LABYRINTH OF TOUHOU - GENSOKYO AND THE HEAVEN-PIERCING TREE

LABYRINTH OF TOUHOU - GENSOKYO AND THE HEAVEN-PIERCING TREE
N/A
Metacritic
91
Steam
77.909
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$29.99
Release date
23 August 2021
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
91 (290 votes)

Challenge the Great Tree with the maidens of Gensokyo! Challenge the mysterious great tree that suddenly appeared! Form and develop a large team from the characters of Touhou Project, and challenge the powerful foes that stand in your way! Now, enter the labyrinth that pierces even the skies!

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LABYRINTH OF TOUHOU - GENSOKYO AND THE HEAVEN-PIERCING TREE system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows® 10, Windows® 8, Windows® 7
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-3550
  • Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Graphics: DirectX 9 Compatible GPU
  • DirectX: Version 9.0
  • Storage: 1 GB available space
  • Sound Card: DirectSound Compatible Sound Card with latest drivers
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Terrarius
Terrarius

TLDR:
+ bossfights in this game are great and very plentifull
+ fun party building
- exploration has almost no noteworthy puzzles
- random encounters are boring
- you will spend roughly half of your playtime on the 2 previous negative points.

Lunar_Flowers
Lunar_Flowers

My favorite Touhou grid-based RPG (so far!) Quite old-school: Think the older Etrian Odysseys or Elminage Gothic, with puzzles. You'll spend a lot of your time searching for switches, trying teleporters, falling down holes, pushing boulders (Sokoban-style) and figuring out the correct team composition for bosses. Extensive post-game, most of your time will be spent in the post-game in fact.

Recommended for people who enjoy their RPGs a little towards the puzzle side.

Pro

    • Most Touhou characters till Hopeless Masquerade are included, and each of them have very detailed movesets and are unique enough that they resemble characters, and not faceless chits.
    • Excellent flexibility in builds. You can build debuffer teams, buffing teams, brute-force teams, evade-y teams, etc.
    • Unlimited grinding ceiling. You can grind to your heart's content and curbstomp the bosses.


Cons

    The post-game grind! You will have to grind for days if you want to 100% this game. Major level inflation a la Disgaea.
    • Puzzle bosses. Some bosses (again, most of the post-game bosses) will smash your team if you don't have the optimal composition. Some bosses have multiple stages and you'll often find yourself having to damage-race while the boss flings powerful attacks at your flimsy glass cannon characters (looking at you, Yuuka).
    • Some puzzles are incredibly obtuse, including a temperature puzzle that took me days.

Epilexia
Epilexia

The fame of Labyrinth of Touhou as one the finest games inspired in Etrian Odyssey lives on, after my initial hours.

They have taken the essence of Atlus games, greatly expanding the best elements. Beginning with the difficulty, the default level is Hard, and this is much more harder than any Etrian Odyssey entry, even playing in Expert.

Be ready to spend hours to take down any of the bosses or FOES, by carefully creating a party to exploit their weakness, changing the character's equipments for each battle.

An it makes the brilliant design decision of showing in the map the level of each boss. If your level is above the marked number, you can't fight the main bosses. And the optional bosses won't drop items if you're over-leveled. When you're in the town, there's an option to temporary lower your level. This make of every combat a brutal challenge, based on strategy, in which every command matters.

It also does really well the part of exploration, creating layouts full of sense of wonder. Interesting gimmicks in the dungeons, a lot of optional routes in each level to try to recruit every secret character, including a lot of backtracking to the early levels. Without a guide, it's quite fascinating trying to find every secret by yourself.

And the icing on the cake comes with the extra post-game content, including an infinite roguelike mode with procedural generated dungeons, which is something that as an Etrian Odyssey fan I have always dreamed of.

The game runs out of the box in the Steam Deck, playing great with a game controller. It looks fantastic on the Steam Deck screen, with readable text and great battery life.

Giving that the Switch version wasn't translated to English, this is one of the best JRPG exclusives. Justifying alone the purchase of a Steam Deck.

HellRavenMatingPress
HellRavenMatingPress

Perfect game for Yuuka enjoyers because she will stomp your balls to dust.
Also every single other boss lady in the game will stomp your balls to dust.
This is the most painful experience of my entire life.

Kips
Kips

Don't play this game on hard mode.

Really good 2hu fangame, lots of build varieties, characters, and some really interesting fights. I'd put it up there with some of the greats (as if it hasn't been a part of them for like a decade, anyways?) and I've got nothing but high hopes for 3.

AdmiralCarnage
AdmiralCarnage

If you're a dungeon crawler or RPG fan and are looking a fun and rewarding game with a (somewhat) fair difficulty curve, than look no further than Labyrinth of Touhou - Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing tree. I highly recommend it, even if you're not familiar with Touhou.

Nennu
Nennu

etrian odyssey x touhou
more focused on using multiple team setups rather than just using the same 4 team members. lots of going back and forth between the town and dungeon but there are checkpoints along the way to make it not really an issue. cute art. sadly no voice acting of any kind.

bnnuy
bnnuy

tldr; Dungeon-Delver JRPG which you can sink hundreds of hours in if you want to experience everything; I recommend this game if you're a fan of the "Touhou Project" and have a fondness for "Etrian Odyssey" style games!

This is the second game of the same style the devs have made and it's pretty good, there are lots of characters from the "Touhou Project" and their designs + art style direction here is pretty unique; you dungeon delve in this jrpg-esque game and build teams of up to 12 characters - there are roughly ~50 characters so there's plenty of combos you can do even when you've finished the entire game and the "plus disk" content; Some characters' abilities interact in interesting ways, but I won't spoil anything :P

The story is what's probably what I really enjoyed, even if it was a pretty minor part of the game, despite it being a fanmade game, it really ties in nicely to Touhou's usually story. Without any spoilers, it features a large portion of Gensokyo's cast in this huge 'incident' where everyone bands together to try and resolve it, of course there's the staple protagonists Marisa and Reimu, later on you grab Sanae, Youmu and Reisen.

I had roughly 300+ hours when i felt like i did most of the content, but kept messing around with new saves and just recently ended up finishing all of the game's content.

It's pretty fun and has a lot of replayability, both in starting a new save or playing in hard mode which makes the game considerably more difficult, just make sure not to relapse into playing the same team combos!

Note: The devs are currently working on their third game, I'm really looking forward to it whenever it comes out during 2024!

Lucky
Lucky

I’m glad that I finished Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven Piercing Tree. Or at least, I finished the second part of the game with the included add-ons. There's another another part after the first and second part that's basically just the post-post(?) game with more remixes of other bosses.

In short, the game is fantastic. As someone who enjoys Etrian Odyssey to an extent this game scratches that inch but pushes further into its own directions to make it stand out from being "just" the Touhou version of Etrian Odyssey.

For starters, the gameplay is fast. One thing that can bother me with dungeon crawlers is that each encounter can take a ton of time, and this becomes a test of my own patience especially when you smack out scores at dudes per run. LoT does a lot to mitigate this: enemies have fairly low amounts of health as does your crew, MP is restored after every battle, animations rarely take longer than a second (although I would've preferred being able to turn them off entirely), and menus are fairly responsive.

The game does a lot to cut a lot of the fat from dungeon crawlers in this way. There is no item management, instead all resource management is tied to the amount of MP you have. You can return to the main hub at any time. You can start from certain checkpoints on a floor. The game encourages you to continue pressing onward in a dungeon with cumulative bonuses (EXP, Rare Item Drop Rate, Money). Which provides a very addicting gameplay loop of pushing forward as much as you can to get the biggest paydays when you return to the hub. No penalties for dying either!

And yet, the game is hard. The game gives you around ~50 or so Touhou characters to choose from in your party, and each one has a simple skillset because you manage 12 of them in your party. You only get around 4 equipment slots, 3 “subs” and 1 “main”. Oddly, the sub equipment determines stats the most, while a main is usually a game changing stat suited to the build of the character. You are expected, even early on, to find the right synergies to take on many of the games bosses, which often have very selective gimmicks that push you to playing a certain way or taking on a certain character.

But at the same time there’s many ways to brute force stats. The normal difficulty in the game gives a bonus if your party of girls is at a certain total level against certain bosses, but this scales with the number of girls on the team. So, you can get the bonus for a Lvl 50 boss with 8 Level 70s rather than 12 Level 50s. In the post post game this isn’t possible but for the first two swathes of the game, it’s definitely a viable strategy and useful for those who simply want to blow up a boss with big number.

I would say that the game, while it tries to trim the fat of the basic model of a dungeon crawler, introduces so much nuance that is very hard to determine from the player’s perspective that it becomes reasonable to scour wikis and documentation. Many skills in the game, in the current translation, can have issues spelling out what each skill does and how they compare. One character’s attack that inflicts poison can be completely different than another: potency of the poison, length, chance to inflict poison at all. Some attacks bypass defenses completely, and some skills do not tell you that it does this (Mei Ling is a good example).

