Labyrinth Of The Demon King

Absolutely fantastic game all the way through, assuming you don't bounce off the combat. The atmosphere and environments are immaculately horrible and opressive, the music is genuinely disturbing, and the enemies remain freaky even after they lose their threat factor as you learn how to counter them. The bosses are a bit whelming, but aren't bad even if they've a wee bit jank. I really enjoyed my time and will probably beat NG+ too.

King's Field x Silent Hill x Dark Souls based in feudal Japan. I do wish items/weapons were explained a bit better. The classic 'I have no idea how good this weapon is' andd instead of just having simple stats we have ambiguious wi-fi bar that tells you basically nothing. The combo guide was staggerly useless. When you first open it, it feels like you're going to have a migraine with how little information it gives you. L? Ok, I guess that's Light Attack, H? Heavy attack ok. F? What the ♥♥♥♥ is an F? Am I paying my respects? Then you open the how-to-play section where it tries explaining it and still fails to make sense. Also, game is far too easy. I played without the 'resurrect you at the nearest shrine with practically no punishment', enemies are too easy, you aren't punsihed enough for having no stamina (you can still block and parry..) and gun/bow are far too powerful making the already easy bosses a bigger joke. Why use the melee combat system when you have a gun that chunks away at their hp from a distance? Whenever I go to pick up a talisman, it'll just say 'talisman'. What talisman? The healing talisman? The useless knockback talisman? The talisman that shoots electricity? What talisman is it that I'm full on? I have no idea. Same thing with armour, it tells you legitimatelly nothing about armour and you have to ♥♥♥♥ around with it yourself constantly to find out. Just tell me what it does man. I don't wanna ♥♥♥♥ around with menus for 5 minutes and go test whatever is best.. The whole matcha thing is cool the first time, but tedious, boring, takes way too long and breaks you out of immersion for far too long when you're character slowly puts matcha in a bowl for the fifth time. I get that it's supposed to be a relaxing, calming, relief from the outside, but please, don't make me calm and relaxing i'm here for an atmospheric horror not a calm relaxing break from the horrors outside. Or at least, give me the option to skip the 30 second matcha making minigame pls. That being said, the atmosphere is excellent, the sound design is really good, music is insane and the story is.. fine I guess. It does make sense and it does leave some room for you to think, but a lot of games, especially one trying to be like Silent Hill leaves far too many questions than answers. Too much mystery makes an otherwise good story convoluted and nonsensical. The game tells you enough for it to make sense but not enough to make it an interesting enough story. It is fairly overrated, but in a market where it's saturated with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ jumpscare slop and horror that fails to be horror, it does it's job decently well. I never really felt too scared to be honest. This game isn't that scary. Is horror supposed to be scary? Silent Hill had a few 'jumpscares' but most of the horror came from the game itself and it did feel innately scary. But everything in this game just sort of feels like the same colour, same 'monster who is distorted' type of design and it becomes stale a bit too fast. Would I recommend it over playing any of the mainline Silent Hill games? Absolutely not, but does it do a good job of being it's own unique Silent Hill-esque story? Not really, but it's still worth playing. To me, what this needed was a more RPG-style system with more resource management and difficulty. It lacked all of those things and progression a lot of the time didn't have the same satisfaction as Survival Horror games usually have. It needed more character story, a deeper meaning (it's genuinely not that deep) than just ending up in a hell trying to avenge your lord. It lacked the depth to make me feel, in anyway connected to anything or anyone in this entire story and in the end, it all lacked the oomph and amazement that it probably should've had. You could've combined Buddhism and some mind-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ story-telling but y'all didn't. The main character is just, this dude that wants to avenge his lord. That's it, he doesn't say a word, he just does. I can't help but not care in the slightest for this dude and the characters, story and the rest struggle to make me feel even the slightest way for anything in this game. Not to say it's generic, but it's just, severely lacking and felt more like a game teaching me about Buddhism more than anything else. I might be being a bit too harsh, but it just left a giant hole of storytelling and gave me what could've been a 5 minute video essay on Buddhism. I think I probably shouldn't have went into this game expecting a cool Silent Hill-esque story, but I couldn't help myself with how atmospheric and how good the sound design was. I felt immersed and I wanted the game to ♥♥♥♥ with me but it barely did.. I feel blue balled. I do wish there were multiple endings, or some choice to be made but there wasn't. Outside of that, the game is generally fine, it has it's moments but it felt severely lacking in a lot of areas but I'd still say it's worth playing if you've already experienced the main survival horror games.

