Verdict:
Strongly Recommended
Content Warnings:
Mention of sexual assault, homophobia, descriptioms of extreme violence, child abuse, emotional abuse, mention of lobotomies, existential dread, sexual themes, partial nudity, coarse language, probably more.
Do you play as a woman?
No, you play as a book, the Tractatus de Monstrum.
Do the women drive the story?
Yes, the story is entirely driven by Dronya and her apprentice Luca. You merely execute their plans.
How many men are there?
A few, mostly as side characters.
What are the Romance options?
No romance options, you’re a book. However there is a lot of sapphic romance in the game
Is the game any good?
I’m finally here, the game that I started this blog to talk about. Labyrinth of Refrain took me by the throat and kept me utterly enraptured for the entire story, despite some parts of the gameplay actively working against it.
You open the game with a short tutorial teaching you how to do things. Shortly after, you die, and the real game begins, with the turoial apparently not having happened. This will be a trend.
There is a lot to learn, and the tutorial tries its best but it is difficult to take in all at once. Eventually most of the mechanics will become second nature to you, but be warned that there is a very, very steep learning curve to this game.
The gameplay you will be learning is a party based dungeon crawler. You move around on grid based maps, hunting for treasure, fighting or avoiding monsters, and doing what madam Dronya tells you to do. Movement is simple and easy to learn, making moving around the levels easy enough. Enemies are also easy to handle, early on you gain the ability to see where they are, and they only move when you do, giving you plenty of space to plan around them.
The levels themselves are sprawling labyrinths, with later maps reaching truly massive sizes. Throughout the main story you’ll pass through several worlds, all of which will have distinct themes, enemies, treasures, and objectives. The levels feel relatively fresh, and its fun to see what new inventive place you will go next, they never disappoint as eye pleasers.
The pacing though, is a problem. At times its left somewhat unclear what you have to do, leaving you wandering around aimlessly until you get lucky or look up a guide. Some levels also outstay their welcome, being more of a chore by the end than a fun time. Also worth pointing out is the occasional need to grind levels, a problem made much worse by how characters work in the game.
As the Tractatus de Monstrum you have the ability to command puppets that have been infused with the soul of a once living person. Thise are the characters you will bring down into the dungeon with you, and you get to customise them quite a bit. To make a puppet soldier, you choose a name, a facet (their class), and then the following: personality, sign, voice, appearance, growth style, and lucky number.
While appearance and voices are locked to a small number of presets, it is still a lot and can lead to having very different puppets with very different strengths and weaknesses. The facets are interesting as well, being fun to play with and some of them proving to be remarkably flexible. Some facets definitely stand out as being better than others though, with better skills and stats, but that is a problem that is mitigated by transfering souls.
Transfering souls moves your puppet to a new body, letting you change everything about them besides their lucky number. Crucially, they can bring over some skills from their previous body, which gets thrown out. This lets you make super soldiers, building yourself a perfect puppet from skills of all different kinds. Transfering also increases a soul’s “clarity” which boosts their natural stat growth. You don’t get access to tranfering souls until quite late in the game but when you do it opens up a whole new world of possibility, its easy to get lost in transfering again and again to build the perfect team.
Building the perfect team does take a lot of one thing: time. Labyrinth of Refrain is a LONG game. My current playthrough is 60 hours long, and from what I have read it is the kind of game you want to play twice to get the good ending. Be prepared to invest a lot of time into it.
Ultimately though, it could have taken me twice as long and the experience would have been worth it. The gameplay is serviceable, the mechanics keep it from being a total chore but so few enemies ever pose a real threat that its easy to turn your brain off while exploring. The narrative, on the other hand, is nothing short of fantastic.
The narrative follows Dronya, an arrogant and mean spirited witch who comes to the town of Refrain in order to investigate the mystical well in the town. The well is full of deadly miasma, meaning it’s lethal for anyone to enter in person. Thankfully, Dronya has you, the Tractatus de Monstrum, to do her bidding. Dronya is accompanied by her apprentice, Luca, a bubbly and kind hearted young girl who acts as Dronya’s foil and moral compass.
I really can’t say much more without dipping into serious spoiler territory. Instead I will say that Dronya, who really acts as the story’s main character, is amazingly well written. Her story, as it unfolds to reveal both her past, present, and future, is utterly captivating and by the end I adored her with my entire heart. Luca as well, started out as a bit of a pest but quickly grew on me as a truly sweet and lovong young girl.
The side characters are more of a mixed bag. The man who shows up and helps you out in the labyrinth seems interesting at first, but spends most of his time blatantly disrespecting and threatening Dronya for no clear reason, which comes across as needlessly cruel. Many of the inhabitants of Refrain also make appearances, many of them making interesting contributions to the story, but mostly not hanging around for long.
Those characters are put through a lot of tragedy. The entire game is steeped in it, especially Dronya who is at the heart of the whole affair. Make no mistake, it is not a happy game, and where I am right before the final boss – they are very difficult! – I can’t promise you that there will be a happy ending. That alone would be a valid enough reason for some people to avoid the game, and I would understand and respect that.
One thing that is important, for me at least, to mention is that the game has a heavy focus on sapphic romance. Dronya loves women, as do several of the side characters. Being the game it is, a lot of pain comes from those relationships and that attraction, and the first instance of it is arguably predatory and iffy. Speaking personally as a lesbian, I don’t think it ever strays into harmful tropes, though it does toe the line at times. I genuinely loved getting to see women in love on the screen, its not something we get to see a lot.
For those who can handle the relentless downfall of tragedy, you will find in Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk an experience unlike any I’ve ever had. You will experience moments of joy, love, and hope holding hands with moment of deapir, confusion, and grief. I do not have enough words to express how much I love this game and I so desperately hope you do as well.
I Want to Play as a Girl 