But the nuance adds so much to the combat that you really feel encouraged to experiment and explore the systems. Defense versus elemental resistance, speed, observing synergistic characters and effects, debuffs, ailments, all of it culminates into a system that rivals the best the genre has to offer in a very conventional package. You just have to deal with the fact you may not be getting the full hand with those descriptions.
The dungeons themselves, however, are straightforward with a couple of annoyances that make it a lot harder than it needs to be. For one thing, you cannot access each map at any time. You need to go to the map itself to read the map, so for any multi-floor puzzles or to check if you missed any tiles – yup, gotta go to the dungeon itself. This is especially painful given that this was a problem solved by the very first Etrian Odyssey.

As far as graphics goes, on par with the DS Etrian Odyssey, but there’s no dynamic 3D bosses like in the 3DS games. It’s very pretty, the character art is great (although little variation which is a shame) and the overworld music is pretty good at first. You’ll hate it pretty soon, that’s the given with dungeon crawlers. There are also only a select few battle tracks and so you’ll hate that as well.

The writing is mostly a shitpost. Characters just rag on each other constantly and make callbacks to the canonical Touhou games but through the lens of the fans. All equipment in the game are references to other media, some common others incredibly uncommon. This includes DOOM weapons, Fallout weapons, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, random movies and shows, the works. There is an overall plot which gets a bit interesting come the second act, and once you finish it you kind of like your extremely large band of weird magic bullet shooting girls.

I highly recommend it if you like dungeon crawlers, deep combat and character-building systems, and have like 200 hours to kill.

Bonus: Introduced around the same time as the second act is the randomized levels. I will be the first to admit that after I went through enough to finish the second act, I didn’t really want to continue forward. I spent months playing the game and the bosses/dungeons were ramping up incredibly that I was getting outleveled so fast that I felt discouraged from continuing. Maybe I’ll return to it someday when the addiction returns, but I think the first two parts of the game on its own served as a fantastic game all around.

Firstkungzaa
Firstkungzaa

Combat Focused Dungeon-Crawler Turn-Based RPG.

It's a game where you keep bashing your head against a wall and hoping you would win. (That, before you finally know what to do and start planning for real.) Random Encounter are just boost speed and use AoE Sweeper who can also pierce armor, because gods, there are so many tanky enemy, which make a lot of characters hard to use.

Final Boss require some good planning. Tenshi's Buff-Removal RNG was a pain, though.

Still a good game regardless... The Sequel is also coming soon...

40 Hrs. Mark : Completed the Main Story.

Thanuris
Thanuris

Very grindy JRPG which improves upon its predecessor and adds lots of QOL features like game overs sending you back to the main hub instead of making you lose progress from your previous save. Play it if you like experimenting with builds (there's a lot of viable ones) and don't mind the old school random battles after X steps system.

Aqua
Aqua

I played a bit of the first Labyrinth of Touhou many years ago. It was a rather difficult rpg, but seeing many familiar characters and funny dialogue kept me hooked.

I'm glad to say that the Second Labyrinth of Touhou upholds all that, though, sure, 2 hours in is far from playing much into the game.

The music is still wonderful, the art style seems more "standard" anime rather than the more old school 80s esque look they had for the first game. The UI has been relatively clear at telling you what skills do, though I guess it would be nice if there were more indicators that enemies were weak to an element or something, maybe I need to read up on the Beastiary over in Keine's school

The very first floor has one of the weirdest map designs ever, but the first game was also very cavernous. That seems par for the course for this style of game / dungeon crawler, but there are quite a few areas that seem so close yet they are so far

All the characters seem relatively relevant so far, even Rinnosuke doesn't die immediately which is nice to see. This probably changes at higher difficulty levels but I'm the sort of person who likes to see varied kits for playable characters in games and this delivers. Sure, some characters will inevitably be much stronger than others, but at least in early game it seems each person you recruit is helpful: Rumia's kit seems surprisingly so

If my opinion changes as I play, this review might change. I admit that I'm playing various games at the same time right now, but for that tactical itch this game delivers. The first game, despite its difficulty, was amazing and it seems that hasn't changed!

loreofloki
loreofloki

I remember playing this game...years ago. Couldn't get past floors 13 and 14 because my memory just sucks. But imma be real, most of my time lately has just been idling so I can get the achievements for playing x amount of hours before I actually get into playing the game.

Doesn't mean it's a bad game though! I'm just... tactically taking my time.

as shrimple as that
as shrimple as that

A damn good DRPG with an ingenious team system where you enter the dungeon with a huge twelve-character roster and swap them out from the four-person battle group like Pokemon mid-fight. The battles are highly tactical and require you to build the right characters for the job, and the game makes this easy by allowing you to respec any character from the ground up at any time, completely for free. No sticking with a subpar team due to sunk cost here-- Build what you want, when you want.

Hard mode sets a level cap for bosses, which makes it very clear exactly how strong the game expects you to be to face them. If you've overleveled you can easily adjust your whole team's level down in town and then enter the fight. Your XP is banked and can be withdrawn to level up or deposited to level down any time outside of the dungeon.

The excellent, deep strategy and the fact that the game is so respectful of both the player's time and intelligence is so refreshing. The cherry on top is the genuinely funny character-driven writing, which you get tons of on any given floor. It's truly a pleasure to see and I always love running into a cutscene.

I highly recommend this game to any DRPG fan, whether they know Touhou or not. As fangames go this is an excellent entry point to the franchise and will give you a broad overview of the many Touhou characters as you play through.

Jaiden Leaf
Jaiden Leaf

If you like Touhou you should definitely buy this
If you like RPG dungeon crawling you should buy this
If you like Anime Girl you should buy this

Also this game has epic soundtrack

Emmanuel2
Emmanuel2

Great dungeon crawler with very interesting fights. The non-plus boss fights are "puzzle" encounters when you fight them on the recommended level which might be a con for some people; the plus disk encounters are very free-form though and has less restrictions in builds in contrast... minus the Full Power Dragon God.

The game has a boatload of content (it has the base game and the expansion disk), a massive roster of characters, and quite a few ways to build around your preferred strategy/characters.

Exploration Puzzles can become quite involved but not they're not too difficult that they become infuriating.

Artwork is easy on the eyes, the character portraits are cute and the music is okay.

Highly recommended dungeon crawler experience even if you're not a Touhou fan.

Gizmo
Gizmo

I adored this game. Anything to boost this title in the eyes of the Steam discovery algorithm.

You do not need to know anything about the Touhou universe to play this game. This is my first Touhou game, and while I'm sure I'm missing some things on character interactions, you'll be able to follow the plot and everything. However; the plot takes a backseat to the dungeon crawling and combat.

Majority of your time will be spent building characters, mapping out floors, and fighting. This is where the game shines. Labyrinth of Touhou has to be one of the most mechanically complex dungeon crawlers I've encountered. You can unlock up to 50 something characters, all with their own unique skills and damage formulas for their abilities. In addition, they can all be given subclasses and the Plus Disk adds even more options for character building. This allows for a massive amount of customization in filling out the 12 person party (4 front line, 8 reserve). The combat is turn-based and based on speed - however, there are no items - so boss fights can turn into a very MP oriented balance, as well as swapping a character in for a few turns and swapping them out. It is very engaging and tactical. I was able to kill all the bosses up to the post-game plus disk content by altering my strategy without ever needing to grind and always killed them at or below the recommended level. Some of the bosses in the post-game plus disk content were far ahead of me stats/level wise upon first encountering them which is the only part where I ever felt like grinding a bit was necessary.

There’s tons of floors with different enjoyable puzzles, although the Sokoban puzzle made me want to bash my head into the wall.

Great music, not just for the boss encounters, but also the ambient music for all the different floors.

Really just a phenomenal package here for the price. If you’re looking to do all the content, easily upwards of around 150+ hours and I loved nearly all of it.

My two negative would pretty much be the following:

The information on the damage formulas for all the different spells is not available in game and you will need to consult the wiki. Luckily, the wiki is very in depth, but I always wish for this information to be present in game.

The Infinity Corridor in the Plus Disk is pretty boring. You get a boss fight every ten floors, but most of them are reskins of their heaven counterparts and the unique boss fights are too far inbetween. You could ask why I just didn’t skip it, but the Infinity Corridor is mandatory for accessing parts of certain floors as well as for unlocking new abilities for your characters.

Kiraidi
Kiraidi

I'll keep it short, I've played this game before it was released on Steam (gone on 300 hours or so), and I will say it's an excellent game all things considered, ithe few bad things it has are that characters will vary in performance over time as the game's context changes (that is, how far in on the game are you) and that it can get a little grindy at times, but that's pretty much standard fare for this kind of game.

Otherwise? Give it a shot, excellent, gameplay rich game, if you're into optimizing your party for a given situation this game very much scratches that itch.

Plastic-Pop
Plastic-Pop

Do you like touhou do you like numbers do you like increasing numbers of and from your favorite touhou if you answered yes to all of these this is the game for you
BTW dont bother trying to play "fair" or "balanced" once you hit post-game, overleveling and cheesing when necessary should be your go-to tactic at that point

Corvid-19
Corvid-19

Finally beat the main game.
Time for the plus disk content now I guess.

ani_blast
ani_blast

A Casual Doujin Touhou Dungeon Crawler RPG with jokes abound and customizability for days? Count me in!

