Deep Labyrinth (DS)
 

Finally, what the DS needs... A motherfucking dungeon crawler like the days of yore.

It's been confirmed that release date is March 23rd in Japan and localization is being negotiated at this point.

This game is being developed by Interactive Brains and has (don't know his name so I'll call him) the dude that wrote the story for Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and FFXI. It also has Yasunori Matsuda (who composed Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross and other games) doing the music for the game.

This was a popular cell phone game, and they are remaking it completely for the DS.

What I find enjoyable about this game, is the fact that you use the touchscreen to SLASH YOUR MOTHERFUCKING SWORD and CAST YOUR MOTHERFUCKING MAGIC. That's right, you draw on the screen (a line) where you want it casted.

If this game is localized, I will DEFINITELY pick it up. If not, I'm definitely importing it.

The pictures just don't do this game justice.
http://www.cubed3.com/media/2006/Mar...usraz/dl17.jpghttp://www.cubed3.com/media/2006/March/jesusraz/dl2.jpg
http://www.cubed3.com/media/2006/Mar...usraz/dl18.jpghttp://www.cubed3.com/media/2006/Mar...usraz/dl22.jpg
http://www.cubed3.com/media/2006/Mar...usraz/dl11.jpg

Movies
Deep Labyrinth TV Spot (Save-As)
Deep Labyrinth Promotional Video (Save-As)

MP3s
MP3 #01 (Save-As)
MP3 #02
MP3 #03

This game is going to be serious business.

I hope to death it's localized. Importing is only my last resort.

I don't know anything about the cell phone version, but if the guy who did the stories for Chrono Trigger/Cross and FFXI is working on it, the story will be great.

I'd hit it.

FFXI had a storyline? ;D

Ahh, reminds me of Kings Field... ((which is why I'll give it a good crack))

CC & CT's composer? OMFG. BUY.

That is why I put up links to the MP3s... So you can hear the GLORIOUS MUSIC.

Best music and graphics I've seen out of the DS so far, no argument at all. I'm impressed ^^ A nice celtic twist on a few tracks would make this a must-buy soundtrack.

It does indeed have a storyline.

Just an update...Atlus is expecting to release the English version in August 2006.

http://www.atlus.com/cgi-bin/press?press_release_id=13

Commence rejoicing. :)

Wow, I'm loving the music. The graphics are alright, but if the gameplay is half as good as I've seen in those clips, count me in.

And wo0t, a U.S. release!

This game looks pretty cool. I'm definitely considering getting it, and since Atlus is releasing the sooner the better. Unless it gets really bad reviews, I see no reason not to get it.

I am reminded of King's Field whenever I see a first person RPG, which disappointed me within the first 15 seconds.
I think I'm a sucker for the active touchscreen slashing and magic casting though.

Wow! The official site is now up! This game looks really awesome, It makes be confirm that I want a DS. Who says a game can't be great with mediocre graphics; these visuals are not PSP-quality, but it looks like I would have much more fun with it.

Oh man, that website just confirms that I'm definitely getting this game. The plot seems intriguing, the combat looks fun (the magic system definitely looks way easier than Lost Magic's), the music sounds great, and the graphics don't even look that bad.

And shame on you Free.User for not already having a DS.

The official U.S. site for this just opened here: http://www.atlus.com/deeplaby/
I think it's safe to say I'll pick this one up

That's already been posted about 3 posts back. Way to read the thread.

NICER GFF OR BAN 4 U LOL D:

I can't believe it's already almost out. I mean, early-to-mid August? Freakin' awesome (this is the first I heard of a definite US release by the by). I'm going to buy it on release day. Definitely.

Yeah, had I known it was coming out this soon, I probably would have pre-ordered it already. I still have a whole bunch of other games to play, but this one will probably go straight to the top of my list once I get it.

It doesn't disappoint at *all* from what I've read ;D O'course, a lot of folks are saying this'll be nearly impossible to find in coming months since it's Atlus ;_;

Oh man, I am definitely looking forward to this one. The site is pretty spiffy, I like the music and the action tab is badass :D. I can't believe I hadn't heard of this title before today.

Looks interesting. The puzzles look cool and the music sounds really good too. I may pick it up.

I better buy it the first day if it comes out. For some reason..Atlus games are just so hard to find..

But man, this game looks awesome..

RPGamer recently put up a review of this game, giving it a 2/5... Ouch. I'll probably be waiting for some other folks to review this game before I actually go out and buy it myself.

Just so I'm clear about everything, is the release date August 8th or August 15th?

RPGamer gave Breath of Fire III a 1/5. They're full of shit, period :( They also gave King's Field IV: The Ancient City a 2/5 & 3/5 rating from two folks.

