Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society

This review is to help people who don't know whether to start with Galleria or Refrain. I've played both (400+ hours worth) & have some insight that may help you make that decision. Which you choose largely doesn't matter if you just want a super fun, grindy, turn based dungeon crawler. Both games are equally fun in that regard. In fact I'd go so far as to say they are my two favourite dungeon crawlers bar none. Where they differ is mostly in small QOL differences and level design. It is a matter of personal preference, though mine may help you decide if you choose one or the other.
I'll start with Labyrinth design as that is the majority of the game. Refrain's labyrinth is more enjoyable to explore for several reasons. The first being it was less confusing initially. During the first and second map sets of Refrain I got confused and lost far fewer times than I did when doing the first two maps of Galleria. Galleria's first set of maps seem purposefully obtuse to stump players and artificially inflate play times, where as Refrain's first set of maps are pretty easy to figure out and keep you engaged for longer, giving you time to bond with the characters and world without getting frustrated immediately.
Artistically, the design of the backgrounds, textures, environments, breakable objects and chests in Refrain all scream creativity and quality. Galleria is nicely designed as well, but I found the areas very "samey", particularly in the infamous second half of Galleria. Refrain does not suffer from this problem with back to back environments being wildly different. Galleria is also more vertically challenging ie going up and down stairs to get around blockages and unlock secrets, where as Refrain's maps seem larger and more spread out with fewer stairwells and pit falls.
Galleria's Labyrinth rating = 8
Refrain's Labyrinth rating = 9.5
The differences in quality of level design between the two games are barely discernible, but they are there and IMO Refrain is the clear winner.
Refrain's maps are, overall, more engaging to interact with (particularly from an ADHD player perspective) ie finding little holes in the walls to crawl into to escape enemies or find loot, or needing to speak to a ferryman to help get you across the swamp map. These instances are small but numerous and add up to a labyrinth I feel has more charm. Galleria's maps have their own charms and oddities as well don't get me wrong and I enjoyed the hell out of the game no question, Galleria just isn't as weirdly satisfying as Refrain is to play for me.
Switches/Buttons are another place I feel Refrain excels. Their designs are more varied from map to map than Galleria's and visually indicate their "status" (ie activated/not activated) better. A pull chain that has been pulled down and has changed color indicates that that "button" has been activated far better than the barely perceptible change in depth of the buttons you are working with in Galleria. I do like that Galleria indicates with a flashing circle which door the button unlocked, an improvement over Refrain which does not provide this secondary visual indicator for buttons/locked doors.
These games do take place in the same world, though they are barely connected. There are subtle nods in each to the other but that is it and you really have to be involved in the story and world lore to even notice them anyway. I will say the story elements are way more enjoyable in Galleria; the concept the excecution and the characters are all much more interesting and fun to learn about. I prefer the characters in Galleria more than in Refrain for sure, though Dronya, Luca, Mareietta, Neldo and the rest all have their unique...charms...
The voice acting is good in both games so that's a big plus! Both games have a horror undertone to them and in Galleria a few things happen near the end of the first half that did shock me a bit, though I won't spoil them here. Not that it matters much but in case this floats your boat, both games have Yuri/lesbian undertones and light sexual situations that are cute/funny when they appear. These elements were largely toned down in the translation of Refrain but Galleria's translation seems to be pretty faithful to the original.
Female main characters are the name of both games really and both games pass the Bechdel test :)
Sound effects carry over from Refrain to Galleria with a few small exceptions that aren't very noticeable, though when it comes to music I prefer Galleria's. As an ASMR fan, I found turning all the music off and just walking around in the labyrinth was satisfying to my ears as the footstep sound effect is *chef's kiss*
The combat systems work nearly the same in both games! One noticeable difference in combat between the two games is Refrain's lack of enemy health bars. Galleria has health bars however lists them as "unknown" until you've defeated that enemy type at least once. As the first game in the series Refrain does an excellent job gradually introducing game mechanics to the player, both in tutorial pop-ups and in the story itself. Galleria does this also, just to a lesser degree story-wise, relying more heavily on one time pop-ups you are free to read later if you are confused. The learning curve in Refrain is far gentler to the player then in Galleria, though that makes sense given Galleria is the 2nd instalment in a series with mechanics upon mechanics upon mechanics. There is a certain level of presumptuousness in Galleria that the player is familiar with all of them from the first game. As Galleria was actually my introduction to the series, not Refrain, perhaps my view is a bit skewed as I went in without prior knowledge of the series and found it to be a bit steep in terms of learning curve. I was comparing it at the time to other games in the genre like Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi rather than Refrain.