KevinTheGreatZ
KevinTheGreatZ

To much grinding.
It takes a huge amount of time to just level up your character, and this is not fun.

Dondondora
Dondondora

please play labyrinth of touhou

FantasyJared
FantasyJared

TL;DR

Labyrinth of Touhou is an isometric doujin dungeon-crawling JRPG featuring the characters of the Touhou Project series. To be blunt, it is my favorite game series ever and I would highly recommend it to JRPG fans looking for a challenge. While Touhou fans will definitely get the most out of the game, the series is extremely self-contained, so don't stress too hard if you're out of the loop.

SUMMARY

Don't let my seemingly pathetic amount of playtime fool you - I have well over 500 hours clocked in the Labyrinth of Touhou series. Between the original PC releases on DLsite and the Nintendo Switch port on the Japanese eShop, this is a game series extremely near and dear to my heart. Being consistently updated and fine-tuned over the course of eight long years, Labyrinth of Touhou 2 has finally made its exciting debut to Steam in HD courteous of the Japanese doujin developer 3peso.

The gameplay loop comprises of three main components: dungeon-crawling, combat, and building your team. Being an isometric party-based dungeon crawler, Labyrinth of Touhou is quite accessible to those unfamiliar with the genre. Though the dungeon design isn't nearly as mechanically complex as some of its peers, the game more than makes up for that with its thoughtful and visually appealing dungeon design. Puzzles are intuitive and fun to think through, while a variety of hazards will keep you on your toes. Finally, the TP system cleverly encourages players to be efficient in combat in order to prolong their dungeon explorations.

The combat in Labyrinth of Touhou 2 is notably fast-paced. Utilizing a unique, turn-based take on the ATB system that Final Fantasy popularized, battles can be fought in a myriad of creative ways. As a result, fights feel complex and you'll rarely approach them in the same way every time, keeping combat engaging. Finally, the Challenge Level mechanic rewards players for taking on boss encounters at a fair level, encouraging skilled play.

Thankfully, the teambuilding process is just as well fleshed out. Character customization is robust to the point of absurdity, encouraging players to experiment with their party members. Perhaps even better, Labyrinth of Touhou is not a game that punishes the player for committing to a choice. Allies can be completely reset at any time, further pushing the freeform nature of the game's character customization.

PROS

+ A massive roster of 50+ characters; 12 of which can be in your party with up to 4 allies on the frontline.
+ A unique take on the Action Time Bar/'ATB' system, keeping battles engaging.
+ With over 200+ hours of content, the game is exactly as long as you want it to be.
+ Being entirely self-contained, even non-Touhou fans can enjoy this game.
+ A wonderful soundtrack that is both Japanese-inspired and heavy on the variety.
+ Overhauled HD visuals, featuring some truly beautiful dungeon and UI layouts.
+ Very charming dialogue and a lovable cast of characters, making for an entertaining story.
+ An impossibly high amount of video game references. Everyone will at least catch a few!
+ There are an insane amount of ways to customize and build your characters.
+ Highly challenging, yet mostly fair boss fights that are very fun to figure out.
+ Extremely little level grinding is required to beat the main campaign. However...
+ For those who enjoy insane amounts of level grinding, the post-story content is nearly endless. One unique system has repeating content that stretches up to levels in the billions.
+ You get to support the incredible developer. :)

NEUTRAL

~ Dungeon layouts, while diverse and unique, are notably simpler than other dungeon RPGs.
~ The sheer amount of systems and mechanics at play can potentially overwhelm newcomers to the genre.
+ Despite these setbacks, LoT2 is the video game that got me hooked on dungeon crawlers. The memorable areas, incredible background music, and gameplay depth kept me consistently invested during all of my playthroughs.

CONS

- The second half of the game has some very tangible balancing issues. A number of areas feel either too easy, or far too difficult. This is especially true with some boss battles.
- Quite a few characters end up either very underpowered or overpowered relative to each other, although most of them are completely viable for playing through the game normally.
- Maintenance is a horribly broken skill that doubles stat boosts gained from equipment.
- Toward the final parts of the game's content, the player is expected to level grind too much for my liking.

CONCLUSION

Need I say more? This is only my second year following the Labyrinth of Touhou games, but if my intuition is right, those numbers are only going to keep on rising. It is not only my favorite Touhou fangame and doujin work, but my favorite video game series of all time. The incredible music, the silly character interactions, the atmospheric dungeons, the thrilling boss encounters - I could go on forever about this series. If you have even the slightest interest in JRPGs, dungeon crawlers, or Touhou Project, do yourself a favor and commence your journey into the Great Tree at once!

MISC. NOTES

An English fan translation is available for this game. However, the community is currently working things out since the Steam version has likely changed a number of parameters. While I am merely a passionate fan and not an actual member of the translation team, I do follow the community closely and ask that others be patient while the kinks are being worked out.

Developer's Website: https://n-e-studio.com/

Major Update/Edit - English support is finally here, so go nuts everyone! ^^

Remi
Remi

EDIT: As of 10/13, the game is translated to English, so go and play it!

+ Tenshi is playable
+ Great visual and audio design
+ Intricate combat system with a lot of potential character combinations (56 characters total, party size is 12 with 8 in the back and 4 active characters in the front)
+ Amusing dialogue and pandering between characters while still being true to the canon personalities
+ Characters are mostly balanced well enough that you can just use your favorite character(s) the entire game
+ Tenshi dual-wielding swords
+ Extremely high amount of farming possible, especially in the post game areas
+ An actually infinite post game area to farm in
+ Tenshi is playable

archmag
archmag

Many years ago I played Touhou Pocket Wars 2 game as the first Touhou game. I enjoyed it a lot even though I blindly played it without knowing the language. Since then every good Touhou game that makes it to Steam reminds me of that game and rekindles the hope that it will also eventually make it to Steam and will even have English translation.

This game is one of those. Apparently you have a lot of characters (I am currently at 10 but heard the limit is 60) and can take up to 12 for an exploration. Only 4 of them fight and after they get tired (run out of TP resource) you have to use others or return outside. There are many stats that can be leveled up using points that you get on level up (bonus points and skill points), cash or rare items. Skills have elemental affinities and enemies have elemental strengths/weaknesses. There are many achievements that popup in game which reward some items. There are also some things that I don't understand yet but I keep experimenting.

Developers are currently active on forum and communicate with customers.

Overall the game is very smooth and stable so no complaints from me about that.

I certainly recommend this game if you know Japanese or Chinese (there are talks about English fan translation becoming available later, but I have no idea how long it may take or even if it succeeds eventually, I do hope it does).

Yakumo Yukari
Yakumo Yukari

It has a reason to be able to exist this long and goes on sale in steam

Autism Bux
Autism Bux

One of the greatest and most mechanically deep/rewarding dungeon crawlers ever produced; bar none.

While the interface and navigation are relatively simplistic, the staggering level of content and customization present are no joke and a testament to the development team's passion. I've clocked 600 hours in the Windows version of the game across its updates and I still can't say I've "done it all", and with the game's impressive roster of characters (with a wide variety of sub-classes for everybody) there are always new synergies and strategies to try out.

Keeping this review brief for the moment, this is just a brilliant game and a testament to what can be accomplished when no time is wasted on trying to reach frivolous technological milestones in game development or cynically aping what "worked for everybody else" and instead maintaining a laser-focus on delivering what matters in their own style.

Congratulations to Nise-Eikoku-Shinshidan on their console and Steam releases. I wish them continued success.

natsume
natsume

extremely good game. played way more than the hours shown off of steam. english translation would be lovely!

YES FUCK YES ITS BEEN TRANSLATED, THIS IS THE BEST RPG EVER BUY THIS NOW

NekoNinjaWarrior
NekoNinjaWarrior

Seriously one of the greatest JRPG's I've played. It provides a true challenge that makes you think and plan out battles and make use of your arsenal against all odds.

The game is CHOCK full of content and could easily push you into the 1000 hour mark if the gameplay engages you enough to go through all the post-game content and further.

This version of the game includes the base game and plus Disk which is a huge expansion to the game.

I'll update this review as the English version continues to be developed!

Gesh86
Gesh86

As of yesterday, I can finally fully recommend the Steam version of Labyrinth of Touhou 2. Before then, the Comiket release of 2013 had been the definitive way to play for any westerner. But now that everything with turning the english fan-translation into the official one worked out, the new Steam version is perfectly viable.
Labyrinth of Touhou 2 has been known as one of the most relevant Touhou fangames for years. It is an extremely deep and challenging RPG with exciting dungeon-crawling and some of the best designed boss encounters I've ever seen. You have a huge character roster of 55 Touhou girls and 1 Touhou boy to recruit, so your top favourites are pretty certain to make an appearance.
Not only is the gameplay great, but this title also doesn't mistake being complex and involving with being unnecessarily archaic: Wiping in the dungeon loses you no progress, only your current money/experience/droprate multiplier. If you've made a mistake in a character's build or a situation simply forces you to reassign their skillpoints, you can do that with no penalty whatsoever.
Apart from that, Labyrinth of Touhou 2 looks good and sounds good. It even has a better, more serious story than its predecessor, especially during its expansion. While Labyrinth of Touhou 1's expansion actually joked around that there's no point for the Gensokyans to even be dungeoneering anymore, the story here actually peaks at around the 25th floor.
Lastly, not only is LoT 2 really fun, but it's fun for a very, very long time. To see absolutely everything, about 300 hours are required. That might sound like too much of a good thing, but it never grew stale for me.
Overall, it's a must-play for any Touhou and/or RPG fan.