It's the 15th. I addressed it in the August Releases thread. Gamestop says the 15th and that's all that matters, as I'm buying it from them. Bear in mind that this is an ATLUS game. It'll be hard a fuck to find after a while. I'd strike while the iron's hot. It IS a good game though. If you're in to the whole dungeon hack-and-slash genre (like I am).

I'll take your word on it. I only have about five DS games anyway, though there are a crapload coming out in the upcoming months that I want to get my hands on.

It looks nice. And cerberus are always cool to fight in games. And you have...a dog? But wow, I was having flashbacks to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons on the Intellivision from that map screen.

I'm going to wait and see how well the sword slashing/magic casting works with the touch screen. It would nice to see a game that actually uses the feature in a beneficial way rather than just making it seem like a replacement for an analog stick or buttons. It looks like a typical dungeon crawling otherwise, but that would be a good genre to have on a handheld that you'll probably be wasting away your time with on long trips. Either way I might pick it up when it drops to $15 or so. Then again it's Atlus, they'll make 5 copies and it will stay at $40 forever.

DS games are $30 =p And this is no different. I doubt it'll drop to $15. Chances are it'll be a sleeper hit and it'll be undersupplied (see Phoenix Wright). But then again, this genre is an acquired taste. It'll be anything but incredibly successful I'm afraid. Folks just don't like this type of game.

Contact is supposed to be $35, as were several other games like Metroid Prime Hunters. But either way, while the chance of it dropping is pretty minimal, I have gotten lucky with a few Atlus releases in the past (Sky Gunner for $15, for one).

The fighting in the game still looks a bit...clunky though. I'd have to play it for myself, but I'm having a hard time trying to tell just how you're supposed to fight efficiently in it, especially against the bigger monsters. It seems like it's hard to judge the depth of your sword swipes and such. But hopefully you can do more damage depending on where you swipe and at what angle, it would be nice to see a game like this with some strategy in it's battles. The Diablo style point and clicking got old with...well, Diablo 2, really.

Really bad reviews kinda deterred me from buying this...maybe if I see it cheap somewhere I'll pick it up..ah well

It's getting bad reviews because this and Kings Field are RPG niches that most folks don't take kindly to. If you hated Kings Field, you'll hate this. If you liked it, you'll like this. None of the reviewers for RPGamer or Gamespot or what-have-you gave high marks to the KF games and those are dynamite, if you enjoy the genre. Playing through The Ancient City (KFIV) right now in fact. Bought it for $10 online and I love it to death more than I remember.

Well, Lunar DS came out for $40, and it's now selling for $20, so it's not that hard to believe. But since this is Atlus, I doubt this we'll be the case. Just look at Trauma Center, it fits the scenario you described perfectly (undersupplied sleeper hit), and it's still going for $30.

I'll get this game, though I think I'm only getting this game because of Mitsuda. That and the wonderful catchy advertising by Reznor.

Same here :)

I just hope the quality of the soundtrack isnt hampered by the DS speakers

True, true. But if it is hampered, you could just plug in some headphones, which is often my situation anyway. This game seems hard to find. It might need to be eBayed. :/

I think Atlus had some kind of unannounced delay in shipping, because I went to four different stores (Target, Best Buy, and two different Gamestops) and none of them had it. I also checked Gamestop's website, and they list it as out of stock. I remember this same thing happened with Guilty Gear Dust Strikers, so hopefully this game will be here by the weekend like GGDS was.

Well some folks on Gamefags report having it. No luck getting it here today but it'll be here tomorrow.

If not tomorrow, I smell foul play from Atlus =(

I picked it up today actually :) It was at my local EB, though nowhere else. Plenty of copies, so it isn't exactly flying off the shelves. A girl picking up Brain Age had actually heard of it though and was wondering if I'd played it, though of course I haven't until this evening.

So far, my short impressions

Pros:
- Great soundtrack, obviously.
- Dialogue is witty and for the most part well-localized
- Overall storyline seems intriguing so far, considering it is Masato Kato

Cons:
- Movement is a bit clunky. It follows the Resident Evil school of forward-backward + rotate, except in first person. I suppose I'm too used to well-constructed FPSs with mouselook.
- Slashing the sword gets superfluous when all you have to do is tap, really. Update: Actually, slashing matters more once you progress further. Some enemies are smaller and hence you have to aim your swings carefully or else you just miss a lot.
- Spell casting requires you to press a button after you do the spell motion, which seems a little redundant. I'd think if you execute the spell motion, it should just cast.
- The "talking with NPC" BGM is extremely short and loopy. I kind of wish they just kept the normal BGM running instead of switching.

Semi-con:
- Playing left-handed is kind of awkward with the buttons used as a D-pad, but it's even more awkward to play right-handed since I can barely hold the stylus well with that hand. I'll probably get used to it though.

