Labyrinth of Touhou Tri is a dungeon crawler for freaks

Every dungeon crawler might look the same on the surface. But they all have distinct flavors: Etrian Odyssey’s party synergies, Dungeon Encounters’s math puzzles, Shin Megami Tensei’s oppressive atmosphere. By their nature, these games cannot suit all tastes. The common rat that steals all your gold in Dungeon Encounters, for instance, is either a hilarious joke or an unforgivable crime that makes you throw your $300 Nintendo Switch in the garbage. Most people in the world are surely in the latter camp. Yet the remainder love Dungeon Encounters more than anything else. They understand that difficulty isn’t just a matter of accessibility — it’s about catering to specific needs.

Labyrinth of Touhou Tri -The Dreaming Girls & The Mysterious Orbs- is one such experience. The player builds a party of 12 characters out of 48 (borrowed from the long-running Touhou series of independent games, set in a closed world where mythological spirits throw drinking parties and/or challenge each other to laser duels depending on the mood) to explore various dungeons and defeat enemies. Battles are turn based, where turns are determined by speed and the recovery time of each move. You can swap characters between your four-person frontline and the reserve at any time; in fact, you’re encouraged to, because characters in reserve quickly recover HP and MP. Some party members become stronger the longer they remain in the fray, while others will crumble if you don’t swap them out before they take damage.

The heart of the game are the boss fights, which are brutal. The very first of these encounters will demolish you if you don’t pay close attention to the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses as well as your own party composition. Later bosses summon helpers that buff their stats sky-high, inflict your party with ailments that activate their own super attacks, and have conditional effects that limit the amount of damage they can take between turns. Worse, higher difficulty levels forbid the player from outleveling them.

There are plenty of ways to tip the scales, though. Upgrading individual pieces of equipment, for instance, powers up every single kind of that equipment you find in the future. A character’s skill points can be reassigned in the field at any time. Bosses come with charts breaking down their strengths, weaknesses, and even the order in which they use certain moves. You always have what you need to succeed. All that remains is crafting your 12 person party into a key that can open the correct lock.