Doc Sophie
Doc Sophie

Easily one of the best Touhou fangames and overall a *really* good dungeon crawler with an immense amount of content.

It also got an English translation recently, so the language barrier isn't a problem either!

Okayge
Okayge

A dream come true.
After 8 years we finally got english version on top of steam release.
Good dungeon crawler with lots of customization, puzzle, secret and stressful boss fight.

Take note that 1st part is more mechanic intense than 2nd part.
And 2nd part is about 'Grind it till you beat it'
Things will get absurd, 10M damage flying around the screen and boss oneshoting you will be a common sight.

Have fun grinding

namenotinuse
namenotinuse

This is a great combat-oriented dungeon crawler, with tons of customization and fun boss battles. It can be very punishing too, unless you're playing smart (which you should!). I played this game to death using the fan translation, so it's amazing to see it available on Steam in English now. Highly recommended.

Baneslave
Baneslave

This is a dungeon crawler for RPG fans who want tons of content and customization. I personally did not have the energy needed to continue this kind of huge RPG to the end, but that was mostly because I got exhausted at the front of massive mountain of content. Younger me would have gobbled this up.

ghool
ghool

WIll Update this as I play more, because this game is incredibly deep, and has an insane amount of content. I have no idea what Touhou is, nor do I still really. It's anime shrine maidens, and some not shrine maidens as well. Whatever. I don't really like SHMUPs, but i do LOVE DRPG's, specifically the etrian odyssey series. I've played so many other DRPGs, but none of them even come close to the complexity that comes with the team building and fun combat that etrian has, and instead usually rely on being half a visual novel to supplement the less then stellar gameplay mechanics, which is fine imo, but these games just aren't as good as EO.

There is where this game comes in. I saw some mention it was similar to EO and that it was finally officially released in english, so I just decided to pick it up, and refund it if I felt like it was too low budget, or I was confused/lost about the world and characters. I'm only about 14 hours in so far, and only on the fifth floor, but this game is insanely fun, and easily rivals EO in its complexity and team building. You don't need to understand the Touhou universe, as the story in this game is mostly non-existent and very self-aware. I (think) this is a fan game technically, but regardless, it's amazing. Instead of creating characters there are an insanely large roster of characters you recruit with their own class. You can further customizae these characters with subclasses, but I haven't really gotten into that yet, so I won't touch on it here. Even without touching on this aspect though, the customization is already incredibly deep. You travel with a party of 12 into the dungeon, and the synergies and strategies you can pull off with these characters is already so interesting this early in. Bosses are challenging and require the right units and equipment to beat, even this early on.

I'm not that far in, but this game is fantastic, if you're a fan of EO, you'll love this game. If you enjoy games with high levels of customization, big numbers (max level is 12,800 for instance), infinitesque replay value, etc. this will be something you like. Half this game is just sitting in menu's, tweaking your characters stats and equipment and skills, and I love every second of it. For the amount of content you get in this, it's also a great price point. Don't be scared off by the fact it's from a weird series you don't know about, or that it looks kind of low budget. This game is easily worth every penny and I'm so glad someone recommended it to me.

Abundy
Abundy

If you like turn-based combat and unit building you need to get this game.

Brightside
Brightside

Cute girls doing cute things while dungeon spelunking. A surprisingly mechanically rich game that rewards careful planning and a lot of experimentation. Story and narrative are practically non-existent, the conflict merely exists to push you up a 20 floor labyrinth which gets increasingly complex and challenging as you climb up.

The main draw of the game lies in the battle and encounter design. Battles consists of 4 characters fighting on the "front" row with 8 additional characters acting as reserves in the back. At any given point you are free to swap out any character in your front formation with a character in the reserves. The complexity in encounters comes from managing your little militia of 12 and carefully dancing your characters around as most seem to have the fortitude of a sturdy piece of cardboard.

The characters at your disposal is where the game shines. Each character has their own unique set of abilities/passives and the tool kits provided to your cast of 30+ waifu's is overwhelming. Damage sponges, buffers, ailments specialist, healers, glass cannons, evasion tanks, and a character that seemingly exists to die and blow up in the enemies face. The game merely throws a bunch of tools in your direction and its up to the player to figure out an effective way to use and synergize them together.

Character synergy and experimenting with different compositions is key as the game throws some horrifically difficult boss encounters in your direction.

If your a fan of the DRPG genre or looking for an RPG with a strong focus on mechanics definitely give this game a look.

ʷᵒʷ Ark ᶜᵒᵒˡ
ʷᵒʷ Ark ᶜᵒᵒˡ

Cute artwork, loot, grinding, huge numbers, references to obscure oldschool English and Japanese RPGs everywhere. Labyrinth of Touhou ftw.

The only things this game is missing are moddable music (the postgame/plus disc boss tracks get old fast) and a turn order list in the style of Final Fantasy X.

If you like obsessively wandering onto map tiles in fog of war, particle effects, and puzzling out the right party to deconstruct boss fights, I don't think there's a better game for scratching that itch on Steam.

alpha_5h311
alpha_5h311

Unfortunately as much as I want to like this game, it has some severe issues. Expect a ridiculous amount of grinding in order to have a decent chance against any of the bosses, and don't even think about attacking them at the "recommended" level-- you'll lose in the blink of an eye.

Don't bother getting attached to your favorite characters either, you will be forced to swap characters in and out or you'll regularly run into fights where you can't damage enemies due to lacking the right damage type. Even then, sometimes you will use an attack that shows "weak" against an enemy and do no damage for no apparent reason.

Oh, and there isn't near enough equipment to go around unless again, you grind like crazy. Since you can't change equipment mid-battle, every character must be equipped before you start the fight or they get ripped to shreds when you swap them in.

In short, if you like grinding, you might enjoy this game. I've ground my way to max level and stats in many a game though, and to me it actually seems a bit ridiculous-- almost Disgaea-like.

Blackhole Aberrant
Blackhole Aberrant

By far both one of the best dungeon crawlers and best Touhou fangames I've ever played, and I say that as a lover of the genre and a lover of Touhou. I don't think anything short of Touhou itself has made such strong use of the series' ensemble cast to date; by offering the player a massive playable character list (numbering at 56 total), each with a narrow-yet-functional kit representing their own specialised niche, Labyrinth of Touhou has succeeded where many games have failed.

While I wouldn't hesitate to call it an Etrian-Odyssey-Like, an inspiration which it clearly wears on its sleeve, the matter of the cast and its own mechanical quirks definitely make it its own beast; for one, the 12 character party and the intricacies behind formation absolutely define it, and you'll have a much easier time with bosses if you learn to frequently use the Formation command. It has a few issues with RNG, and some bosses have a bit too much defense for their own good, but I can't overstate my fondness for the design behind it even still.

iviachupichu
iviachupichu

This game has a lot to sink your teeth into. As with any dungeon crawler, you'll be diving as deep into the dungeon as possible before leaving (or dying), improving your team, and going back in for more. The game boasts a huge cast of characters with meaningfully different stats and skills. These characters can be further customized with equipment and subclasses (which also have their own skills). Your team consists of a whopping 12 characters, 4 in the frontline and 8 in reserve, and you'll be frantically swapping between them to adjust to the situation. The game balance isn't perfect, but there's a ton of flexibility in team building—especially since weaker characters and odd builds can still be effective with enough grinding. You can reset characters freely so there's plenty of room for experimentation. This game is a must-try for dungeon crawler fans, and familiarity with Touhou is entirely optional.

-----

For those who want more details about the game system...

Skills
Every character has unique passive and active skills along with standard stat and EXP boosting passives. Active skills come in a solid spread of attacks, buffs, debuffs, and heals. Reimu, one of the default team members, is a well-rounded character with two hybrid attacks, a team heal, and a team defense buff. She also has four passive skills. "Main Character: Reimu" increases all her stats whenever a party member dies, even if Reimu is in the backline. Grand Incantation doubles the effect of her next attack or heal after she uses Concentrate (MP recovery action). Hakurei's Divine Protection gives a chance to restore MP to your frontline after every battle. Final Prayer gives a massive heal on your frontline when Reimu dies. Depending on how you build her, Reimu can function as a powerful support character or a gimmicky attacker. This isn't stated in-game, but skills only gain around 5% damage per level so they aren't worth investing in early unless they have buffs/debuffs attached, as those effects do generally scale with level.

Classes
On top of this, you also have character-specific awakening skills and a ton of subclasses (over 20) to customize everyone with even more passive and active skills. For example, the Healer subclass gives you a heal and an ailment cleansing skill. It also has passives that strengthen heals, give a chance to clear ailments when healing, heal when cleansing ailments, and heal your frontline each turn. This subclass can be used to augment existing healers or turn any character into an off-healer.