So far, I'm playing Storyline Part 1 with the boy and his dog, or rather the "lighthearted" beginner mode, and it's pretty simple. I'm still in the first tutorial area. Feels very much like oldschool 3D games on the Playstation.

The pre-titlescreen sequence is horribly compressed and is just sort of a mass of jumbly polygons forming into a mansion. However, once you start off the game, there's a nice little anime sequence complete with mediocre voiceovers. Caught me off guard, since I was assuming it would just be comic-style storyboards with text. Cool stuff though. The opening scene makes good use of the two screens.

I'll have more impressions when I play through a bit further.

Oh, and there's a few gems in the instruction manual...

-Don't use a broken stylus. Just go buy another one, you tightwad.
- Don't rub the Top Screen with the stylus, unless you're using the DS of someone you don't like, in which case go crazy.

Double Post:
After playing for another few hours... I have to say I'm hooked. While things started off roughly, I'm getting the hang of controlling. I found out that you can double-tap left or right to strafe-dash in either direction. Helps for avoiding spells or projectiles. Also, once you actually enter the labyrinth itself, the gameplay becomes much more interesting- and of course more claustrophobic, as there's more winding maze-like hallways instead of big wide-open fields with a save point every 2 seconds. Hence, tutorial. Right.

Also, play this game with headphones. Always. The DS's speakers just don't do the sound justice at all.

Alright, you got me. I might go and pick up the game sometime before the end of this week, if I can track it down. If just for Yasunori Mitsuda, then...

I'm liking this game so far (just played around a bit and beat the first boss).

It's like a faster, brighter, more light-hearted King's Field (which I was a fan of). I like the fact that you get upgrades in your sword or magic skills depending on which you use. The drawing of magic spells is pretty responsive, as far as I can tell.

Basically, if you liked King's Field, you'll like this game.

The fact that they included 2 full-length quests is what seals the deal.

The only things snagging me thus far are minute.

Firstly, inability to pan/look up and down.
Secondly, items are ONLY in chests or on monsters. I remember in KF that you'd hafta look around (and closely) to spot all armor and weaponry. They'd be stabbed into walls or tucked behind objects, what-have-you.

But oh well. It's still quite good :O

I didn't bother w/chapter 1, so I went w/the second one to start.

It's not too hard, i mean if you just strafe around everything, you'll almost never get hurt :(. Otherwise it's entertaining.

I just got through playing for almost an hour, and I must say this is a pretty fun game (heck, I'd say it's one of my favorite single-player DS games so far just based on the little I've played so far). The controls took a little getting used to, but after you get past that it's pretty damn fun.

The combat is pretty good. It's easy to get close to the enemies and strafe around them while attacking them with your sword, and the magic is great to use if you don't want to get to close to them. Also, the magic system in this game is a hell of a lot easier to use than the one in LostMagic.

The graphics in this game are also pretty good for what it's worth. The DS isn't the most powerful handheld out there, but they still managed to do a good job with the 3D graphics. I also really like the music as well.

Overall, this seems like a great game so far. If anybody is reading this who's on the fence about getting it, I'd say go for it, because you most likely won't regret it. Plus, I don't know about everyone else, but I had a hard time finding it in my area, and this is right when it just came out. So if you do want it, I'd say get it now, because like all Atlus games, this will probably be nearly impossible to find in a couple of months.

Holy crap. I went through a few stores today, and none of them had Deep Labyrinth still. They didn't have 2 other DS games I've been hunting for, but I kind of expected this since it's "new." :/

Yeah, this game was a bitch to find, especially for a game that's supposed to be new. Your best bet is to just keep checking Gamestop's website until it says a store near you has it. That's what I kept doing until I finally got my copy yesterday. Only about half the stores in my town had them yesterday, but now pretty much all of them do.

I personally don't want to get this game after my friends(ZOMG! I got more than 1 friend!!) bitched how bad this game is. I don't know, I need my fellw GFF members to tell me their opinion

has anyone played this game long enough to get up to Story 2's 1f the Aqua palace? I need a spell to open teh door to leave this area, but i have no idea where to find it.

I just beat the first chapter today (in all, it took me almost 18 hours to beat it), and I started on the second one. So far, I don't like it as much as the first one (the story seems more generic), but maybe it'll grow on me. Gameplay-wise though, it's almost exactly the same, so I haven't experienced anything to difficult yet (all the bosses so far have been especially easy). Unless they made this chapter ultra long, I'll probably beat it way faster than the first one.

If this is true then I will get this game. I had completely forgotten about Kings Field! I picked it up when I got my PS1 (which I can't believe was 10 years ago, feels like yesterday) and loved it. I didn't realize they actually made 4 of them. The ending piano music was beautiful too, gotta check to see if there is a rip of it somewhere.

Back on topic, I am now excited about this game. Must add it it to the list of cool DS games I need to buy!