Honestly when I purchased this game I had no idea it was based on some novel series which had anime adaptations. I will go over with my honest review of what I thought of this Metroidvania.
First off I want to praise the spritework and animations, it's one of the most beautiful I have ever seen for a game, that is undeniable, it seemed to have very obviously taken inspiration from Symphony of the Night's infamous Alucard walk sprite in Deedlit which I think anyone who played that game would notice. The combat at its core is also pretty good where the snappy sound effects makes the combat feel intuitive. I find the sprite/spirit elements where you switch from wind and fire to be fun as well. Some enemies are immune to either fire or wind so you have to switch up, there are also moments where bosses or areas have these wind/fire barriers where you must switch to the appropriate element to absorb.
The story was also easy enough to understand, especially for someone who has not consumed the original source material. There were a lot of moments where returning characters appear and the text makes it out to be as if a player already should understand who they are, but thankfully I didn't feel lost as I still grasped the core themes the story was trying to tell. Since there are risks of fans who are going to read this, I will simply say that the story is about Deedlit going through the process of grief, the main focal point of the story seems to be to not be stuck in the past.
Now here are my complaints about the game, and even though the game is eyecandy, there's a lot of worthy critiques. Firstly, I found the game to be a little too easy, after all the game took me about 4 and a half hours to beat, the reason why is because of two reasons.
1. The game's bosses while incredibly designed at its core, die way too early to leave an impact on you. The game could have compensated that by either making the HP higher for bosses or by balancing out the weapon system, since weapons are tied to this complaint I want to mention that the weapon I used, a boomerang weapon was not a weapon I found through some secret, but through normal discovery. Each new area tries to powercreep your previous weapons but once you find a weapon from said area the enemies too die in less than a second. Weapons should have definitely had some better balancing to compensate for the enemy and boss balancing.
2. The exploration was very linear, which is why this game was so quick to beat. A good metroidvania incentivizes the player to memorize areas and through their own intuition, determine what should be explored next. Wonder Labyrinth instead makes it so that to traverse over to another area, you activate a lever which activates all purple doors, all you need to do is check the map and look for purple marks and you wouldn't be lost at all, in fact I believe the game used 4 or 5 different types of colored levers, a more polished metroidvania would have added more powerup abilities to the player character to traverse. Speaking of exploration, a good metroidvania is the kind of game that encourages you to explore everything, and because you already were powerful enough to face everything, and the secrets led to shallow rewards such as rooms that gave you weapons or spells or minor power-ups to your sprites/elements, there really is no encouragement for you to explore everything as the rewards don't edge out the abilities and equipment you already possess to a high enough degree where it becomes noticable during combat. Which makes this a much weaker metroidvania compared to other more polished ones.
This last complaint I have is in regards to the traversal where you need to use arrows to hit gears to open up for example locked barricades. The issue becomes that this puzzle gimmick doesn't really feel like guessing and more of a chore when backtracking, this is especially apparent when you use a bow which fires more than one arrow where the arrow can hit the forward and backward mechanism of the gear at the same time, which becomes more like a guessing work rather than intuitive puzzle solving, this is especially apparent when later gear puzzles introduce magnets where you just fire off anywhere to have it work. In other words those were unnecessary additions to the traversal of the map which halted gameplay exploration.
Even if my critiques seemed harsh I would still recommend this game to whoever enjoys a decent Metroidvania or is the type who wants to have the milestone of beating a shorter game. I do also believe that whoever is a fan of the original series would definitely enjoy this title a lot more than one who hasn't consumed the original material. Is it linear for a Metroidvania? Yes, but at the same time it is short enough where it becomes excusable, it doesn't necessarily waste your time. That is why my final score for the game is a 6/10
(mind you a 6/10 does not mean it's a mediocre experience)