Leveling
Characters gain 1 stat point and 1 skill point along with an overall stat increase with each level (there's no level cap afaik). Newly recruited characters receive your accumulated EXP, so you don't have to grind every new character back up to your current level. Characters do not level up automatically and must be leveled up in town with their acquired EXP. You can also level characters down to meet "Challenge Levels" for bosses to acquire additional permanent stat boost items, or simply for the personal challenge. There are shortcuts for adjusting the levels of your entire team at once so the process itself is fairly snappy. Stat and skill point distribution can be reset for free at any time. Finally, you can spend an increasing amount of gold for permanent stat bonuses on each character. These bonuses can be reset and refunded with a rare item.

Combat
The game uses an ATB (Active Time Battle) combat system where units get their turn when their action bar fills up. The speed at which this bar fills up is determined by the unit's Speed stat. Different actions/skills have different delays after use, and status effects like Shock or Paralyze can also affect the bar. On your turn, you can Attack, Spellcard, Formation Change, Concentrate, or Escape. Attack and Escape are self-explanatory. Spellcard allows you to use skills. Formation Change allows you to swap any two characters (frontline or backline) at the cost of the active character's turn. Concentrate recovers MP. Units in the backline are safe from enemy attacks and regenerate HP/MP, so you'll be swapping characters often. There's also a basic aggro system where your left-most character generally has the highest chance of being targeted, with aggro decreasing as you move right (i.e. tanks on the left, squishies on the right).

Damage Formula
Every character has different stat scaling and damage formulas, so there's a solid amount of strategy in trying to efficiently break through enemy defenses and elemental resistances even in normal encounters. Do beware that, on top of having different ATK/MAG (Physical Attack/Magic Attack) factors, every skill also has different DEF/MND (Physical Defense/Magic Resist) factors which determine how well the skill pierces defenses. Even the most basic damage skills have different use cases. For example, Marisa is a typical caster whose Mystic element attacks scale off MAG and are reduced by enemy MND. Meanwhile, Reimu has Spirit element hybrid damage skills which scale off both her ATK and MAG stat. Her first skill is single-target and reduced by enemy DEF while her second skill is all-target and reduced by enemy MND. You also have characters like Rumia with an all-target skill that has a low MAG multiplier but ignores DEF and MND entirely. The game lets you preview you how attacks interact with enemy elemental resistances before casting, and there's an in-game bestiary with more detailed enemy information.

Dungeon Crawling
Every character has a TP stat that determines how long they can stay in the dungeon. After combat, every character in the frontline loses 1-5 TP depending on their remaining HP (tripled when using Escape) or 10 TP if they die. Characters with 0 TP are removed from your party until you return to town, so you'll constantly have to manage your TP by adjusting your formation. You fully heal after each battle, so this game is about managing your TP and MP instead of the usual HP and MP. You can also use the Rest option out of combat to restore 2 MP per TP. This system can be pretty restrictive, especially early on when you lack characters to swap around, but it does encourage you to utilize all 12 party members, for better or for worse.

Conclusion
The game has a lot of systems to keep track of but it does mostly explain them as they're introduced. There is a lack of details for things like skill effects and character stat growths so you'll have to refer to the wiki for these. There's a lot of strategy involved when building your team for different encounters. Barring that, you can still grind / trial and error your way through things but it may test your patience.

Zondac
Zondac

As I am having a bit of a rekindling with the Touhou franchise lately, this really hit the spot. Fantastic RPG mechanics, simple stats, lots of ways to interact with the systems however you please, it's impossible to imagine many playthroughs being particularly similar because of how dynamic it is. If you like RPGs like Wizardry or EO/PQ, this will appeal to you. The artwork in this game is also reaaaally pretty, the characters are rendered beautifully. Hopefully they'll release LoT1 too, preferrably with a portrait overhaul, because I really enjoyed that game way back in the day too!

Archvile 240
Archvile 240

start battle against boss immediately murders one of my starting line proceeds to kill them all 10/10 would play again

Hambulance
Hambulance

Dungeon Crawling ✅
Touhou ✅
F.O.E.s ✅
Death ✅

Kresnik
Kresnik

Fun dungeon crawling and great art

Nemui
Nemui

First a call of gratitude for the Devs for bringing this game in English in less than 2 months from the petitions.

A must for any fans of Touhou, A must for any kind of weeb. A very recommended one for a great dungeon crawler with a little bit different system.

MOOMANiBE
MOOMANiBE

Do you like Etrian Odyssey? Do you like Touhou? Do you like not being punished for dying? Play this. It's a great, chill time.

bogs binny pls
bogs binny pls

Ignore my pathetic amount of playtime - I've finished this game before it came to Steam and it was one of the biggest pleasant surprises I've ever experienced in gaming.

Don’t let its appearance deceive you – the game looks like some trash RPGMaker hentai game made on a $10 budget but it’s actually one of the most complex and challenging RPGs you’ll ever see and it’s very fun especially if you enjoy dying a lot.

LoT is a turn-based dungeon crawler heavily inspired by the Etrian Odyssey games, but with a twist. Unlike most dungeon crawlers where you make your own party and stick with it for the entire game, in LoT you get a lot of preset characters with unique abilities and combat roles that you unlock as you progress, and you’re expected to constantly switch around your team comps to overcome the game’s challenges.

You can bring up to 12 characters with you on a run and with over 50 characters to choose from that can be customized through skill trees, gear and subclasses the number of different party builds is staggering.

The game also constantly throws boss fights at you and you really need to get good at the party building aspect to beat them. The bosses range from simple DPS checks to tough hour long fights that go through several phases with multiple mechanics that require a level of preparation and strategy above and beyond anything you’ll see in other RPGs. Just getting the right elemental resistances and stacking stat buffs up the ass is not a guarantee of victory, but rather the bare minimum you’re expected to do to survive past turn 3.

The complexity of some of the fights and the fact that you control 12 characters makes this game feel like you’re in an MMO raid but, it’s turn based and single player so you’re the one making all the decisions.

The game also manages to be challenging without wasting your time – you lose nothing for dying, so you always progress further no matter what you do, your inactive characters receive EXP at the same rate as your exploration party, so you won’t need to grind their levels to catch them up, the random encounters are capable of killing you in one turn, but with the right tools – so are you, so trash mob combat can be over with so quickly you barely have time to look at the battle screen.

Some negatives:
-Very indie visuals and low production values
-Lackluster GUI that hides a lot of information from you (I recommend using a wiki to look up stuff like the math behind different spells)
-Slow start until you get enough different characters
-Dungeon exploration outside of combat is not very interesting
-Story and writing, even if it manages to be funny sometimes, is mostly inconsequential filler

With that being said, if you enjoy RPGs with interesting and challenging combat and lots of min-maxing potential, if you care more about killing and looting than story and lore and if you like (or at least, tolerate) anime art, I highly recommend this game.

On god frfr
On god frfr

Probably one of the best JRPG / DRPGs I've played, the depth of content is incredible and the game is challenging.

+ Boss fights are very challenging (especially if you try to stay at the challenge level) and you actually have to plan out a team to counter some of the bosses. You can kind of grind to out level / overpower bosses but you'll typically still have to plan a team to counter a boss. You'll wipe on some of the bosses multiple times, but you'll learn the boss' skillset and counters and re-arrange / re-kit your team accordingly.

+ I like the idea of having a large party and making use of swapping characters in / out of the main 4 as well, it adds a lot of depth to how you handle battles and the dungeon crawling in general.

+ Large variety of items, skills, and subclassing, lets you build characters in multiple ways.

+ Good skill variety on characters, each has their advantages and disadvantages depending on the scenario. Most characters fill a specific niche (or multiple depending on how you build them).

+ Dungeons are designed well, there's some puzzles too although they typically aren't too hard.

+ Character art is good, my only complaint is that there's only 1 portrait for each character.

Cons:

- Mobs feel so easy compared to bosses. You can one shot an entire enemy party of mobs with a well built character but do 0 damage to a boss / foe on the same floor. There are random encounters with stronger enemies, but they're still usually not a threat and nowhere near as powerful as foes / bosses. I wish that there were random encounters with mini-boss-esque enemies it'd make the crawling / grinding more interesting.
** Note this becomes less relevant at higher floors as mobs can actually get kind of scary and make you plan your lineup accordingly, but applies for pretty much everything prior to ~floor 16.

- The game can feel kind of grindy at times if you're wanting to improve the stats of / get gear for your lesser used characters. This isn't a big negative though as I usually don't mind having to grind some and the game has ways to speed up the grinding process.

