Fatal Labyrinth for the Genesis, one of the first console rogue-likes I believe. A rogue-like game is often a series of random levels in a dungeon/maze that one has to navigate lots of tight, confined quarters. They are also a quasi-rpg; having leveling up, equipping gear, but not going into a different screen for battles - they take place on the main map, but all actions are still taking turns. 

Fatal Labyrinth relies on some luck. I had to to restart my journey 4 times within the first 5 levels, as sometimes the game's randomness is very unfriendly. The creatures can be ferocious to the ill-equipped player, and this is on the first level! But if you can take the rough sink-or-swim nature (welcome to rogue-likes), then this game can be good fun.

Graphics: 6
Sadly, the graphics are quite lacking. Since there is only one view, a distant, top-down view, you don't get any real sense of scale, or detail. Everything looks dinky and unimpressive. There is a nice jaws reference that looks pretty good, but thats about it. There are no great graphics here, its just serviceable. One big knock is how dull the interior looks, the floor tiles and walls have no life or interesting objects to catch the eye.

Best: The title screen I guess? At least it shows the massive tower, the enormity of your task. The items you wear also enhance your character's sprites as well.
Worst: Getting to a fearsome dragon enemy, the elite of beasts, and seeing you're about as tall as they are. 

Sound: 5
The music is pretty bland. It gets changed up every 10 levels or so, but its nothing really interesting. The opening has a bit of mystery to it, and might be the best track. The sound effects, ehh.. spells blip and squeak. The alarm and parrying sounds are pretty good though. Get used to hearing that parry effect, a lot!

Best: The music does get more ominous and dangerous-sounding the further you go.
Worst: The sound effects can be pretty bad, sounding a bit like an Atari 2600 game.


Addictiveness: 8
This is FL's best trait, and one common to rogue-likes, the surprise factor. Due to the random nature of your next dungeon map, enemy placement, and even what items appear on the ground - there is a lot of excited expectations about the dungeon floors. New enemy types, new gear, traps, mimics that pretend to be treasure -- theres a lot to contend with here. And if you can just get a toe-hold into the game - a decent armor or weapon, then you can start to enjoy this feature. In the beginning it probably seems like a nightmare as you won't find the gear in a set place if you die.

Best: You never know what you're going to find! And a percentage of rare items do turn up. 
Worst: Being totally random, you may go a whole game without seeing some of the items turn up, or putting you in situations where your hampered because of what you didn't find, making the way ahead very challenging.

Story: 5
Most RPGs excel here, but not so much with these types of games. There is a great evil inside the Castle Dragonia, and you are the hero who must go in and find the holy goblet that some ghouls stole .. for some reason. Anyway, get it back. You know its going to be at the top of the castle and there is a boss of sorts. You don't get to leave the castle, you just march, march, march until you die or beat the game. Speaking of dying, the gold in this game is really weird. There's kind of a story in that, and we are in the story section. 
There are NO shops in this game. Anything you find, is all you get. You don't make items, or buy them. All gold does is make your game over screen look better. Really odd! 

Best: Getting the macguff-  I mean the goblet and seeing its awesome power! You can see why that is at the top!
Worst: I guess the village you start in? There is some random 6-7 villagers standing by at the beginning of the game, and while they give you bits of the story, they are largely unnecessary. Plus, no one could scrounge up a decent set of armor for the guy? Really villagers? And why iIs everyone just standing on a road?

Depth: The game changes every time you play it, new items, different layouts. Only the monster types for the floor and the general quality of the gear are indications. You have magic scrolls, potions, and wands you can find. In fact, everything you find needs to be tested to see what it does. Brown potion? Who knows! But once you use/equip it and gain (or suffer) the effects, the items will then start telling you what they do without needing to use them again. Its not as frightening as it sounds, most effects are temporary. There are dangers, some items are cursed and won't let you take them off. Some do horrible things like remove all your food or make you go blind temporarily! 

I mentioned food, because in this game, like Gauntlet, food is sort of a soft timer. If you run out, you start losing life. You can always pick more up, off the floor (video game logic) but you don't know how much food is in each pile. You can literally pick up so much food you will walk slower. If you attempt to max out your food capacity- which makes sense to me, why worry about it later? You will die if the food tries to go to 100. Its really odd.

