Thanks to NIS America for sending a copy to review.

Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society is the second entry into the Coven and Labyrinth series (yes, that is what they call it on Steam) which is itself connected to The Witch and 100 Knights series. The Moon Society continues the basic format laid out in Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk of the main gameplay being a roleplaying dungeon crawler and presenting the story in a visual novel segment with both parts being hefty enough to be full games in their own rights. If you have read my previous review for Coven of Dusk you will find much here fairly similar, but they have made a few tweaks and improvements as well as making another really creative original story.

So to explain the basic gameplay loop of Moon Society for those unfamiliar there are two main parts. The core gameplay is exploring a dungeon with your puppet soldiers. You can create these soldiers with some pretty in-depth RPG elements, equip them with gear with so many stats you’ll get lost reading them all, and stick them into covens to try and get the most bonus benefits possible. The covens function in a weird manner with them being your units, but with the possibility of adding multiple puppet soldiers into them. They will then receive orders as if they were one unit. You can either have the puppet soldiers in the front to attack and take damage or put in the backline where they will buff and grant other abilities. You will then send them into dungeons to explore to get the next story trigger, but this time with a few more Metroidvania elements. While exploring the dungeons you will be collecting mana which, if you make out alive with it, can be used to upgrade many abilities in the Witch Petit on menu.

The other core chunk is the visual novel (VN) cutscenes. These are all wonderfully voiced and are very long. While exploring the dungeon will make up most of your playtime, these cutscenes also add quite a chunk of time. I’d even go so far to say that these alone are longer than your average VN in addition to being almost fully voice acted in English as well as Japanese.

But now to get into the things that are new to this title. I mentioned the Metroidvania elements above and this is one of the biggest elements I noticed that was new. There were previously reasons to go back to places you previously visited, but this time they added in something new: the Curio D’Art and the lesser just Curio. These are items scattered throughout the dungeon that can be collected. Quite a few are tied to the main story and will be found through normal gameplay, but the majority are hidden or locked behind areas that require powers that are learned later in order to be collected. There are also plenty of red herrings too to really make you have to explore. One big one I encountered early on was the waterways. There are tons of these that are introduced way before you can safely (well, “safely”) navigate these and they just sit there tempting you like a cookie just beyond reach. When I finally got the ability to navigate these I found mostly nothing, but a few had something that was really worth getting so I had to explore every single one. The game is so bad at doing this that I had reached what I thought was the end of the title, when it was actually the first fake out ending, and I spent so long trying to figure how to beat the one way arrows to get to the clearly visible Curio chest only to learn I had to wait until 2/3rds of the game later to come back after getting the ability to violate one way roads.

Other gameplay additions include two new weapon types, the ability to get enemies to drop meat, new mana abilities, and some new character classes and coven functionality. The new weapons don’t add too much to the game, though it is funny that you can’t get them until after your first ending which in hindsight should have been my sign something was up. The meat mechanic is a really neat idea. Basically there is a chance that each enemy defeated will give you their meat upon being defeated with the ability to increase the amount dropped through Witch Petitions. You can then feed these to your puppet soldiers to grant experience points. This is a really neat system to help make it easier to make new puppet soldiers later in the game to quickly boost them to the levels needed for where the rest of your party is at or give your current ones that extra edge to get the upper hand on a boss. The new mana abilities are mostly related to exploring, such as making poisonous mud not deal any damage, or using light or shadow to reveal hidden interactions or display fake walls. A lot of this you will be bringing back to earlier areas to use to finish what you couldn’t do the first time. The new classes for your puppets aren’t too crazy, but they work in some interesting new roles such as the cat. You don’t send the cat out to fight. You keep them in the back line to give you stat buffs and some exploration boons.

As for the story I’m going to try to avoid any explicit spoilers, but there will be some for some of the earlier twists of the game. This time around it starts off way more normal than the previous title did. It starts and keeps going forward and doesn’t do an odd reset like it did before. The setting feels fairly similar with a medieval Europe backdrop, but with witches. The story starts with you following Eureka as she gets a job at Galleria Manor helping to find stuff, since that is all she is good at. You meet a witch named Madame Marta, also known as Madame Granny, and you get roped into binding your soul to a wandering spirit. That’s also when you get told you play as that wandering spirit and not Eureka. You get to enter your name, though it doesn’t matter since they will almost always call you Fantie. They then shove you into a lantern and you get sent into a wardrobe in the dungeon beneath the manor.