Jasonhollis289
Jasonhollis289

where do i start on this game's review? heck if i know but i'll try to leave it readable

the fun i have had in this game exceeds that of over 99% of rpg games i have ever played the combat is excellent its kinda like active time battle but each time you or the enemy gets their turn the atb bars stop increasing until everyone who has their atb bar around 10000 or so had their turn then atb bars resume increasing up to 10000 then those characters or enemies have thier turn rinse and repeat

the difficulty with the bosses is legendarily hard even by dark souls standards you will die a lot of times and when i say a lot I MEAN YOU WILL DIE A HEAP OF TIMES (assuming if you dont over power yourself because lets face it overpowered characters negating the challenge is less fun then stepping on the edges of lego pieces barefoot) joke aside the some of the bosses will take every single bit of knowledge you have from this game and any other similar role playing games to even have a slight chance take it from me i have been party wiped so fast i didn't even have time to say darn i got shredded and owned lol (i party wiped so many times though not once have a rage quit because of the boss's difficulty it happens because i made the blooming mistakes that made the party wipe happen oh for those fans of a certain super hard rpg game im not going to say who it is but all you need know is a certain npc appears from that series somewhere in this game when i saw them i was like nooo..... can it you are you really them? no blooming way its them (yes it was them i can tell because i played a good bit of that game series myself

i have put in over 250 hours and despite some angry and annoyed moments i will not count them against this game in anyway oh as for the party members prepare yourselves for some of the cutest most excellent and most beautiful characters you will see in any game ever (at least in my opinion) there is a heap to do and even i havent gone through 90% of it yet though there's a funny story to that i accidentally save over my save that had the most progress i was annoyed but ultimately i shrugged my shoulders and said i aint even mad and started all over again and my second run through? it is just as fun as the first time i have ever played it less then 5 games i have played (assuming my memory is correct) have made me play for more then 200 hours before going off to play something different for a bit but my desire to come back to this game hit me like a freight train again and again

this game is without a doubt far far far many times better then recent "triple diarrhoea video games" that have come out lately this game just hits them out of the ballpark and out of this solar system to never be seen again to the creators of this you have my utmost gratitude for this triple a slaying apocalypse of a game (that was a compliment saying this is so superior to the "triple aaa games" that i would not get them at all but instead buy copies of this to give to people for free)

because frankly you (the devs of lot2) deserve so much praise and funds to make your next game i eagerly await for that to arrive (i of course am referring to the sequel of this game) that i wouldve paid a incredible 120$ just to play it for the first time (like as if i hadn't heard or seen this game before) developers you have earned my money well because in my opinion you deserve the price of admission into this super fun fest corporation annihilating true example of a video game thanks for the memories so far and cheers here's to a great future for you and your fellow game developers that worked on this may you rise to make ea look like fools because of their greed and as for the team that made this? may you rise to the highest of gaming companies that are the champions of what true video games companies should be

(TLDR) i tell you to save up if you haven't got enough for this game and when or if you already do i demand you to buy this game right now .....what are you still reading?? i said buy this game now!!

JUST DO IT!!

just a joke but seriously if you like dungeon crawlers then this is a absolute must have imo

the final rating for this is a 7 out of 5 or (14 out of ten) that means this game is a PINNACLE OF LEGENDARY MASTERPIECES among all the games ive ever played this is easily in my top 2......scratch that it is with no doubt in my top 5
video games i have ever played if you enjoy super difficult bosses as much as i do then you will enjoy this game

now if you will excuse me i'll get back to getting my party wiped out and me being so happy with a huge smile on my face that i enjoyed all the party wipes

i'll see you in my next review (whenever that'll be) bye for now and ......JUST BUY THIS GAME ALREADY XD lol serious now bye and hopefully you got some enjoyment out of this review

knil_link
knil_link

Yea great game, granted I did fine a game breaking bug and had to start over, missing item from boss on level 14. never got the item so I had to restart game since didn't have a 2nd save. didn't find out it was missing later.

Pain-peko
Pain-peko

Wowee I sure can't wait to finally play the LOT2 Plus Disk with an English translation, sure hope no nerf hammers hit Byakuren

Byakuren:
All Sutra skills: 14% -> 12%
Skanda's Legs: SPD buff (11+SLv)% -> (14+SLv*2)% / No longer states the buff gets higher if she kills an enemy
Sutra - Duplicating Chant: Overwrites target's de/buffs with Byakuren's -> Applies a buff equal to (36+SLv*4)% of Byakuren's buffs

tl;dr - This game is a massive hit and would highly recommend it if you're a sucker for grindy DRPGs or the Etrian Odyssey franchise. Major props to the devs and the folks over at MotK for making this English patch possible on a major gaming store platform.

*Battles are not traditionally turn-based but use a pseudo-Active Time Battle (ATB) system
*Almost every single equipment piece is a pop culture reference of some sort
*Balls-up-the-wall difficulty
*Teambuilding is a vital and, surprisingly, fun concept to play around with

-Game is incredibly grind-heavy (which can be a major turnoff for some)
-No way (that I know of) to transfer save data from previous LOT2 to Steam version (which I honestly don't mind since it's been ages since I played this again)
-MANnosuke died so Labyrinth of Touhou 2 (+Plus Disk) could have an English translation on Steam

P.S. - For the LOT1 bros, the boi ***WINNER*** is back baybeeee

hnibel
hnibel

Great game even if you know nothing about Touhou. Combat is hard but fair. You are free to customize the characters as you wish.
The official translation uses a font that is kinda hard to read imo.

Ikkoru
Ikkoru

If you like the genre it's probably good enough to get into even if you're not familiar with Touhou.
Do go check the wiki though.

Kamov
Kamov

This game finally available on steam and with it, it brings us very lovely OST and quality gameplay. There's also an English translation available!

Chompy
Chompy

One of the most fun JRPG I have played in years! It has an enormous amount of content (over 200 hours!) and it's fun and exciting from start to finish. I'd give it a 9.5/10!

You have a continuously expanding roster of very unique characters that you build a 12 character party with, and a massive amount of customization available for each of them, this makes the team building and strategy development really fun, the difficulty is spot on, you will have to figure out a specific strategy for every single boss, which makes beating them feel very rewarding.

You are constantly getting new features and new characters along the way, so it never feels stale.

Only cons I could list is that a few maps feel a bit tedious to traverse, and the "Infinity Corridor", which is the game's infinite dungeon you unlock late into the post game, gets stale after a couple hundred floors, and it's annoying that you can't save while inside it.

Otherwise it's a stellar JRPG, can't wait for the sequel!

Leeroyzen
Leeroyzen

One of the very best dungeon crawler out there, even if you're a newbie.

This game has a rather robust guide out there in Touhouwiki, so don't be afraid if you feel lost

The story isn't exactly groundbreaking, but the character interaction is interesting enough to keep me play

Looooots of characters to pick

Mace
Mace

This is tough because I like Touhou and I love dungeon crawlers. There's a lot to like; great art, lots of dialog, and a ton of characters. However, the age of the game shows with some of it's inaccessibility. Stats are not explained, mini map is pointless (markers don't actually tell you what they are), no quest journal, leveling up is manual, can't see enemy weaknesses, and a host of other unexplained things like auto setting the encounter rate to 200% (don't press Y accidentally, you can't revert it).

Battles are played out traditional DC like. Turns seem to be based off of speed. After battles you get full HP back, but not MP (you can concentrate during battle to gain MP back). The exploration portion is 3D isometric and the maps are quite large. They don't appear random and you can exit anytime you wish, just select leave dungeon. This is not for a hardcore purist, but more fan friendly.

I do think there can be some fun here for non fanatics, but only at a deep discount. 30-50% is probably a good buy.

Sc4rlet ra1n
Sc4rlet ra1n

I remember the first time I played this game's predecessor when it first came out. Instantly fell in love with it. Same with this one. It's one of those games that is too well-made considering that it was made by a few people. Then, I replayed it when it was first translated. And now it's on Steam too. Of course I had to play it once again!
-Amazing and fluid gameplay
-LoTs and LoTs of floors to explore
-LoTs of characters to recruit, with some of them having a very unique playstyle
-Stellar soundtrack
What's not to like?

Scherezad
Scherezad

Probably my favorite JRPG ever. Previous to the Steam release, I'd already played over 400 hours among two other files.
Mechanically deep, with a surprising amount of versatility.
Status effects are actually _useful_, and can make many boss fights much easier (or utterly trivial, in the case of some Death vulnerabilities)
It's also pretty replayable to a point, as there is a _very_ large cast of potentially-playable characters.

As far as likening to other games-- I would describe this as FF9 + SMT + Etrian Odyssey + Pokemon... which doesn't do the uniqueness of the gameplay justice.

Just... very good game. Bonus points if you happen to be a Touhou fan. Just note that the game is _hard._

AlnU
AlnU

As a somewhat casual fan of both Touhou and JRPGs, I would say that this game is excellent in both aspects. I have only played the game a little bit, but I like the game a lot.

As far as JRPGs go, Labyrinth of Touhou prevents itself from getting stale by offering a variety of ways to build your team, all the while creating bosses with challenging gimmicks and resistances that encourages players to try new strategies. It also has an optional hard mode that puts a maximum level cap for party members in order to discourage grinding excessively to trivialize fights.

Part of what makes this game awesome is the fact that it doesnt punish you for experimenting with how you build your characters. You dont need to worry about wasting skill points on a specific skills that might seem helpful for a boss your struggling on, because if it proves to be a bad choice, a characters skill points can be refunded free of charge.

The game has a lot of characters to choose from, and each have different passive and active skills that make them feel very different from each other.

