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Shadow Labyrinthis a Metroidvania platformer where you get to play as a soul who can’t even pick up a sword with their hands. Instead, you get a mechanical arm to help you with it. One of the main attractions for the game is a twisted version of the beloved Pac-Man, with this one devouring your enemies whole.
The game is divided into a bunch of massive areas, and as you’d expect, a lot of your progress is mainly gated by different abilities. However, you’ll have a lot of fun from start to finish in this one as long as you keep a few tips in mind to enhance your experience.
Make Sure You Explore Every Path
If you’re playing a Metroidvania like Shadow Labyrinth just to follow through the story linearly and ignore every side bit that you can, you aren’t truly playing it. The entire attraction of this game lies in a giant world where most of the paths aren’t necessary to beat it,but these paths hold the most difficult challenges.
In the linear path, you might have a few strong enemies to defeat with a couple of minibosses here and there. However, it’s only in theseside paths that you find true gems of crooked monsters that want to defeat youat all costs. Of course, there’s also a generous reward waiting for you at the end of it.
Most of the yellow and red crystalscontaining important items like HP increase and regenerationare hidden in these side paths.
Following these paths will not only make it easier to beat the main story, but alsomake you understand why Shadow Labyrinth is so good.
Use Gaia Mode When You Need To
After defeating your second main boss of the story, which is essentially an older version of PUCK,you’ll get a special ability that allows you to turn into a giant mech. You initially play as this mech at the start of the game, which already shows you just how powerful it is. However, you need quite a bit of setup to shapeshift into it.
You can see themech icon on the top left when it’s ready to be activated, and you should use it in any dire situation. For example, there will be times when you’ll find yourself one hit away from defeat, and a bunch of enemies will ambush you. In these scenarios, you can essentially get the easy way out with Gaia.
Gaia is also a way to cheese boss fights in the game sinceyou can defeat most minibosses in the early gamebefore its bar runs out.
Collect Materials Whenever You Can
Apart from being this powerful undefeated mech, Gaia also gives you a unique ability to devour your enemies after stunning or defeating them.You have a short duration to do this after you defeat an enemy, since their body will disappear if you don’t trigger it fast enough. Devouring enemies not only helps you activate Gaia, but also provides a ton of materials.
You’ll need these materials every step of the way throughout the Labyrinth sincethey’re required to get your ability enhancements and buy different perks. In the early game, it’s highly recommended to devour every enemy you find since stocking up on these items will help you in the long run, preventing you from having to hunt for them.
Gaia can only devour enemies in a straight line if you use it normally,but it can be aimed with your joystick or keys.
However, itwon’t be able to devour an enemy through the wall.
While it’s great to get your materials from these enemies, you also need to use the ability at the right time. It consumes a lot of your ESP, andyou might end up getting hit if you use it at the wrong time.
The Map Can Sometimes Give Extra Details
While exploring different areas in Shadow Labyrinth, there will be plenty of times when you go through a special item but completely miss it due to it either being behind a wall or just completely hidden.However, your map can help you out in these times, which makes it important to check it once every few minutes.
There are instances when you don’t see an item on your screen but it still gets marked on the map when you’re close enough. This can help you identify some secret paths andthe things you need to do to get to certain special items. You can also see the direction to shatter the breakable walls, giving you a general idea of where you need to go.
Regenerating Your HP Is Difficult
One of the most attractive aspects of a Metroidvania is its souls-like nature where you only save games on a specific checkpoints, andif you get defeated anywhere in between, you’ll spawn at this checkpoint. However, Shadow Labyrinth takes it one step ahead by having two different types of checkpoints: one with an orb and one without an orb.
The checkpoint that doesn’t have an orb regenerates your HP, butdoesn’t refill your HP Tank or give you the ability to choose where to teleport. Even if you get defeated and respawn on these checkpoints, you’ll have to pass through the same area without the ability to refill your HP, which can be quite daunting.
If you regenerate your HP Tanks by getting a new one, they’llgo away if you spawn back on the checkpoint without an orb.
This makes it quitedifficult to regenerate your HP in the game, especially when you can lose it very easily.
Know Your Enemies
Since you’ll have a hard time getting your HP back in most instances, especially during the early game,the only choice to progress is by learning what your enemies do. Shadow Labyrinth has some smaller enemies that mostly work the same, but there are a bunch of larger enemies that have a specific move set.
For example,the big warriors you can meet in the Sky-High Treehave a slow attack speed but deal a ton of damage. However, the smaller warriors usually appear in packs andhave dash and jump attacks that can catch you off guard. There are also some pouncing enemies that you can easily dodge by just running into them while they pounce.
You can Redo Some Boss Fights
As you go through different areas in the game, you’ll have many boss fights on your path. Some of these will have a special introduction with some text on the screen,while others will simply block your way out and spawn from the skies. The best part about the latter bosses is that you can easily redo them.
While looking at the map, you’ll see a yellow skull iconwhere you’ve already defeated a miniboss. Entering this room again will trigger the fight all over again. The main reason for this is that you have to farm the materials dropped by these bosses for certain items, which makes the replayability important.
Your Dash Has Strict Immunity
Even from the very first boss fight, you’ll notice that Shadow Labyrinth’s bosses have very agile attacks that usually hit in a big AoE. These attacks can be quite intimidating, but your dash is the key to dodging most of them.As soon as you trigger your dash, you get immunity for nearly a second, letting you evade everything.
The timing for this immunity can take a bit of time to get used to, since the window is very tight. However, once you’ve learned it,you’ll be able to dodge most attacks in the game easily.