It then progresses with new bits whenever you encounter a new obstacle, defeat a noteworthy boss, or collect some special treasure. You get introduced to a wide range of other characters, the most notable of witch (bad um tsk) is a young witch named Nachi. She gets roped into helping Madame Granny do witch stuff and helps you progress further into the dungeon. There are also a few other odd encounters with sometimes you getting bits of scenes from the perspective of a cat, and these don’t always seem to line up well chronologically, but I expected this to be building for something neat with how the story was laid out last time. Eventually you reach the end and everything just goes wrong. Eureka becomes a genius by interacting with a Curio D’Art, then gives another to a reporter who uses it to start a revolution, and then the world blows up. In your last interaction all sorts of other crazy stuff happens and it feels really out of place, but it feels like you’ve reached the end of the story. Madame Granny then tells you, Fantie, that maybe next time will go better and you get the credits. The main menu loads, but now it isn’t just darkness and it has some light starting to appear. Dawn has now arrived. You have to load up your last save and then it drops you to a familiar face in a new world.

Now I won’t give too many more plot events from near since I don’t want to spoil a lot of what will happen, but you see that in this world you are following Nachi, who is also just starting off with a Fantie of her own and she is exploring a new dungeon in her apartment complex. You quickly get introduced to the fact that this world is much further along than the last. I’d place this one in a rough 1900s time period. You have cars, radios, and environmental protection agencies. Also, your more basic medieval fantasy soundtrack is replaced with some more jazzy tracks, which is by far my personal favorite thing. Over time Nachi gets roped into finding some Curio D’Art hidden in her apartment dungeon as well as helping witches of this world try and stop the Upheaval Phenomenon (UP). I found myself getting really engrossed in this portion of the story. The one in the other world was good, but it felt very related to exploring the dungeon. This time the story could practically exist without having the dungeon. Very little you do is really tied to it after the very beginning and it really starts to feel like a separate thing. I’d almost go as far as to say this portion starts to feel connected to something else almost as if I missed a part by skipping to part two of a series. With that said, I also feel like this is where some things start to happen that feels like something leading up to it was missed. Some things just sort of happen or get said like it isn’t your first time hearing about it.

This section eventually ends with it being revealed the two worlds you have experienced so far are twin worlds. They used to be one world, but somehow split with both progressing at different speeds thus there being a medieval and almost modern world. The UP and the explosion in the first world are both related to these two worlds trying to become one again which will basically kill both unless one can be killed first. Nachi then gets sent into the first world. This is where things feel like they will start to come together, but they do not. Everything here is different, though most notably Madame Granny being absent and everybody being just really bad people. Nothing is really like that first time. From here tons of different things happen including finding out about a World Tree Tribe made up of bird people that can travel between worlds ad multiple world ending events. The story then becomes about what should be done when saving one world involves killing another world, are someone’s family members worth the death of a world, and should people try and stop death since it is a natural thing. I’d love to go into more detail about the story, but we have just reached roughly the halfway point so I don’t want to do anything to ruin this experience for yourself. All I will add is that is does end on a sweet note. Maybe a bit bittersweet, but still quite touching.

The last thing I want to mention about the story is I do think this is a better and more engaging story than Coven of Dusk, but it is also more confusing. With how they handle the different worlds, jumping around between them, and adding in some memory manipulation along the way, I have been left with some questions. I didn’t feel this way last time around, though I was also more hooked when experiencing the story. The other major plus is a lesbian relationship isn’t a large focus this time. There might be some implied ones, but with how straightforward it was last time I don’t feel like they’d be playing coy this time around.

The art style continues to shine in this outing. The characters continue to look good and I really like some of the different designs in the second world. Moving away from the medieval fantasy setting really let the artstyle pop when compared to Coven of Dusk. Enemy designs continue to be neat and creative even if some are horrifying. They also do something that I don’t remember from before where they make some enemies way bigger then the screen for the battles. One early example is around three times taller than the screen. This felt weird, but added an interesting element to the enemies appearing especially when that same enemy model later became a generic enemy. Sadly the dungeons are a big letdown. You have some neat ideas, like the apartment and some of the final areas, but the starting world, while having six different locations, all feel very similar. They are all a dungeon with some different coloring.

