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When I first booted up Shadow Labyrinth, I expected another classic metroidvania experience—the kind where you get lost in intricate maps and gradually unlock abilities to access previously unreachable areas. What struck me immediately was how surprisingly linear the opening hours felt. For roughly five hours, the game holds your hand through a carefully crafted but somewhat restrictive path. Now, I know what you're thinking: isn't that against the spirit of metroidvania? Well, yes and no. As someone who's spent countless hours analyzing game design, I found this initial linearity both a strength and a weakness. It allows new players to settle in without feeling overwhelmed, but veterans might find it a bit slow.
During those first five hours, you'll encounter forking paths, but they mostly lead to upgrades or secrets that don't drastically alter your progression. I remember specifically spending about twenty minutes trying to reach what looked like an optional area, only to find it blocked by an ability gate. It's a classic metroidvania trope, but Shadow Labyrinth executes it with precision. The game deliberately teases you with impassable areas, building anticipation for when you finally gain the tools to overcome them. From my playthrough, I'd estimate around 60% of the map remains inaccessible during this early phase, which is both frustrating and cleverly designed to fuel your curiosity.
Then comes the moment when Shadow Labyrinth truly opens up. Around the five-hour mark—give or take depending on how thoroughly you explore—the training wheels come off. Suddenly, you're presented with multiple objectives and the freedom to tackle them in any order. This should be the game's crowning achievement, the point where it joins the ranks of Hollow Knight or Symphony of the Night. But here's where things get complicated, and honestly, a bit disappointing. The sudden openness feels somewhat unearned, and the game struggles to maintain the momentum it built during those carefully structured opening hours.
Let me be clear: I don't think linearity in metroidvanias is inherently bad. In fact, some of my favorite games in the genre use guided openings effectively. Where Shadow Labyrinth falters is in its transition from linear to open. The shift feels abrupt rather than organic. One minute you're following a clear path, the next you're dumped into a sprawling map with multiple objectives and little guidance. I found myself spending nearly an hour just trying to decide which direction to pursue first, and not in a good, exciting way. It was more overwhelming than empowering.
The game's structure reminds me of trying to learn a complex strategy game without proper tutorials—you have all these tools at your disposal but aren't quite sure how to use them effectively. During my playthrough, I encountered at least three major ability-gated areas within the first hour of the game opening up, each requiring different upgrades to progress. While this should create engaging exploration, it instead led to considerable backtracking that felt more tedious than rewarding. I'd estimate I spent about 30% of my playtime after the opening just retracing my steps through areas I'd already thoroughly explored.
What's particularly frustrating is that Shadow Labyrinth has all the ingredients of a great metroidvania. The combat feels tight and responsive, the art style is gorgeous, and the upgrade system is genuinely interesting. But these elements don't quite coalesce into a satisfying whole once the world opens up. The multiple objectives, while theoretically exciting, often send you to opposite ends of the map with little consideration for logical progression. I remember specifically having to choose between pursuing a movement upgrade or a combat enhancement, and both choices felt equally arbitrary rather than strategically meaningful.
From a design perspective, I think the developers may have overcorrected. The carefully controlled opening establishes certain expectations about pacing and progression that the later game completely abandons. It's like reading a meticulously plotted mystery novel that suddenly turns into a choose-your-own-adventure book halfway through. The transition isn't smooth, and it left me feeling disconnected from the experience I'd been enjoying up to that point. During my second playthrough, I actually found myself preferring the linear opening to the open middle section, which is saying something for a metroidvania enthusiast like myself.
Don't get me wrong—there are moments of brilliance in Shadow Labyrinth's open world. Discovering a hidden passage that connects two previously separate areas is genuinely thrilling, and some of the late-game upgrades are wonderfully creative. But these highlights are sandwiched between stretches of confusing navigation and unclear objectives. I found myself consulting the map screen approximately every two minutes during the open section, compared to maybe once every ten minutes during the linear opening. That constant need to reorient yourself breaks the immersion that the game works so hard to build in its early hours.
If I had to pinpoint where Shadow Labyrinth falls short compared to genre greats, it's in the execution of its core metroidvania loop. The best games in this genre make backtracking and exploration feel organic and rewarding. In Shadow Labyrinth, it often feels like work. The impassable areas that seemed mysterious and exciting in the opening hours become frustrating obstacles later on, especially when you realize that overcoming them requires trekking across the entire map to find a specific upgrade. I clocked about 15 hours in my complete playthrough, and I'd estimate at least 4 of those were spent on what felt like unnecessary backtracking.
Looking at Shadow Labyrinth as a whole, it's a game of contrasting halves—the carefully crafted linear experience versus the ambitious but flawed open world. While I appreciate what the developers were trying to achieve, the execution doesn't quite hit the mark. The game shows flashes of brilliance that will satisfy hardcore metroidvania fans, but it lacks the polish and thoughtful design that would elevate it to must-play status. For players new to the genre, I'd recommend starting with more polished examples. For veterans, it's worth playing for its strong elements, but temper your expectations for the later sections. Shadow Labyrinth is a good game that had the potential to be great, and that might be the most frustrating thing about it.
