Welcome to the third Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club selection thread. Our third game is Record of Lodoss War - Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth! The target completion date was Valentine's Day, February 14, 2022. Spoilers are now open

Fall in love with Deedlit and join in the fun!

Prior message:

We ask that until that date you use the forum software to mark any spoilers, either story based or mechanical, in the discussion below. Ideally the bulk of the discussion will occur after February 14, but if you want to comment before then you are welcome to so long as the spoilers are marked. We ask that if you leave a comment before that date you also come back to the thread after it to read other people’s comments and respond to them, though of course we cannot force you to do so.

All are welcome to participate regardless of whether you have stated a preference to or not and there is absolutely no commitment. You do not have to finish the game to participate but please let us know if you have not.

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What is Record of Lodoss War - Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth?

It is a 2D Metroidvania style game based on the Record of Lodoss War manga and anime, which were themselves based on a pen and paper campaign. It is very similar to Symphony of the Night

How long is Record of Lodoss War - Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth?

How long to beat lists it at 5.5 hours long.

I'm an hour in this game and it easily resonates more with me than The Pedestrian or Gorogoa. The game just feels damn good to play, it's action combat with a good variety of melee and ranged attacks.

Two minor gripes are the controls and story. The keyboard controls are plain awful and I didn't like the default controller bindings. The story is very basic; reminds me of the PS1 or SNES days where narrative takes a backseat to gameplay.

Whoops, I somehow missed the voting for this week. Excited to write some impressions for this though since I never went back and finished the Pedestrian (life stuff kind of snuck up on me).

Current status: Fighting the first boss.

First impressions, i would never play this due to anime "cover" because of my dislike of anything anime. Fortunately game is SNES-style pixel art so that turned out to not be a problem for me. But i would never know that without this game club, nice.

It's so Castlevania and I'm here for it, my only fear is difficulty (the reason I could not play THE Castlevania).

@donutello: I'm planning on making a separate post about this game but of course still want to discuss it here in the club. I'm glad you're enjoying it. I think it's a pretty decent love letter to Symphony of the Night (I disagree that it has SNES style art; I think it's much closer to PlayStation artwork given how large the sprites are and how many can be on the screen at once.)

I've finished the game and I don't think it's ever particularly difficult but what I will say is that some of the bosses take a little figuring out, especially because you absolutely have to use the mechanics specific to this game, which handles elemental vulnerability and especially life regain in a way that can be counterintuitive to people used to Metroidvanias. There were times I fought bosses and was like "how am I ever going to figure this one out?" and then it clicked pretty quickly and I beat them on the third or fourth try. Some took a few more attempts than that but I don't think any of them are actually unfair once you figure out how to approach them. Some of them are arguably way too easy.

I guess what I'm saying is that I hope you enjoy the game and don't get discouraged if you come across something that seems really tough. Chances are you just need to think in the way the game wants you to and then it will click. Nothing in the game requires lightning reflexes or 'l33t' gamer skills.

If you want to discuss any particular boss or section of the game (using appropriate spoiler tags of course) I'm happy to talk about what worked for me.

Also the music is pretty good. Not Symphony of the Night quality but respectable. It's easy to see a game like this like a 'podcast' game but I think this one deserves at least some aural attention.

I just want to jump in and say, as a fan of the source material (Record of Lodoss War) this game is a real fun nod and half-love letter to some of the characters and events in the 13 episode OVA. You should all watch it, it's basically someone's 80's D&D campaign that goes 0-60 real fast!

@bigsocrates: thank you for encouragement, my first 2-3 attempts were pretty much "how could I beat this?" and then it clicked and i enjoyed boss fight tremendously! Just as you said so.

So first boss down. It was super fun!

HEY WE HEARD YOU LIKED SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT...

OK, really, I just beat the first boss and this game is one of those with a sprinkle of Ikaruga baked in (Oh, hello there, Outland). It seems like a pretty good one thus far, too, although putting jump on B and attack on A is kinda weird? Is there a reason for that? I remapped that pretty much immediately, I'm not rewriting nearly thirty years of muscle memory for one game.

Also, that first boss has some moves that are very reminiscent of Serris from Metroid Fusion. I've killed Serris so many times I could beat him in my sleep, but this allowed me to recognize how they're playing with formulas. I mentioned the Ikaruga thing earlier - the boss is a little easier if you switch between your orange and blue spirits as necessary. When Abram slides along the ground, if you just jump up you're going to fall down and get hit anyway. You have to use the floating ability they give you early on. It's just different enough to not quite be the same boss and to throw me off enough to be a bit of a challenge - I still beat him first try, but almost didn't.