In terms of Touhou stuff, The game features characters from Touhou 6 to Touhou 13.5 (Yes, I looked up a list of playable characters before I bought the game), along with some characters that originate from Touhou's printed works. I haven't played all of the Touhou games, so I cannpt say how lore accurate their personalities are, but I can say that nothing feels blatantly out of character. The only thing that bothers me is that Marisa's dress isn't her Iconic look from most of the games, but rather a dress that she apparently wears in Curiosity of Lotus Asia (one of the printed works). Its a super minor thing, but it kinda threw me off.

Overall, 9/10. It would be 10/10 if it weren't for the fact that the game doesn't do a good job explaining how the stats work. Its not too hard to figure out or look up, since there is a lot of information on the wiki, but I would prefer if this information was more readily available in the game itself.

Sei
Sei

Labyrinth of Touhou 2 is a dungeon crawler in the same vein as Etrian Odyssey and Labyrinth of Refrain, with one of the most well executed battle systems I've ever seen. If you have any fondness for turn-based combat then it's almost guaranteed you'll enjoy this game, even if you're not into the Touhou series at all.

Great
+ 56 playable characters with a max party size of 12 means nigh-infinite combinations to suit any playstyle
+ Every character has at least 1 or 2 unique niches so everyone is viable throughout the entire game
+ Character stat allocations and skills are very easy to revert so there are no roadblocks to experimenting
+ Utility, tanking, status, buffs and debuffs matter even against bosses , it never devolves into mindless offense spam like so many JRPGs do
+ ATB meters and buffs for both allies and enemies are visible so you always have info to adapt your game plan mid-battle
+ Attack animations are super quick so even repeated encounters go by super fast
+ Random encounter % rate is visible and scales with the number of steps taken since the last battle or floor change and has the option to force an encounter at any time
+ Every few floors has a different gimmick like switch puzzles or darkness to keep exploration fresh

Could be better
- The endgame grind can get tedious with how high the superboss levels get
- No item sorting system so finding the right equipment can be a bit time consuming

10/10
Worth more than full price for any JRPG/turn-based combat fan

C h e n G a m i n g E s p o r t s T e a m

⑨ DAsh ツ
⑨ DAsh ツ

where 120fps like in the non steam version (so i can play the game double the speed)

but loving the game so far

BloodCri
BloodCri

It was fantastic when it came out and its still fantastic now that its on steam. The quality of life changes such as showing if an attack is strong or weak against an enemy is great and helps reduce the blind trial and error if you're not using the wiki to get help with the bosses. (you should be using the wiki though to reference characters and formulate new strategies at least though.) But there's nothing more refreshing than going into a bossfight after having put together a team and strat to deal with it and then seeing it work flawlessly. Especially with some of the harder bosses.

Technical wise, it also runs better than the non steam version. I haven't had any problems with slowdown. Also, the English translated text is actually properly centered now! Which it wasn't in the non-steam original. These really raise the quality of the overall experience.

My only gripe is the same then as it is now. The heat/temperature maze SUCKS. It's a relatively small part of the game when you take it as a whole but it's just extremely unpleasant and getting through it takes forever. It would have nice to have at least seen a quality of life change where the temperature changes are listed on the switches either on the map when you pull it up or hovering over the switch in the game world. Running out of TP is a real risk if you're going through the maze blind thereby forcing you to memorize a route and series of switches if you get booted from it. Fortunately a walkthrough of the maze exists. Just use that. It's intimidating but it will get you all the key items and let you get back to the fun exploration aspect.

Shang.EXE
Shang.EXE

If you like both Etrian Odyssey and Touhou, quit reading and just buy.

80 hours to reach the end of the base game's story, 128 to reach end of Plus Disk's story, and then there's the Plus Disk postgame that's technically endless but will probably take forever to finish.

This is one of my favorite Touhou fangames I've ever played. Create a giant team of twelve from dozens of characters (up to Hopeless Masquerade) and go run off into the labyrinth beating up everything in sight. It's an endless repetition of beat up enemies for money / drops -> enhance / level characters and craft equipment -> repeat. While there is quite a large number of normal floors to explore, there's also a randomly generated endless dungeon that's somewhat repetitive.

The game is primarily focused on its combat system. There are a colossal number of ways to build every single character and team composition in the game, so no two playthroughs will likely be the same. Difficulty is rather high in base game (barely any bosses were ever beaten first try), becomes easier initially in Plus Disk, then ramps back up. Surprisingly, I only felt the difficulty unfair during exactly one boss fight so far, so even if you lose it feels more due to player error and not cheapness.

Aesthetically, the music is fine despite not being Touhou; some of the tunes are rather catchy. Character artwork is great; some enemies look a bit out of place due to clashing artstyles. The story is hilarious and in-character. They managed to make a talking sword my favorite character in this game, so props to the writers. There are a few spelling errors, but likely only one per every few hours. Oh, every single piece of equipment is a reference to some other game, so that's a fun meta challenge on the side to figure out.

The largest issue with the game is definitely information regarding mechanics. I had to consult the English wiki fairly often to understand how damage multipliers worked, turn ticks, counters, and et cetera. Even figuring out that one of your buttons immediately starts a random encounter took a bit.

9/10 game, nothing but Utsuho spamming Giga Flare for 120 hours straight

LaByRinTH of TouHou
LaByRinTH of TouHou

Wanna know a tip?
Just use aya as support

Conpak
Conpak

This game has a lot of similarities to the Etrian Odyssey series, but there are a lot of things that make it unique. I'll just list things I like and things I don't like about this game:

Like:
- It has Touhou characters and the portrait artwork is wonderful.
- Difficulty is just right (playing Normal), not piss easy but also not frustratingly difficult.
- Gameplay is very fun and rewarding.
- Re-speccing is very easy in case you screw up building a character. It also doesn't cost anything so the game encourages you to experiment with different setups and strategies.
- Sanae, Youmu, Aya, and Reisen, in that order

Dislike:
- I wish the map had more icons and landmarks. You'll start wanting to rip your hair out when you get to a floor with teleport tiles and you forgot which tile went to what tile. FOEs are unmarked on the map even if you've charted the entire floor. Being able to view maps of other floors aside from the one you're currently in would also help, especially for floors with pits.
- Quest givers or event tiles sometimes don't even tell you what they want or what you need to do to trigger the event.
- Character skills could use a little variety. On average most characters have 3 to 4 active skills only (before subclassing) and everything else are passives. I feel like most of the characters are out to do one thing only and nothing else.
- The music is a okay. It's not bad, but I think I would've preferred Touhou arranges for BGM instead. Touhou Puppet Dance Performance executed this wonderfully.

That aside this is an amazing game well worth the price, I think I'm about to fight the final main story boss at 55 hours, but it's obvious with the achievement descriptions that there is still a lot of things to explore in the postgame content.

Walkin
Walkin

As has been said in countless other reviews, if you like Etrian Odyssey even a bit, you should buy this.
This game has the best and most fun turn-based combat mechanics I've ever seen in a JRPG/dungeon crawler. It uses an ATB system combined with swapping party members in/out to adapt to the situation at hand. You have 4 "active" members that can perform actions/take hits/receive buffs with 8 members in reserve for a total party size of 12 members. If all active members die you lose the fight.
Each character has a limited set of moves and passives that often leave a few gaps in their gameplan. In this sense, your party of 12 becomes a wildly versatile toolbox that you can adapt on the fly. And as the game gives you more characters to choose from, you get more freedom in how you design this toolbox of yours to tackle the challenge at hand. (Once you've beaten the game you can play through the game with all party members unlocked, which adds a lot of replay value)
Most of the fun comes from constructing your 12-girl (or 11-girl and 1-man)-party, and seeing if the party can execute the plan you had in mind.

This is without even taking into account the amount of customization you can do on each character's stats, levels and equipment as well as the subclass system which can slightly expand each character's options.

The main draw here are specifically the boss and FOE fights which require increasing amounts of strategy and party optimization. Almost every boss fight (assuming you fight them at/below the recommended level) is like a small puzzle and they're incredibly fun.
Random encounters mostly come down to outspeeding monsters and hitting them with AoE moves they're weak to. Luckily animations and transitions are fast, and you can even force encounters to make grinding a breeze.

The story is nothing to write home about, but the dialogue is very entertaining (and very meta at times). Prior experience with the Touhou universe is not required but does make some jokes/relationships easier to understand.
Good character art, good music.
The actual act of exploring the dungeon is very basic, but it's fast and on occasion has some interesting switch and teleport puzzles.

My only two critiques are some of the postgame content being horribly imbalanced and/or grindy if you're going for 100%.
And the other critique being that it's borderline impossible to unlock all characters/bosses without the help of an external guide. Some of the unlock requirements are not made clear to the player at all, so you either fulfill the requirements by dumb luck or by using a guide. Luckily the Touhou Wiki has a fantastic page with all the info you could possibly need and I highly recommend you use it.

Darth Fader
Darth Fader

Finally paid for my first Touhou product. Played the first game way back and this one also for some floors, time to go back this time to the end.

Game is great and not super punishing, although will take a bit of puzzle solving and time investment, which is great too ofc.