Weirdly enough this starting area is kind of an old church. At first the names seem random, but as you unlock more areas it feels like there was meaning behind them. After looking it up the different parts are named after older layouts of Catholic churches that were made in the shape of a cross having a narthex, apse, trancepts, and chancel. There’s also the introduction of the randomly generated dungeons, with the apartment being one of them that are just random hallways and rooms that are just a bit boring to explore since there is no real design behind them. You do have a few preset floors that appear every few levels, but the overall dungeon feels more like a way to extend the playtime of the game. I really do miss the unique dungeons of last time. I would have even preferred there to be more cohesive enemy designs in the dungeons to make them feel more connected.

The music is good, but limited. In the VN segment it is used well, but in the dungeons it is limited and got repetitive. It got so bad I eventually muted it to listen to something else during long journeys or grinding runs. The character voices are all really well done. I played this game in English and all the voices were good and the performances were well acted. There were sections in the dungeon unvoiced, but I do believe that is intended. That said I wish they went the extra few steps there to fully complete it with full voice acting, but that only left less than 5% silent. The voices for the puppet soldiers are also good, but they are once again weird. Each class has a few different options to pick from for voice, including the cats, but they gave each voice a very defined personality with each one having lines that kind of ruin making custom characters. I forget what all they were, but it was things along the lines of collecting frogs and loving the smell of cheese. It doesn’t ruin things, and it is honestly funny when something like that gets shouted out in the middle of battle, but I would have preferred more generic lines. The puppet soldiers also have a lot of their cast reused as various less important characters throughout the story. It’s not the worst, but some were very noticeable.

During my time playing I didn’t run into many major issues, but there were a few things. The biggest thing was tabbing out of the game. I once lost about two hours of progress when tabbing out of the game which caused it to crash. After that I always played in windowed mode instead of full screen since I’d be listening to other music or a video in the background of longer exploration segments. It is worth adding the game doesn’t seem to like staying windowed and it kept changing the window size when I’d click off of it. The next biggest issue was with the key bindings. You could rebind keys, but you couldn’t separate actions. Since this game was mainly designed for consoles a lot of actions had to be done with multiple actions bound to the same button, but on PC I have a whole keyboard of keys. I wish I could have made some of the more obtuse actions to a separate key. Instead you had stuff such as C then left arrow key then escape. You also have quite a few changes between menus. Some of the stuff is so obtuse that I got it locked into muscle memory only to then mess it up when doing another different input. Weirdly, menus are both easier and harder to navigate with the mouse. I played the previous title on the Switch so I’ve experienced both options and I can’t say which I like better.

There are a few other nitpicks I have. The biggest thing being the clarity of what was supposed to be done next in the dungeon. The first major obstacle I had was I found what must have been two Curio D’Art in one run. When I found the chest for the second it told me to come back later. To me that sounded like it would get unlocked from something I’d later find like a switch or I’d collect a key. I got stuck there for quite some time. Apparently I just needed to come back on a different run. It told me a cutscene or two later that I can only collect a Curio D’Art each run. This is oddly never told to you before you are able to collect more than one. I had collected multiple other Curios while exploring so that led me to believe there was something off. Another time I had reached the introduction of the gooey darkness sections of the dungeon. I had ran into two entrances that told me I couldn’t do this yet. I found a third one, but it was at the end of a long hallway so I turned back to look for something else. I was apparently supposed to interact with this thing to unlock the next story section to then get the ability to enter it, but it seemed pointless to try to enter it when being rejected earlier. Lastly, the first ending for the game took me way too long to complete. If you haven’t found every Curio you get reset and told to find something you are missing. The game doesn’t tell you what this is though. I spent hours trying to look up guides for this game, which there aren’t many, and see what all I missed. Funnily enough I missed a whole section of dungeon since I never went back to an earlier section to check for a long jump point to enter a new area I had never been to before.