EDIT: Completely unrelated fun fact - according to the Wikipedia page for this game, the developer Team Ladybug previously worked on two other Metroidvanias - Touhou: Luna Nights and Shin Megami Tensei: Synchronicity Prologue. I had no clue anyone ever made a SMT Metroidvania.

For starters, that is a fun fact...and now I have to try and find this game, because I quite enjoyed T:LN and this game...so, maybe one of these set in a SMT universe won't have an utterly senseless story (I doubt it).

As for the rest, yes the game has an initial button mapping that is ridiculous to me...so much so that I forgot about it in the time between when I started it (a month ago) and finishing it recently. This particular button mapping comes up from time to time (I want to say the Castlevania Collection did it?) and it is always maddening and seems wildly counter-intuitive.

Anywho...like I said, I enjoyed this. It looks really nice, feels quite good, and the boss fights are quite a bit of fun (outside of a few that basically allow you to break the game and make their difficulty level plummet because of their system of absorbing magic, etc...). Still, even in those cases, things can get a little frantic -- Outland style. I just...the story is just such nonsense. Not even in a comedic way...just, purse nonsense that makes me even wonder why it's there. Perhaps it's on me; I only have a passing understanding of what Record of Lodoss War is (from the Wikipedia page), so maybe there's a lot here that fans of that will love...but to me, I just kept mashing the button to move on to fighting part.

Some of the bow puzzles are fun, and I actually had a really good time with a bow training section about midway through. I even considered getting all of the achievements, until I noticed one was for collecting everything in the game and no thanks: I'm almost 40 years old and have no time for random drops just to get an achievement.

Overall, it's my favorite Gamepass book club game so far.

The Deedlit thread is now open for spoilers.

I liked this game, especially the unique Ikaruga-like elemental switching aspect, though I wish it was easier to tell which element was active without looking for the spirit or up at the health bar because you often have to switch on split second's notice without time to check your active element.

I also got absolutely nothing out of the story even though I am somewhat familiar with the Lodoss anime. I mean the characters are recognizable but the actual story of the game is so disjointed and disconnected from the events of the anime that it was impossible to care. At the end Deedlit's recognition that Parn was dead and she had to move on in some way could have had some pathos, but I was already so checked out I just kind of shrugged.

It just felt like fan service for the sake of fan service, which is fine, but a little surprising considering the property's creator had a role in development.

I also found myself wishing that there was more to the exploration aspects. It's just a very straightforward and linear game for a Metroidvania. You could find a weapon or powerup if you went down one of the forks in the road but they were all obvious and generally there was only one optional thing to find in between each boss.

The bosses were fun to fight and the game looks great with decent music so it's definitely a decent time, but it has a lot of competition in the Metroidvania sphere right now and I felt like it was surprisingly straightforward.

Also I'm not sure why it is called Wonder labyrinth. Did anyone pick that up?

I didn't end up finishing the game in time, but I'm what I think is the end of chapter 5. From what I've seen, there's really nothing I'd consider worthy of being called a spoiler beyond maybe some boss gimmicks.

In keeping with the other games we've played, the integer-out-of-5 that I would give it is a 4. I think it's been a good Castlevania clone, a genre I'm altogether indifferent on, but it managed to keep my interest for more than just trying to finish the game before today. I'm not sure I will end up finishing, but that's because I'm in the middle of several games right now and Elden Ring is right around the corner. I liked the switching between blue and orange elements during bosses a lot, but outside of those encounters I found the mechanic to be pretty secondary. After a couple of puzzle games, I was grateful for the opportunity to turn my brain off and just kinda slap stuff with a big sword / shoot 5 arrows at once.

Of the three games we've done so far, I think this is just below Gorogoa for me (but well above The Pedestrian). In a way, they're very dissimilar games - Gorogoa is riding almost entirely on its originality but felt awful at times to actually play, and this game was a very polished entry into a way overstuffed genre. Both approaches have merit, but I almost always give the nod to the more ambitious game. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth: Potentially Another Subtitle is, however, a very good game I might not have played at all if not for this game club, so thanks everyone for voting for it!

I found this to be a great yet forgettable SotN clone. The Ikaruga-like elemental switching is really cool. But I'm confused why the game introduced 7 elements, where enemies have certain weaknesses. I almost never took advantage of it since you are really capable of using fire and wind, unless you found a hidden magic spell or use a specific weapon.

I had so much fun playing it but can't really remember much storywise. Granted, I'm not familiar with the source material, so maybe it makes sense to others?

Also I liked the dumb fun moment where Deedlit has a flashback and there's this one sword that's really powerful but slow. If you try to use it, she can only attack once and can't pull the sword back up.

Technically I did find some odd issues. I played this on PC and found that turning on V-Sync introduced stuttering even on a Freesync monitor. Turning V-Sync off helps. Also the game hard crashed on me 2 times, not a big deal since save points are plentiful but I had to repeat one boss fight because of this.

