In a old-school game with random-generation, making hand-crafted, interesting dungeons is a hard thing to do sometimes. There's lots of ways to design them; base them around an environmental theme (quicksand, for example), have some sort of gimmick that makes the place unique and stand out from its peers, and can even be given their own set of tiles, floors and walls to make the place stand out visually in comparison to the randomly-generated schlock that you'll find elsewhere. Dungeons like these can - and, in a perfect world, always would - be enjoyably memorable experiences.
Labyrinthian is not one an enjoyably memorable experience. Memorable, yes. Enjoyable, no.
First off, it’s a two-floor dungeon with the Gerudo Training Ground gimmick, ie: you start off very close to your goal (the Staff Piece), but it’s behind two magically locked doors. These locked doors cannot be bypassed with an Unlocking spell (I haven’t tried the Skeleton Key), nor can they be bypassed by using a Passwall (destroy wall) spell on the neighboring blocks. Instead, you are given some backstory: two brothers, long ago, entered the Labyrinthian looking for a treasure hidden there by an ancient mage. They decided to "split up, gang!" (one of them is described as dim; I imagine he'd be the one blind enough to think splintering the group was a good idea), and take each portion alone: one brother explored the eastern section of the dungeon, while the other explored the western section. Each brother eventually died and was turned into a ghost, meant to guard the Keys needed for - what else? - the two magically locked doors.
While it’s good to give the player clear instructions on what to do and where they’ll end up, it’s bad to not allow the player to use what the game allows for. Hell, Passwall can be used in the final dungeon to skip some locked doors. Why not here? Arena, like the rest of the main TES games, is an open-progression game. Who says I couldn’t possibly have access to Passwall at this point? Maybe I just blew off the fate of the Empire for a couple of months and grinded quests for cash and prizes.
Second, the floors are frustrating to navigate. The two brothers each make up one half of the dungeon, and you can go to either section at the start. The problem is that the dungeon contains two things: raised floors and pits. These show up under the same color on your map, meaning that it’s very common to be walking through a pit path and expect to be able to climb up where you need to be, only to find out that that end of the tunnel is actually a raised floor, and you need to go all the way back!
This gets worse on the second floor of the dungeon, which is completely separated into east and west halves. It’s not as problematic in the eastern half, as the east section mostly consists of doors and rooms, and a dangerous area where you must tread carefully or fall into lava (which is actually just damage-dealing water with a sprite change; it even has the same water splash sound). The western half, on the other hand, more than half consists of these raised-tiles/pits, making what will likely be the latter half of the dungeon the player goes through an absolute nightmare to wander through, much less getting to the second needed Key.
Finally, it’s full of enemies that compound the Labyrinthian’s mazelike structure in a terrible way. Spiders are common, and these can cause paralysis. I chose the Knight class, making me immune to being paralyzed, but any other class would have been completely boned without knowing that they’d need Potions of Free Action (unless you were a High Elf, who has a natural immunity). There are also Ghouls, which can impart diseases (which lower stats over time, and if a stat hits 0, you die), and unless you happen to have a Potion or magic item of Cure Disease on hand, you have to struggle your way all the way back to the entrance of the dungeon, go to the closest Temple or Mages Guild, and get a cure. Lastly, there’s Trolls, who can be killed, but automatically revive after a few ingame minutes if not killed by magical means, forcing non-spellcasters (like Knights) to waste precious magic-item charges on enemies, and hoping that the monsters don’t pass their spell save. I’m a level 10/11 character with some of the best armor in the game, a fantastic weapon and great magical accessory doodads, but I’m still having trouble keeping up because the dungeon takes so long.
Maybe my youth is showing here, but this isn’t good game design, especially for the second dungeon of the game (technically fifth if you include the tutorial dungeon and the ones you’re sent to before finding the Staff Dungeon location). Sprawling mazes of dungeons are okay in my book, it’s why I love Daggerfall’s dungeons, but Labyrinthian (or just the game’s map system) is designed in such a way that it’s counter-intuitive to helping the player navigate, and by making the dungeon so large, it adds up to potentially hours of real time spent completely lost and trying to figure out where the damn staircase is. This is doubly counter-intuitive to the player because of the enemy choice, which can actively force the player to have to navigate out of the dungeon, but the map is so poor and the dungeon is so large that they can’t get out.
