquire has stuck so closely to the RPG formula circa 1990 or thereabouts that you might love the game for its evocation of nostalgia, in spite of its archaic graphics, sound, and mechanics.

If you have ever played any classic dungeon crawlers like Dungeon Master for the late, great Atari ST and the Eye of the Beholder series for the PC, or gotten into any of the modern revivals, such as The Dark Spire and the Etrian Odyssey franchise for the Nintendo DS, you will immediately know what you’re in for here. Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls is a straight-up single-player dungeon trek. It pits a traditional six-member party of adventurers against all of the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired horrors that can be found in an eerie underground maze of caverns, chambers, and catacombs. Everything is basic. You roll up a party by tweaking skill stats and choosing classes from a list of mostly traditional fighters and mages, with a couple of oddballs like the samurai and ninja thrown in for good measure. You access various adventurer-accommodating features in a city represented by simple menu choices that instantly port the party to an inn for resting, a temple for healing, a shop for buying and selling items, a guild for accepting quests, and so forth. And you venture into a couple of many-floored dungeons to kill monsters for fun and profit.

Wizardry Labyrinth of Lost souls

With all that said, it is hard to quantify the appeal of a retro game like this. Part of the reason you keep playing is the thrill of exploring ever-deeper dungeon levels and seeing what else there is out there to try and kill. Despite the minimalistic visuals, sticking around to see what lies around the next darkened corner is a big part of the attraction. The stark visuals are entirely in keeping with the retro theme, of course, although the backdrops are perhaps a little too dark, even when you have assistance in the form of a spell. Another issue has to do with the six character portraits that line both sides of the screen to provide a look at the party you’re leading and to keep an eye on their overall health by tracking hit points. These big and brightly lit anime-flavored icons contrast so much with the darkened dungeons that it is hard to make out where you’re going when adventuring underground. Being able to turn them off would have been welcome, so you could better immerse yourself in the spooky dungeon corridors. The anime character art is also a bit extreme in spots, with some of the big-eyed female heroes dressed in risque outfits that are wholly inappropriate for exploring a dungeon stocked with goblins and dragons. Creatures are more appropriately drawn, although they are represented by flat, mostly unmoving models that don’t have a great deal of detail. There are a lot of different types of monsters, ranging from floating evil coins and orcs to dragons and demons, but all you see of them are simple little figures that don’t have a great deal of visual impact.

Audio is also pretty rough and ready. The generic music could have been composed, if not recorded, during the 8-bit era. Battle effects are equally old school and made up of basic sword clashes and groans. All of the vocals seem to have been carried over intact from the Japanese version of the game that was released back in 2009. This works with the anime character art, but it isn’t so pleasing to the ear. Most of the lines are high pitched and involve various squeals. The collective gasp when you navigate the party into a wall is hilarious, at least.

Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls is one uncompromising game. To really appreciate this sort of RPG, you need to be either someone who fondly remembers the good old days or someone who has always wanted to take a trip back in time to the dungeon crawlers that dad used to play. As such, it’s either a good game or an awful one depending on your perspective. But the developers have clearly succeeded in their efforts to turn back the clock for the nostalgia-minded, so you have to admire the effort and the end results, even if you can’t fully get into its old-time atmosphere.

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