All-in-all fun game, best game club game I've played thus far.

I like it a lot and when you guys say it's "one of those Castlevania clones" a would really appreciate if you can give me some recommendations for game like this one!

I tried SotN (love it but it's too hard for me), then Bloodstained (it felt too anime for me). I love games like Ori, but I'm not looking for 'just metroidvania' but rather games like this one - because it has that 'gameplay feel' like SotN. That's what I'm looking for.

(btw i didn't finished Lodoss yet, but i plan to do so. It turns out, two weeks is not that much time for me lol)

So please recommend games like this to me, hopefully Castlevania-like that isn't too hard and too anime!

@donutello: There's the castlevania GBA collection on consoles which is a collection of three metroidvania castlevanias. They feel old sometimes, but it's good.

Timespinner is a well regarded one. Chasm is OK and a very forgettable one of those, if ever you just really want a fix. Yoku's Island Express is closer to Ori than Castlevania, but if a pinball take on metroidvanias interest you it's pretty good and breezy.

For my money Hollow Knight is the best, but if you find SOTN hard you'll probably find Hollow Knight too hard. I would avoid ENDER LILIES too, because it's super anime.

My opinions seem pretty similar to everyone else's: I really liked it and never found it TOO difficult.

I definitely died to a lot of the bosses, but never more than a couple of times and it felt like if I ever got too frustrated, the cheap answer was just to spam some sort of magic and then stay alive long enough to drain MP off of attacks and rinse and repeat (which I don't have a problem with doing). I did get lost once, but I think it was mostly due to being color blind and not being able to differentiate a lot of the door colors on the map. I think this could have been solved for me if I could zoom in on the map more but in the current state I had to have my girlfriend point out where to go to next.

The combat introduces itself as being complicated, but most of the stuff they tell you about (enemy weaknesses, finding weapons) becomes pretty trivial since any time I found one overpowered weapon, I found upwards of three just as powerful within a couple of rooms of it. It just has a solid power ramp where it always feels like enemies will take 2-3 hits when you enter an area, and one when you start to backtrack. It just makes for a very smooth experience that has you always moving forward. I do wish there was more of a "zoom in" option on the map, or a "Highlight all of these color doors" a la Metroid Dread but all in all, the game is worth the price of admission (even if you don't have gamepass I think).

Since others have been ranking/scoring, here is my up to date scores:

Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth 4/4 (would recommend outside of Gamepass)

Gorogoa: 3/4 (easy recommend for someone with Gamepass or a taste for puzzle games)

The Pedestrian: 2/4 (Recommended if you already have Gamepass)

@donutello: I would highly recommend Axiom Verge 2. It is a similar length as Deedlit but I think it handles the exploration side of it a lot better and the upgrades you get can be somewhat surprising despite handling the same sort of functionality you would expect (double jumps, ranged weapon, fast travel option).

@noboners: I loved Axiom Verge 2, but if their issue with SOTN was difficulty....boy they might really have a problem there. Especially early on when the game basically just shrugs and says "better figure it out because there is no leveling up here" and can be pretty punishing.

One that I think still holds up after all these years and isn't too difficult aside from some very late game challenging segments is Shadow Complex.

@sethmode: Yeah but the game does have excellent accessibility options that let you change damage output of both enemies and the player as well as adjusting the game speed whenever you feel like it. So fights can be trivial if you need them to be.

@noboners: Oh right on. I didn't even know it had accessibility options like that.

Then yes, it's very much worth a play. Uses the abilities in familiar but interesting ways and the exploration is extremely satisfying.

@donutello said:

You should check out Aquaria. Also Cave Story, but that might be on the hard side.

Surprised nobody has mentioned the Metroidvanias made by the same developer, like Touhou Luna Nights, which I think is still on game pass until the end of the month.

@bigsocrates: Personally, I only left it out because it was briefly mentioned earlier in the thread (although admittedly it was off-handedly so probably missed). That game is pretty good though, and the time mechanic is very satisfying!

Late to the party, I agree with a lot of the previously posted impressions. Good solid, SOTN type, liked the element switching though I wish it was incorporated more; felt like it only became crucial in the last two stages. Really enjoyed the graphics; As someone that doesn't revisit old games, it looked like what I remembered SNES games being in my youth.

Also, I got the 100% map achievement because I am an absolute sicko when it comes to that and Metroidvanias; I usually don't care about 100%ing any game unless it is an open world game with easy/chill achievements/trophies.

Also, the sound mix on this game was FREAKING loud on xbox with a sonos soundbar., I had to turn it down to like 30 percent; usually if it's loud, I might turn it down to 80-90 percent.