Labyrinthian is not one an enjoyably memorable experience. Memorable, yes. Enjoyable, no.
First off, it’s a two-floor dungeon with the Gerudo Training Ground gimmick, ie: you start off very close to your goal (the Staff Piece), but it’s behind two magically locked doors. These locked doors cannot be bypassed with an Unlocking spell (I haven’t tried the Skeleton Key), nor can they be bypassed by using a Passwall (destroy wall) spell on the neighboring blocks. Instead, you are given some backstory: two brothers, long ago, entered the Labyrinthian looking for a treasure hidden there by an ancient mage. They decided to "split up, gang!" (one of them is described as dim; I imagine he'd be the one blind enough to think splintering the group was a good idea), and take each portion alone: one brother explored the eastern section of the dungeon, while the other explored the western section. Each brother eventually died and was turned into a ghost, meant to guard the Keys needed for - what else? - the two magically locked doors.
While it’s good to give the player clear instructions on what to do and where they’ll end up, it’s bad to not allow the player to use what the game allows for. Hell, Passwall can be used in the final dungeon to skip some locked doors. Why not here? Arena, like the rest of the main TES games, is an open-progression game. Who says I couldn’t possibly have access to Passwall at this point? Maybe I just blew off the fate of the Empire for a couple of months and grinded quests for cash and prizes.
Second, the floors are frustrating to navigate. The two brothers each make up one half of the dungeon, and you can go to either section at the start. The problem is that the dungeon contains two things: raised floors and pits. These show up under the same color on your map, meaning that it’s very common to be walking through a pit path and expect to be able to climb up where you need to be, only to find out that that end of the tunnel is actually a raised floor, and you need to go all the way back!
This gets worse on the second floor of the dungeon, which is completely separated into east and west halves. It’s not as problematic in the eastern half, as the east section mostly consists of doors and rooms, and a dangerous area where you must tread carefully or fall into lava (which is actually just damage-dealing water with a sprite change; it even has the same water splash sound). The western half, on the other hand, more than half consists of these raised-tiles/pits, making what will likely be the latter half of the dungeon the player goes through an absolute nightmare to wander through, much less getting to the second needed Key.
Finally, it’s full of enemies that compound the Labyrinthian’s mazelike structure in a terrible way. Spiders are common, and these can cause paralysis. I chose the Knight class, making me immune to being paralyzed, but any other class would have been completely boned without knowing that they’d need Potions of Free Action (unless you were a High Elf, who has a natural immunity). There are also Ghouls, which can impart diseases (which lower stats over time, and if a stat hits 0, you die), and unless you happen to have a Potion or magic item of Cure Disease on hand, you have to struggle your way all the way back to the entrance of the dungeon, go to the closest Temple or Mages Guild, and get a cure. Lastly, there’s Trolls, who can be killed, but automatically revive after a few ingame minutes if not killed by magical means, forcing non-spellcasters (like Knights) to waste precious magic-item charges on enemies, and hoping that the monsters don’t pass their spell save. I’m a level 10/11 character with some of the best armor in the game, a fantastic weapon and great magical accessory doodads, but I’m still having trouble keeping up because the dungeon takes so long.
Maybe my youth is showing here, but this isn’t good game design, especially for the second dungeon of the game (technically fifth if you include the tutorial dungeon and the ones you’re sent to before finding the Staff Dungeon location). Sprawling mazes of dungeons are okay in my book, it’s why I love Daggerfall’s dungeons, but Labyrinthian (or just the game’s map system) is designed in such a way that it’s counter-intuitive to helping the player navigate, and by making the dungeon so large, it adds up to potentially hours of real time spent completely lost and trying to figure out where the damn staircase is. This is doubly counter-intuitive to the player because of the enemy choice, which can actively force the player to have to navigate out of the dungeon, but the map is so poor and the dungeon is so large that they can’t get out.