Even then it was very annoying since, in one story bit, you give away a Curio D’Art to a reporter, who quickly uses it to start a revolt against the government which blows up the world, but you need to get it back for the ending. To do so you have to do requests. These were little side quests that were present in the last game, but they just gave you some extra rewards for collecting loot while exploring. Well it seems this time you have to do them since the last one gives you that Curio D’Art back. Not only was this not obvious at all, but you had to collect items from little loot piles you can find in the dungeons. I spent well over an hour exploring the dungeons where these items spawned trying to get the correct drops needed to complete the requests and it kind of made me hate the game. It was just way too outside of what you would normally do while playing.

Now strap in as we move into the moral section because this will be long. First up is the violence section. It is very present, but not really shown. I believe a character does get cut in a VN section and it appears on their character, but that’s it. Now, there is certainly a lot of written violence including acts of torture and discussion about rape including with dead bodies. Your puppet soldiers kill a lot of things, but nothing really happens there. Bosses do explode with a comically loud and long explosion. While playing you can expect to hear all manner of language, though none talking the Lord’s name in vain. He is mentioned once, but in just a random mention of Him resting on the seventh day. As for the amount of language, while most manner is present, it is used rather sparingly. You will encounter it, including f bombs, but you are not bombarded by it. There’s a lot of different sexual situations and some that were just crass. Some of these do include minors. One character even mentions not being able to say no to anybody who approaches her including teachers and old men. Rape is also fairly present, though thankfully to a lesser degree than Coven of Dusk. With that said, there is talk about one character potentially violating bodies after killing them. There is a lot of revealing clothing. You get to see both of the main younger characters in their underwear, which is extra odd since one of them you only see once throughout the whole game. Some of the puppet soldiers look fairly young and don’t wear much while that isn’t the case for most male counterparts. Some enemy designs are revealing, with some even being naked but not showing off anything akin to a Barbie doll, and for others it just feels like it is something sexual, but in an abstract sense.

During one of the visits to the medieval world there is a small sideplot of helping a prince who is secretly a princess, due to a curse, become an actual man. This person might be bisexual. Weirdest part of this is it gets introduced and then after you get the stuff needed to progress with the story, it cuts to after they have left and presents the resolution as a little side note. Cheating is a reoccurring theme in the game with multiple people having their lives destroyed by it. In a sense it is also what gets the entire plot rolling. One man gets verbally tortured by another man, seemingly falsely, claiming to be sleeping with his wife that he attempts to drown both himself and his pregnant wife. She survives, but her pregnancy does not. That same husband also had told his wife to get rid of the pregnancy, but that is also after some weird magic prophecy she does to see the future of the child. Weirdly it never actually tells you what she saw so it is possible she saw that the baby would be miscarried. I saw these babies were miscarried, but there is also a plot line about the Curios being made when their creator pours their soul into the work and then dies, but this mother was able to make 7 or 9 seemingly using the souls of her unborn children to do so.

Darker magic elements are brought up. A lot of what the main characters do with magic is related to souls. More magic elements get brought up in the second world when you meet with Moon Society, but quite a few of them are more battle witches that shoot fire or lightning. All magic is presented as if the world views it as a bad thing with the first world having witch hunts and the second world having some in the government blaming the destruction of the world on them. Ironically they are right, but not in the way they were implying. Quite a few of the enemy designs seem to be based off of different occult things with some being more playful and others being more serious. Many wrong decisions are made throughout the story, though most are presented as being the wrong decision. Some of these decisions even lead to the destruction of worlds and suffering of others. There are quite a few drunks throughout the story as well as some other substances that get brought up. One character drinks themselves into a murder suicide.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with Dungeon of Galleria. The game is super long, but you will easily get your money’s worth out of it. While largely an improvement over its predecessor, I can’t fully call this one an overall improvement. The plus side there being that gives you a reason to play it as well if you haven’t already, though I’d recommend checking that one’s review out first. If you are a dungeon crawler fan I would recommend this greatly as one of the best of the genre, but I’d only recommend it for mature audiences. I’m curious to see what they may have in store for a round three. I look forward to checking it out whenever that happens.

- Paul Barnard (Betuor)