is not a game for everyone. I’m mentioning this right at the top, because for the rest of this review, I’m going to be describing things that sound obtuse and frustrating as if they’re feats of genius game design. Both things can be true, after all. The sci-fi horror 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metroidvania reimagining of Pac-Man, if nothing else, contains multitudes.

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My Apologies🅺 To Shadow Labyrinth, I Was Not Aware Of How Nasty Your Game Is

My second time playing Shadow Labyrinth re𒁏vealed that this is in fact a game for sickos.

Spinning off from the Secret Level short Pac-Man: Circle (or vice versa, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:depending on which intervꦯiew you believe), Shadow Labyrinth✨ is an ode to Namco’s arcade classics and a surprisingly meaty new entry in Bandai Namco’s obscure UGSF shared universe, presented in the unforgiving and at times hostile format that defined the games of the Namco era. Indeed, this one is for the sickos.

Welcome To The Labyrinth, Swordsman No. 8

Shadow Labyrinth Boss Fight.

If you thought Circle was pretty high concept for a Pac-Man story, you have no idea what’s waiting for you iꦚn Shadow Labyrinth. The short serves as a prequel to the game, which begins with the Pac-shaped Puck awakening a new swordsman in the abandoned prison and set𝓰ting off across the wasteland on a mission to ascend the Black Tower for… reasons.

It probably won’t surprise you that fighting your way to the tower (and eating everything along the way) is just🌼 as grueling as it looks in the short. It probably will surprise you to learn✃ that getting to the tower, climbing to the top, and completing Puck’s secret mission is merely the intro to a grand sci-fi epic that connects to nearly 50 years of Bandai Namco games. As the short reveals, Puck is much more than it seems at first, and so too is the labyrinth.

The title s♍creen reveals that Shadow Labyrinth is an isekai, and the Swordsman was brought into the labyrinth by Puck from the real world. This is only vaguely referenced o🐽nce, near the very end.

You don’t need to know UGSF lore to play Shadow Labyrinth. I certainly don’t. I did have a hard time following the plo༒t, and gun to my head, I really couldn’t tell you what exactly happened. That may ⛄sound like a flaw of the storytelling, but having only a vague sense of what’s going on presently in a multi-millennia-long galactic war actually serves to strengthen your connection to the silent protagonist. As the point of view character, it was easy to imagine they were just as lost as I was. Plus, feeling lost in a world that’s way too big for you is a core theme of the game.

The Only Way Out Is Through

The swordsman fighting in Shadow Labyrinth.

For the first five or six hours, I thought Shadow Labyrin☂th was a pretty linear experience. Modern Metroidvania titles have a tendency to lead players by the hand through their interconnected biomes on a winding path, giving the impression of dragging you deep into unknown territory without ever having the guts to cut the leash and let the player roam freely. Fantastic games like Metroid Dread and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown are a lot more on rails than their predecessors used to be, and for quite a long time, I thought Shadow Labyrinth was the same.

That was until I w🌸as in the ninth zone and hit a dead end. I retraced my steps for a bit, as I’d done many times before, but there were no more paths forward. Suddenly I found myself staring at the map for the first time, a single path carved through nine massive biomes, realizing that I’d need to reexplore all of them to figure out where I needed to go next.

The moment you hit your first dead end in Shadow Labyrinth is when the game truly begins, and when you’ll first start to realize how little it tries to help you find your way. There are no quest markers and no hint system. There’s a vendor that sells clues, but the clues are vague and only direct you towards optional upgrades, anyway. The map, your only guide that you’ll spend hours studying every pixel of, is a nightmare to read. I spent hours upon hours traveling back and forth along the same routes looking for the next place to go, while enemies - including bosses - respawned in my path. Yes, Shadow Labyrinth makes you refight bosses if you aren’t careful enough to avo෴id them.

After a while, it started to feel like the game hated me. One night, I played for five hours and made almost no progress. I lost count of how many times I found a new path full of vicious enemies and brutal platforming challenges, just to discover the whole thing just leads me back to somewhere I’ve already been, or found a path and followed it only to discover another locked door stopping me from making real progress. The moment you lose all hope is actually when Shadow Labyrinth truly begins.