A hidden gem of a game, mixing the atmospheric horror of Silent Hill with a medieval setting and monsters of Japanese folklore. The old PS1-era graphics and especially the haunting soundtrack fit the dark and gritty mood of the game perfectly. There are tons of different melee weapons in the game and a few, but pretty powerful ranged weapons, but ammo for them is scarce in true nature to Survival horror, so combat is very melee-focused. Sometimes you need to switch weapon types, cutting weapons like Katanas, Naginatas etc. for fleshy enemies and blunt weapons like Kanabo or Jitte for cracking some skelly skulls. Melee combat felt a bit clunky in the beginning due to a small delay between pressing a button for attacking/blocking and the character actually reacting, but with a bit of training one gets used to it. I highly recommend playing till NG++, you can get a bunch of new weapons, a very cool easter egg “armor” and a new secret boss. The only minor bummer to me is that you don't actually need light sources like the torch or lantern since there aren't pitch black passages in the game, would also be cool to be able to light braziers with the torch since there are a lot of them ingame.

Прекрасная, вайбовая игра. Местами даже страшно, и меланхолично, а после представляешь себя тем самым японским героем из древних гравюр и пьес кабуки, сражающийся со злом. В начале своего прохождения, я чувствовал себя отчуждённым, нищим и одиноким асигару. Потерявший своих соратников, охваченный отчаянием и жаждой мести, словно сломленный но непреклонный человек на грани отчаяния, возможно, с суицидальными наклонностями, он шёл в самое пекло демонов. К месту, где некогда был замок его господина. И шёл он только с одной целью - покончить с самим королём демонов. Раз и навсегда.

По сути, неплохой dungeon crawler с элементами игр жанра survival horror. Понятно, что разработчик делал упор на визуальную составляющую, но и звук здесь тоже играет не последнюю роль. Меня подкупили очень годные кат-сценки с монстрами, которые чем-то напомнили ролики из другой игры под названием Concluse (поиграйте, первая часть бесплатная), поэтому и решил её приобрести. Геймплей заключается в исследовании локаций, сражении с монстрами, поиске полезных предметов, а также решении простеньких головоломок. Не сказал бы, что игра сложная, а скорее - наоборот, поскольку ничего трудного тут не увидел. Некоторые называют её souls-like из-за местной боёвки, но это далеко не так. Окна для парирования здесь довольно большие, поэтому освоиться с любым типом имеющегося в игре вооружения очень легко. Монстры респавнятся, но не так, как это было в серии Souls, то бишь после кончины главного героя или отдыха у костра, а после того, как вы покинете локацию. Противники при этом раскидываются по ней случайным образом. Вам ничего не мешает просто обежать их в случае, если не хотите с ними сражаться. Боссы в игре невероятно простые, т.к. практически ничего не могут вам противопоставить, как только вы поймёте, что достаточно просто бегать вокруг них и наносить удары. В случае использования магических талисманов или дальнобойного оружия битва становится ещё легче. Сохраниться можно у алтарей, как в каких-нибудь классических играх, типа Resident Evil или Silent Hill, но и автоматически, когда вы переходите из одной локации в другую. Автоматические сохранения могут подпортить вам прохождение, если вы часто тратите расходники и много погибаете, поэтому рекомендую лучше использовать именно алтари. В игре имеется хаб, где можно передохнуть, а также прикупить что-то полезное или улучшить ваши оружие/броню у кузнеца. Появляется он довольно поздно, т.к. много времени я провёл именно в первой башне лабиринта, а это неудивительно, поскольку она лучше всех проработана. Остальные подобным похвастаться не могут, поэтому не удивлён, что некоторые игроки таким положением дел разочарованы. Цена, как мне кажется, завышена, поэтому приобретайте игру, когда увидите хорошую скидку, что я, собственно, и сделал.

Spooky samurai stuff, senpai!

What a very fun game to play. PSX Buddhist adventure. Don't think ive played many games, if any with a neat setting like this. Most of the time it was fun to explore but sometimes it was easy to miss just one little detail (just like games of old) and just be completely stuck. It clearly is inspired by older titles so the combat might not be for everyone. Bosses are pretty easy, but people have beaten the entire Dark Souls series of games without being hit. Thematically the bosses/ enemies are interesting and once you figure out a strategy you just beat them to death.

Ш ИКиб леск