Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society

Genre: First-Person Dungeon-Crawler / Turn-Based JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Labyrinth of Galleria, released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch, is a sequel to 2018’s Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk, and as such it features a similar presentation and gameplay, although this game follows a completely different set of characters in a different location. As with its predecessor, Labyrinth of Galleria is a First-Person Dungeon-Crawler and Turn-Based JRPG much in the style of Atlus’s entries in the genre like the Etrian Odyssey games (minus the map-making) and the Persona Q series. This game follows the story of the young noble Eureka, who responds to a want ad posted by a witch, unwittingly becoming involved in a perilous and magical search for cursed artifacts hidden in a monster-filled labyrinth underneath a wealthy count’s manor.

Right from the start, Labyrinth of Galleria succeeds where I felt Labyrinth of Refrain failed miserably – while I don’t think this story is particularly spectacular, I am not horribly repulsed by the overwhelming majority of its characters. Eureka is a pretty stereotypical naive youth, but her single-mindedness can still be amusing at times. And while this game’s witch, Madame Marta, is clearly a scheming, self-serving type, she has enough friendly enthusiasm to make her machinations interesting, even if she’s clearly taking poor Eureka for a ride.

The rest of the presentation, as well, is a small step up from what we had before. Once again, characters are represented by gorgeous 2D anime-style artwork and the labyrinth itself is a fairly simple 3D locale, but I’d say the mazelike corridors don’t seem quite as repetitive this time around (though they’re still very repetitive), and enemies now animate much more smoothly. The voice acting here is also good, but unfortunately we still have Nippon Ichi’s Tenpei Sato providing the soundtrack, meaning this once again sounds very much like the Disgaea games, and that’s not a compliment.

When it comes to the gameplay, Labyrinth of Galleria repeats all the major features and issues of its predecessor, but this time around the problems don’t seem quite as egregious. Once again, Labyrinth of Galleria gives players a lot of freedom to create and customize their own party using “puppets” they instill with “souls” and then file into “covens” that form the player’s party. And once again, exploration is made more interesting by abilities such as being able to knock down walls. There’s also a lot of interesting gameplay mechanics in combat to keep things interesting.

In my review of Labyrinth of Refrain, I complained about the way your puppets can be maimed in ways that required you to leave the dungeon in order to heal, how limited breaking down walls was due to an abundance of impassable spaces behind them, and the frustration caused by the inability to tell if an enemy was out of your league until it was too late. All of these issues are still a problem in Labyrinth of Galleria, but their impact is more subdued here.

I found it took longer this time around before you encountered enemies capable of breaking your puppets’ parts, and players are given more combat options so ideally they’ll be able to take out such enemies before this problem occurs. There’s still a lot of empty space behind the walls here, but I feel like the dungeon design is better overall in a way that makes bashing walls feel less random and more productive. And the issue with being unable to tell if enemies are overpowered… well, okay, that’s not much better here, I suppose.

However, while Labyrinth of Galleria definitely still has its share of rough spots, I feel like this is a much-improved sequel. Plus, the fact that the game stars a new cast of characters means you can just skip straight to this game without bothering with Labyrinth of Refrain. If you’re a fan of First-Person Dungeon Crawler RPGs, I recommend you do that. This game may not top the greats of the genre like the Etrian Odyssey series, but it’s still well worth playing.

tl;dr – Labyrinth of Galleria is a First-Person Dungeon-Crawler and Turn-Based JRPG, and a sequel to Labyrinth of Refrain, though this game follows a completely different set of characters in an entirely different story. In fact, while this game has many of the same elements as Labyrinth of Refrain, this is overall a much better experience thanks to numerous small improvements throughout the game. The flaws of the prior game are still mostly present here, but they’re less bothersome this time around, and it’s much easier for this series’ better qualities to shine through. If you’re a fan of this genre, this is definitely worth checking out.

Grade: B-

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