☂There are very few traversal items that you’ll need to fully explore the labyrinth, but there’s a tremendous amount of area to explore to find them. Once you have the air dash and the grapple hook you can access half of the zones in the entire game, then you’ll need to find the double jump to access the other half. There are 18 zones, and many of them have two layers, which means a whole lot of wandering, a whole lot of dead ends, and a whole lot of boss fights that (seemingly) don’t get you any closer to t🦩he end.

But along the way, you’re getting stronger. Buying upgrades, unlocking new Puck abilities, finding health and energy tanks, and consuming foes 🍰to collect their crafting materials are all just as important as finding the double jump. Even when you’re aimlessly wandering and completely lost, you’re getting stronger; you’re training.

The Suffering Don’t Stop

Shadow Labyrinth

I’m not ashamed to admit it took me 20 tries to take down a single boss, only to discover it was merely a mini-boss that you encounter several more times in more challenging configurations. I’m also not too scared to say that I spent two full hours on a boss with only three moves at its disposal. In fact, most bosses only have three moves. They’re nearly impossible to parry without frame-perfect tiℱming, and they’ll kill you in two or thr🐟ee hits, guaranteed.

It might not take you nearly as long to geꦺt a handle on Shadow Labyrinth’s combat. I don’t claim to be a parry god♈. But it’s a fact that the game’s boss fights are extremely punishing, and thanks to the swordsman’s limited move set, there’s very few opportunities to finesse an encounter. Either you have the dodge/block timing down, or you don’t. You can’t even hope to luck into it, because the boss fights can be extraordinarily long.

There’s a little room for technique. There are a number of ESP abilities suited for different situations, and I routinely switched between three of them depending on the type of enemy. ES𓆉P Grenade is one of my favorites for big explosive attacks, but I also got a lot of use out of ESP Satellite, which sends orbs spinning around you, in close-up battles. The most tech you really get is a Shovel Knight-style pogo attack, which is surprisingly effective for some boss figh⭕ts.

Once again, you won’t find a lot of modern combat sensibilities here. Even Gaia, your summonable mech suit (did I not mention the mech suit?), is just a glorified Kratos-style rage mode. This is combat made for people who like Mega Man boss fights, where patience is your most valuable 🍷skill. Of all the hostile aspects of Shadow Labyrinth, the combat is the one I enjoyed the least, especially with some many repeated bosses, but I can still appreciate that it’s consistent with all of the game’s other t🥂hemes and goals.

This Is How You Reimagine An Icon

Shadow Labyrinth Puck Eating An Enemy

Though the references went over my head and the story🏅 was a blur, I enjoyed getting lost and immersed in Shadow Labyrinth.♍ Well, maybe ‘enjoyed’ isn’t the right word, but it certainly made an impact.

I’m old enough to have grown up with unforgiving games, and so I can appreciate a project that goes against the grain at the risk of alienating modern audiences. Even coming in as a genre appreciator, I felt alienated by Shadow Labyrinth. It’s an example of bold game design in a market that becomes more and more risk-averse by the second, and though I hated it at times, I love ౠwhat Shadow Labyrinth is, and all🌊 the respect and admiration for Namco’s video game history that went into it.

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168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Shadow Labyrinth
Action
Adventure
Platformer
Systems
4.5/5
Released
July 18, 2025
ESRB
Teen // Blood, Fantasy Violenc🧜e ✃
Developer(s)
ꩵ Bandai Namco Studios 🙈
Engine
Unity
Franchise
Pac-Man
Number of Players
Single-player

WHERE TO PLAY

DIGITAL

Pros & Cons
  • A truly classic Metroidvania.
  • The biggest world to explore since Hollow Knight.
  • Refuses to hold your hand through it.
  • A convoluted story that?s hard to follow.
  • Tanky bosses with high-damage attacks make combat feel hard for the sake of being hard.
  • The ending boss fight gauntlet may break you.