Brawlers are mostly brainless fun with very little strategy other than knowing to walk away when outnumbered, but otherwise it’s a choice of punching the guys’ face in or kicking them so they keel over. Leave it to NIS to usher in the RPG and strategy elements with more color on the screen than your eyes will know what to do with.

Lapis x Labyrinth is a dungeon crawling beat ’em up with a focus on loot. There are eight character classes to choose from, each with minor customizations in regards to their visual appearances, and quite a bit more when it comes to their loadouts. Eventually you’ll have access to any four classes at a given time in the dungeon, with everyone stacked on each other’s shoulders. Any more than four and they’d fall over, that’s just logical physics. You’re able to switch to any of the four characters while exploring, and you’ll also have the combined ability of everyone when stacked, should things get hairy. Kill enough enemies and the fever starts; gems and treasure comes flying out of seemingly everything you hit, boosting your overall level score, which results in more loot.

Basics out of the way, the game can be quite deep for what it is. I went into this thinking I could mindlessly button mash my way through the first level and ended up dying at the boss. I was surprised to see that upon reentering it, the level was the same. Probably not something that should be noteworthy, but it seems like games such as this are so insistent on procedural generation that I was happy to see the levels were actually sticking so I could learn their ins and outs. There’s a lot of treasure to be found in each level, and each chest’s contents vary on any given playthrough, meaning you may end up losing a lot of life for some common gear, or you may end up with something quite rare that will ultimately help you with the next few missions. The nice thing about level familiarity is knowing what to expect and how to attack, making the trial and error more enjoyable, although at it still feels like needless fluff most of the time.

While the game has a tutorial at the beginning to show you what your characters will be capable of, you really don’t understand until you’ve spent time with them. Seeing the different combinations of classes in the field and getting slaughtered by enemies you’re not prepared for is one of the biggest parts of the game. But it’s okay, because even if you die you reap rewards and level up, making the next run more doable. It’s here that there’s that sense of needing to push through and “git gud” by not only learning new strategies, but actually becoming more powerful. You can brute force your way through it if you really want to, but you’ll lose out on a lot of the game’s nuance if you do.

As is the case with many NIS games, this comes with a Japanese dub and no English in sight. This shouldn’t be a problem for those that prefer English as the voice work is mostly just combat driven. If you’re hoping for an extensive story full of lore, you won’t find that here. As is the case with most NIS RPGs, the main drive is comedy and combat systems. However, it’d be nice to have some connection with the characters you play as – their designs are fine if not a bit generic, but there’s nothing to make you care about them. Even the NPCs seem more devoid of personality than normal. I don’t think many people will buy this expecting a 100 hour long narrative, but it’d be nice for there to be more than what’s here, or at least something to build the stakes and make me care about what I’m doing.

If you’re looking for a brawler type dungeon crawler with platforming and more depth than punch, kick, and special, Lapis x Labyrinth may fulfill that need. With its RPG elements and ally stacking, this brings a lot of new content to a tired genre. Just don’t expect to be too engaged with the narrative or the labyrinthine world built around you.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Stacking Allies
• Huge Color Palette
• Deep Combat System

Cons

• Uninteresting Narrative
• NPCs
• Trial and Error

Lapis x Labyrinth was developed and published by NIS America. It launches on NS and PS4 May 28th, 2019. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Lapis x Labyrinth, check out the official site.

 

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