Just finished
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk, at about 60 hours, with Normal End. Didn't care enough to go for the True Ending.
One of the reasons I've been liking DRPG's is that they tend to focus much more on the gameplay (combat, exploration, puzzles) rather than the story like traditional JRPG's, but Refrain sure has a lot of story. Out of those 60 hours I think something like 8-9 hours were just story parts. The longest one lasted around 45 minutes! To be fair, they can be skipped completely, but I didn't want to do that either. And the story was always presented in basic talking heads -format, there were many scenes I thought would've benefitted from having a nice piece of unique art to look at (like in Sapphire Wings/Undernauts), but nope, didn't get a single one. The story was very anime, with some nice twists.
Instead of the characters doing the dungeon exploring and battling themselves, they use proxies for it, in the shape of wooden puppets infused with souls. I just don't care for this approach and it's so heavily prevalent here, it makes the characters doing the gameplay parts utterly and completely separate from the characters in the story. And yes, I realize I'm contradicting myself here in regards to my caring about the story, but something about the disconnect between the two sets of characters just annoys the hell out of me. It kind of makes both feel pointless.
I'm gonna be honest, I didn't really get some elements of the game. Like the Coven system (characters are placed in Covens, and Covens are placed into the active party. Covens can have multiple slots for both active and support characters, the latter of which don't actually do anything in combat but can provide other effects), so many of them felt useless and restricting. A Coven might give its members nice spells, but all their defense is cut by half and they only get 50% exp. from battles, or something like that. It felt much too cumbersome, so I just used fairly basic Covens (and as a result, barely any magic at all) and it did get me through 99% of the game just fine, even half of the optional superbosses. And the game clearly expects to create dozens of puppets to fill all the Coven support slots for bonuses, which also means a lot more micromanagement if you want to keep them equipped with gear to take full advantage of their support role.
And I have no idea what's going on with the Resonance/Echo -thing. Ignored it completely.
This is tied to the fact that the info for new concepts/powers/gameplay elements are shown exactly once and the info can't be re-read anywhere. The game itself says "You can review this info in the online manual" but the only manual I could find only covers the controls. Compared to something like Undernauts that keeps an extensive help menu from which everything can be checked if needed, this felt really frustrating. After finishing the game I did find this
Google Sheet some fan had made that covers a LOT of the game and its mechanics.
I also don't like how the game invents its own terms for standard concepts. Instead of magic, we have donum. Instead of elements like fire, water, earth, etc. we have Flame, Mud, and Fog. Not jobs or classes, but Facets. Not mages or wizards, but "Marginal Mazes". Not silence/quiet/mute when you make an enemy unable to cast spells (sorry, donum), but "Abyss". This is just making up your words for stuff in an effort to look cool and edgy.
The item management is, frankly, horrible. The game encourages to never get rid of anything, because even the most basic loot that normally would only exist for selling, might be used as an item needed in a sidequests, a reward for which can be something actually useful. And gear can be synthesized to make better versions of the gear, so you don't want to get rid of those either. You can increase your space for items to 3000 (loot stocks up to 99 while equipment is always stored individually), and there's no way to unload the items into a chest or something for storage. And finding the equipment you want can be a hassle, because there's not enough ways of sorting through them.
I don't think there was a single puzzle in the game, unless you're feeling really generous and consider "open this locked door by flicking a switch that's probably no less than ten steps away" a puzzle. Or maybe figuring out all the mechanics is supposed to be a puzzle.
All that said, there were some things I did like. The dungeon maps are good, and you soon unlock the ability to smash through walls (though the walls return after entering the dungeon again, it's not persistent like in Undernauts). There's no random battles, but enemies are shown on the screen as wandering black orbs instead, so you can try to navigate around them, or even do some maneuvering to approach them from the side or back, to surprise them and hopefully get a turn where the enemy doesn't do anything. And while there's a standard Vanguard/Rearguard positioning for characters, there are additional formations which give bonuses based on how many are in Vanguard or Rearguard position, or which positions are in Vanguard or Rearguard. That was something I hoped had even been expanded upon.
But overall, Refrain is probably my least favorite of the "big" DRPG's I've played so far. There are just so many elements to deal with (I assure you, I didn't mention all of them), I think it goes way overboard for its own good, and many of them feel superfluous. I guess if you really love the game and want to optimize everything over hundreds of hours, this can provide that. But I was glad to call it quits at 60 hours. In comparison, Undernauts took me 70 hours, and I felt compelled to play to the True End there.
I feel kind of reserved about Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society now, especially if it's a case of "if you liked Refrain, you'll love Galleria" like m.sniffles.esq suggested. From my experiences so far, my ideal DRPG would have the combat, character and item management of Undernauts, puzzles of The Lost Child, and map layouts of Refrain. I do have several other titles waiting on the shelf, from five different developers, from only one of which I've previously played a DRPG (that being Experience), so it'll be fun to see if the next hits closer to my target. After I take a little break from the genre again.