There is not a LOT of items to have, but there is a fair amount for each type- take weapons for instance; sword, axe, spear, bow - each with about 6 or so different weapons, including a cursed one if it exists. Some of the choices are odd, like the rings that actually are meant to be thrown like a weapon. I'm not sure if thats a localization thing or what.

Good: There is a decent variety of options in all types of items. Also decent amount of enemy types, except some palette swapping but what game doesn't use this?
Bad: Is it me, or is the axes useless? I mean, their hit percentage is downright awful! I've never hit anything.


Difficulty: 7
If this was a console game - i'd say 9. There is no save feature. You better save your state before you try on that random new item you acquired, it could just be very unlucky. The wrong turn or the wrong random starting room can leave you up to your armpits in enemies. Expect to take some lumps learning which enemies are easier and which you should avoid for awhile.  You have to find the one staircase on the floor to go up. And if you run into a pit, you fall back down a level. If you die, its game over, but depending on how far you got, you might be able to continue with a bit of penalties.  There are also secret doors to contend with. If you don't know anything about those, you might think your game is broken!

Good: Once you start leveling up, the game is not that bad. If you luck out and get a great item early, enjoy flattening the foes for awhile.
Bad: This is special, because I found two big problems: 

1) Difficulty curve for the newbie. I have played rogue-likes before, but I died 4 times before I could get to a decent start. Haha!  This game starts you off with almost no support. A flimsy knife, and maybe enough food to last a few levels. It would have been nice to start off with just the first level having some simple enemies to start with. If you run into the red worm/ rolling things on the first level, you might be in big trouble - those guys are tough for a few levels. Run!
2) The hit rate is semi-ridiculous. If you have a spear, you're going to hit your foe but do weak damage. A sword is decent damage and misses are still fairly common. An axe seems to never find its target enough to make it worthwhile. Sometimes you will just trade dodges with an enemy for minutes!  Such as this: You missed! Parry enemy attack! You missed! Parry enemy attack! And on and on. 

My deaths: 
Death 1 - red rolling guys at level 1? Two are probably gonna kill you.
Death 2 - Cursed sword as my first item. I miss constantly, and die.
Death 3 - Wheres the exit? The game is broke? reset i guess...
Death 4 - Spawn into a room full of monsters on the 2nd level. Yikes!

My starting advice? 
Avoid those red rolling guys. And click the button to look for secret doors, they pop up a lot. Don't forget to put on new gear- but first and foremost, SAVE OFTEN.

Overall: 7
I love rogue-likes, and this is still a good game. One of the first for consoles if not THE first. Its fun, and has lots of enemy types and some pretty neat gear to get that reflects a change in your character's appearance. What I didn't like is there's no easing into this game. You might get a crappy hand dealt to you for multiple games until you find a decent starting set of equipment.
This is a tough love game. You will love it, but it will spank you mercilessly until you figure out its quirks.  If you stick with it, you can laugh in the face of the FATAL LABYRINTH!

Each time I find a different review of yours, I just get more and more impressed. You went into such much detail in this one, and talked about your own gaming experience with this game. I am honestly not sure if I have ever seen that done before. 

You know, whenever staff apps roll around again, you should try applying for it. I think you would be an excellent review writer. 

thing1 : Thanks! I like mixing up the styles, some i put best/worst comments, some i talk about parts of the game. It helps make it not seem formulaic for me.  I love your layout picture, its structured perfectly to not get in the way of your text!

So note to self: avoid this game to prevent unnecessary game stress

Great review man! I really like how descriptive you are into putting lots of details for me to get a general sense and relation to this game. The story and difficulty sections are the best parts that I have seen yet because you put both the best parts and the worst parts of the game. Not many people do this and they end up making their reviews one sided. It is important to try to make the game review double sided rather than one sided. I learned an important lesson from you and I should follow this advice, avoid any red rolling guy. I will stick that to my head.

I have never played this game or play the system of this game but I do have a sense of this game is about. That is a definite bonus! Thank you for the good read and review especially to a person like me who never touched this game or play the system.

ghostfishy : Your mario party review (and a great version of that game, at that) is textbook example greatness!

Why thank you very much, fellow game reviewer! I have played other versions of Mario Party so there could be a possibility of me reviewing about the other games in the Mario Party series as well.

Keep up with your good work, good sir!