Labyrinth Legend (Switch)

Geoffrey Wright | January 21, 2022 | Review | No Comments

Previously available on PC via steam, Labyrinth Legend now makes its way to Nintendo Switch to offer players a hackin, slashin and lootin dungeon crawling experience on the go. Worth taking a look? Let’s find out.

Under the surface of the Kingdom of Kanata lies an unexplored labyrinth that hides treasures abound for any adventurers with the courage to explore its floors. Trapped in a village at the mouth of the labyrinth by a mysterious curse, you must clear the dungeon and solve the mystery of the curse placed on the kingdom.

Tackling dungeons doesn’t have to be done alone, as the game offers a local co-op mode which I tried docked with my nephew and was easy to setup by going to the inn. You can also make use of your own little island by using the boat to summon monsters, picking one will have it accompany you into the labyrinths. Your monster buddy won’t attack enemies, but does at least grant some bonuses which you may find useful as you fight on.

Games like these are pretty much the bread & butter of the Switch as they are simple enough to not need many concessions, the game looks pretty much identical to the PC version. The 2D graphics give off a nice high res SNES vibe with the audio of the game taking on a similar outlook. Variety comes into play with the games numerous dungeons, as each looks different to the next, and can have some nice visual flourishes as you get deeper into the game – same applies to boss characters too as the early ones can seem small & tame in comparison.

As you would expect the game performs great on the go, never really noticed any performance drops and it looked sharp enough on the Switch’s screen. Dock aficionados like myself will also appreciate that the game maintains its good looks on the big screen, no doubt helped by a res boost, with rock solid performance to boot. It’s overall a nice looking package, especially for those that enjoy the classic look.

If you’ve played some dungeon crawlers before then you’ll have an idea of how this will go. You start picking one of three classes to suit your playstyle before heading into a dungeon on the first floor and fight your way to a boss several floors up, levelling up and collecting loot as you go – the game does seem quite generous with the loot as you always seem to have a full inventory to manage. You can also carry 4 weapons matched to a button so you can mix & match attacks, so long as you have mana you can even carry 4 different spell staffs – with mana chargeable when running low by standing still and holding the dodge button.

Once you die, which you will at least a few times each labyrinth, you can go back to village with your level, gold & loot intact. From here you’ll likely head to the shop and sell some loot before visiting the blacksmith to upgrade some equipment. Now you head back into the dungeon from the first floor, invigorated by a boosted level and equipment, and try to reach the boss floor. A checkpoint opens here in case you fail, but victory opens up a path to the next dungeon. It all sounds simple, and it is really, with the game easing you into the exploring by facing off against slimes and being quite generous with loot drops at first. Once the likes of Goblins turn up difficulty spikes a tad, but by then you’ll have enough under your belt to make use of the variety of weapons etc. to take down the increasingly difficult enemies. If not you just end up back at the village to suit up for another go.

Labyrinth Legend is a decent little dungeon crawler that suits the Switch perfectly with its SNES like graphics and relatively quick runs to suit portable play. To be honest there isn’t much to fault the game for, while doesn’t really excel at anything it doesn’t lack much either, with the only issue for me being that it felt like I’d played it all before – even though I hadn’t. Those looking for some simple & light dungeon crawling on the go will certainly get their pennies worth out of this game at least.