Moldvay's Labyrinth

I love this game. Everything about it transports me back to the times of graph paper and kick-in-the-door D&D. Still some kinks to work out in the system, though: 1) There’s a very good manual, but it’s still lacking in several places: no information on traps or how the skills to find or disarm them work. 2) Combat is wonky and depends on positioning, but you have no knowledge or control over the position of your character other than marching order (which apparently doesn’t matter “after a few rounds”?). I don’t mind the opaque combat positioning, but if that’s the case, it needs to be derailed a LOT more in the manual. Why does my Thief get “blocked off” every time they Sneak? Why can’t my Barbarian use Rage with an axe equipped? Why does Backstab just seem to…not happen? 3) I could use a little more about how stats work. Which ones work best for which classes? Does STR or DEX matter more for Monks? Is CON a primary stat for anyone? 4) Poison does not function as described - that it goes away and usually does not kill a character. Instead it is a very frustrating slow death sentence. I have had characters lose over 200 hp from poison. It never goes away and at lower levels has no cure except a very expensive temple heal which you won’t have the money for anyway. So I guess I’m saying this is a great game…potentially. It currently has some extraordinarily frustrating issues which I hope will be ironed out.

There is a lot to love about this game, but the early game can be very frustrating. The game has a lot of potential for fun. Some thoughts: I kind of wish you could loot weapons and armor from enemies or convert some of the value of their weapons into gold, the economy feels extremely tight. I understand the design decision though. Classes are interesting, and feel nice and varied. I do wish that character creation had an array option or point buy system. There are descriptions of skills that are missing and some skills don’t work correctly, or maybe I’m just reading it wrong. The rage barbarian skill only works with weapons eith close range and no where in the skill does it say that. Pick locks and find traps both don’t have a description in the definition of terms.

Good game. Never write reviews, but figure I would since I’ve been playing this a ton. Reminds me of Wizardry. Class distinctions aren’t great. Not sure why you would ever use “fight” command instead of the classes special abilities. Magic is very limited to the slots you have for spells, and each spell has limited uses, which are recovered via camping. Here are some things that seem odd: Camping only restores one use of spells, even though it says it restores all uses My paladin is currently at negative AC due to a bug with equipping the defender blad I’m guessing. Level of spell casters only improve one of the spells in the game. No reason to use fireball when your magic middle annihilates enemies in late game. Armor is very limited in the shop, and new pieces don’t show up until you can afford them. There are no notifications that let you know this. The “bishop” class is unable to identify items, and the identify ability doesn’t really tell you anything from the shop. I can’t choose who to unlock or disarm traps. It constantly makes my sorcerer do it and not my assassin. Find traps spell does nothing. Healing spells reduce max hp until you get other level healing. It costs way too much to restore those hp at the temple via healing. How come camping doesn’t restore those lost hps. The low level cure status spell does nothing. This is off the top of my head, I know that this style of game relies on discovering stuff yourself, but there’s quite a bit of information the player needs to really on board easy enough. Thanks for reading, hope this helps. It really is a good game. I’m on dungeon lvl 21 and my party is now pretty unstoppable. Early game was tough though.