Denzi
Denzi

Boss stuns my frontline and then oneshots them, another boss heals 1/5 of their hp every turn
Despite this, I love this game, the stages are awesome, the temperature, switches and shortcuts are really good mechanics. Some bosses are hard, but you can solve that by using weird strategies (e.g. instakill bosses)
Also playable Rinnosuke 10/10

Zosimos
Zosimos

The deep end of rpgs. The mechanics in this game are really interesting and enjoyable to explore. Characters are fairly easy to swap out level as well, so don't feel obligated to stick to a small cast as there are somewhere around 50. The party size is also atypically big allowing you to bring 12 characters and have 4 on the front at a time. The main issue I have with this game is that the enemy AI is a little overly simple and can sometimes make very unfair or unpredictable moves which makes the game seem incredibly unfair at times. Thankfully dying isn't generally very punishing so it's not actually that big of an issue, but just keep in mind that bad luck can really fuck you over and it's usually worth trying boss fights over again at least once.

Lumina
Lumina

I've played through this four times now, both on Steam and off-Steam, and I love starting fresh each time. This game really is something else.

First: You don't need to know anything about Touhou going in. This was the first Touhou-related game I played many years ago and my introduction into the series. While the world of Touhou is fascinating and has an incredible fan-base, you don't need to know anything to play. You can glean the personality of the characters well enough from the game, and the story is independent of the franchise as it's a fan-game. You lose out on references and history between characters- that's about it.

If you like complex teambuilding, subclassing, deep skill growth and planning, finding better and better items, and tense but fast-paced turn-based fights that you sometimes just succeed by the skin of your teeth, this is the DRPG for you. And if you want to turn off your brain and chill, that's viable too - there are next to no penalties for losing other than wounded pride.

The main game's Hard Mode is the best way to play the game, and it rewards knowledge of mechanics and learning boss patterns, strengths and weaknesses, then bringing the right party of 12 to answer. There are oftentimes multiple answers to a single boss, and fights that may be incredibly difficult with one approach/team can feel so much more manageable by changing even one character or more. Ailments, buffs, debuffs, and bringing the right element/damage-type/passive can massively change the flow of a difficult fight.

I would say nearly all of the cast are fully viable as well (which is impressive, as there are 48 characters in the main game, and 8 more in the post-game), though some do have a slight edge over others right at the start, or in the long run. This balance gets a little shot by the end-game, but you can brute force your favourite characters or playstyle into viability if you want to by grinding at that point, so it's not really a problem.

Level design is deceptively clever for a DRPG, with lots of puzzles and cheeky map paths that pokes fun at you for running straight towards a treasure. Personally I enjoyed it, but it may be frustrating to some. There's also lots of references to other video games in the items' descriptions, many of which are obscure, which I felt really gets the developer's love for games across.

Visuals are solid for a DRPG and feels incredibly polished. Audio selection is impressive, sounds and effects are on-point, and the Spellcard effects can be very pretty at times.

One downside is that many of the in-depth mechanics, such as spell damage formulas, ailment chance/strength, and action delays are not directly stated in the game itself - but there is a wiki that others have kindly filled if you want to get into the numbers of the game. My only other qualm with the game is that by end-game, your limited resources essentially force you into playing with a much smaller team; rather than making full use of all 12 slots, it makes much more sense to focus on 4-6 main members while eschewing the other slots.

Estimated playtime for your first main-game playthrough is between 40 to 60 hours. Post-game (Plus Disk) doubles that amount. There is a psuedo-roguelike endgame content which is procedurally-generated, so you can spend even more time on the game as you wish.

Honestly, if you like JRPGs at all for their gameplay aspects, buy this, even at full price (I certainly did - it's that good). The third in the series is currently in the works, and I would most certainly like to see that one on Steam too. :>

【パンツ】Pantsu
【パンツ】Pantsu

Even in my Touhou games, F O E!

bonjour, gentlemen
bonjour, gentlemen

The best jrpg-style game I've ever played, gameplay-wise. The battle systems, team building and boss encounters are what any RPG aspires to but could never hope to reach. The rest of the package doesn't reach the same heights, but how much more could one expect of some dubious trademark law skirting nerd in his basement?

Your party consists of 12 characters and given the wombo combo of healing being rare and MP pools being meant to deplete really quickly while being extremely costly(unless you are Kogasa :^) to replenish enough to keep up with performing every turn, you're meant to switch in and out constantly and maintain a good flow of characters restoring health/mp in the back while others maintain damage/debuffs/ailments on the boss. The actual battle system is an "ATB gauge" one so the speed stat isn't just initiative, it actually dictates how fast allies and enemies take turns; with different attacks taking differing chunks off it depending on their strength or effects and others boasting low delays but relatively low power. Again, handling delays and gauging if you need to switch your frail attackers out to protect them from the boss' nukes adds way more strategic value than your average "just use your strongest attack and stack buffs while spammign items bro lmao"
There's no active items to healspam through encounters; buffs and debuffs apply to bosses as well as normal enemies, and status ailments are not just useful, but pivotal to making boss fights manageable. The bosses have access to the full arsenal of the Yggdrasil tree and they WILL use it wipe the miserable thing you call your life off the face of Gensokyo unless you also use the same tools against them (some bosses are even vulnerable to the instant death ailment *wink wink*)
While characters are for the most part set, you can steer them towards your desired role pretty easily, and a full reset/respec is just a button or two away, other QOL includes deleveling characters to match boss challenge levels (and cirno allahu akbar them).""""RPG"""" developers better take notice, this is how you make a game fun.

Other aspects are mostly there to pad the boss rush. The game is an Etrian Odyssey style Central Hub Huge Dungeon with multiple floors exploration type RPG. The maps themselves are boring before the postgame and the exploration has nothing of the magic and excitement games like EO have. Story is meme-tier and the graphics are nothing to write home about. Music is kinda good; especially for not being 2hu remixes. The enemy design stands out as being particularly decent to me, even though it's all over the place.

Play this for the actual turn-based RPG elements, and you won't regret it, don't even need to know what a Hackarray Reymoo is to enjoy it either.

PS: The true final boss is understanding all the item description references, some of which absurdly obscure.

🐻 Kuma Bear 🐻
🐻 Kuma Bear 🐻

I've never played a Touhou game before and I knew nothing about the characters. There were some inside jokes and references that I didn't understand, but I still thought the characters were enjoyable and the writing was actually pretty funny in a lot of places. So if you like dungeon crawlers but aren't familiar with this series, don't let that stop you from picking this one up.

You can do a lot of customization to your party to match the situation. Each character can be customized a decent bit, but you'll also need to swap between the dozens of party members that join to find the right character setup to get through different challenges. Unfortunately, this lead to me burning out on the game long before I finished it, because the game puts a lot of challenging boss fights in front of you, and having to go back to town to customize a party to fight a specific boss repeatedly got old for me.

There's no penalty for dying, you just go back to town with any items and experience you collected, so that makes the game less stressful than something like Etrian Odyssey. I wouldn't say this makes the game any easier though, since after you get past the beginning areas most bosses will probably crush you the first time you fight them, and customizing your party will make much more difference than just grinding out extra levels (plus the game rewards you for not over-leveling). So your tolerance for reorganizing and reequipping your party will ultimately determine how much you like the game I think. The combat is very good, you're constantly meeting new characters and adding them to your party, and the writing is really good even down to the item descriptions.

Beyond that, keep in mind that this is a low-budget game. The character artwork looks nice (though it's generally just the same image regardless of what's going on), but navigating menus can be slow and awkward, and you do a lot of it. Quality of life options like auto-moving to a destination aren't here either. Also, there are no graphic settings beyond picking your resolution, and that maxes out at 1080p. So if you're the type of PC gamer who has a fit if a game doesn't support your ultra widescreen monitor you probably should skip this one.

TheSandHanitizer
TheSandHanitizer

As soon as I heard Etrian Odyssey and Touhou wrapped up in one nice package, I had to buy it. Clocked in 78 hours and almost done with the base game. Very fun and many references abound in the item descriptions.

Baby Muncher
Baby Muncher

I've had quite the adventure with this game. I've gotten to the semi final boss in the dlc late game, accidentally saved over my main save, and now I'm playing through the whole game again. I love this game, and it's one of the few games where I actually gifted it to a friend. There is always something to do and the challenge is fair. It's a bit grindy, but I don't mind it. It also introduced me to one of my favorite characters Yuugi . You don't need a understanding of the Touhou universe either, you can just start playing. I full heartedly recommend getting and playing this game.

abaoabao2010
abaoabao2010

I have a earlier version of the game, I've already beaten the the true power dragon god, and yet I still bought this once I noticed it's on steam. It's just that good.

NuclearBirb
NuclearBirb

I have no idea why it took me so long to get into this, but once i did i realized how increidble it is.
I have many, many, many, hours of gameplay ahead of me.

Evagorn
Evagorn

Yeah, it's a ton of fun! Solid dungeon crawler style RPG. I wish some of the systems could be streamlined a bit, like leveling up character stats at the library, or allocating bonuses. I mean, we're talking about having to individually increment stats one at a time, one point at a time, for literally a dozen characters. Have some mercy. But overall, the game is terrifically fun and has tons of content. And best of all, it's Touhou. Who doesn't love Touhou? Big recommendation!