One area Galleria has Refrain beat is in puppet creation/unit creation. There are simply more options and little things you can tweak such as color that help make each soldier you create unique. It's not a big deal until you get into the later game, but in Refrain I found I was making essentially duplicate puppets with different names to fill out my covens as I had already used all the soldier designs (each facet/soldier type only has 3 maybe 4 portrait options where Galleria gives you this, plus additional color options within those initial visual options to choose from.) I'm still unsure what choosing a puppets favorite food or animal does to them overall in Galleria as it is not explained, though just like with a units lucky number, I'm sure it can affect small situational stat-based things behind the scenes.
All in all both games are incredibly addictive no matter how you look at them. I can't recommend them highly enough, especially if grinding levels to get an OP team and smashing through games like these is your preferred way to play. You can essentially auto-battle your way through normal mode, with the exception of a few boss fights you might actually need to be strategic about. For some folks this might be a turn off and for those people you are free to micro manage and plan out every battle with your units. My focus when playing has been largely to work on making covens that sync up well together and beef my units that way, strategically speaking, rather than micro manage them by issuing commands to each unit during every battle. I just like auto battle functionality in games, especially grind heavy games like this where the flow of the game essentially becomes: Dive into labyrinth, explore until you can't progress anymore due to a big boss monster in your path, proceed to grind for hours until your team can beat the boss, progress until you can't anymore due to big boss monster, rinse repeat.
For those that want to grind efficiently I have a guide available Here

A great wizardry-like that improved on many of the gameplay elements of its predecessor, Labyrinth of Refrain. Ignore my playtime on this series as I played somewhere else for far too many hours then ported my saves over.
---Weirdness out of the way first---
I would have played these games years ago, as I really like wizardry-likes. However the really (what I thought was) cheap and crude artwork for the box art and advertisements really turned me off! I feel like I am taking crazy pills because the actual in-game art is some of the best I've ever seen for this genre!
---Understanding other reviews---
This game is essentially divided into 3 parts, with the first and last being the size of a fairly large individual game. The first third you could easily spend over 100 hours on without using a guide. If you didn't know about the other 66% of the game, a normal playthrough the game would stop there as the game ends, credits and all, at that point. The first third really is a full game - you can easily get your characters to max level and more (I was level 80).
To progress to need to 100%, more or less, the first third. I don't mind the idea of this, but the game doesn't really spell this out and if you were playing this without a guide or reading social media you'd think it ended there. This, combined with the fact that the fact that the game does a temporary soft reset at that point is a bit controversial to say the least.
---Review---
Galleria is fairly wizardry-like: your party members have static portraits, though are fully voiced, while enemies have basic movement animation and blink while they attack. The gore system from the last game is refined to the point where it is no longer annoying and you won't have a party member gored every other full party attack - in refrain there were some times where a single turn took 5 minutes it was so slow. That refinement along with the new battle speed option makes grinding annoyance-free.
The first third is a very traditionally story-driven where for most of it you are using 5 party members then about halfway you'll gradually move towards using 15. The second half is where randomly-generated dungeons and the second half of the class types come in and the story goes in for some twists and turns, and the last half brings the first two halfs together and ramps up the difficultly... with an asterisk. That asterisk being is that this game has far too many systems going on that the developers clearly lost track of, and if you take advantage of all of them the game becomes far, far too easy. However, they are poorly explained, or in some cases, not explained at all... especially how they synergize together.
There is a lot of class variety, twice as much as refrain which is great. The monsters are still really well drawn, though the designs aren't as edgy or out there as refrain which is a personal dissapointment. There's nothing like a (duck?) with a BDSM getup next to a oversized lavishly-drawn sultry half-apparition girl straddling a sword sadly.
The story is still quite good, though not as good as refrain. Refrain's started out a bit dark then became really, really dark and twisted by the end. That game really committed to its story. This one is decent enough in the first third, though it is very light hearted until the end of the first third and really could've been an E rated game easily, and never has any of the multiple "oh s*%*" moments refrain had. It also does this thing lazy writers do where it leaves about a million questions up the air only to answer them in very, very rushed fashion at the very end of the last act of the game.
The english voice acting is nice for most characters except euro where they make her sound like 4 instead of 16 which irked me. The one playing the older witch is really, really good. The music is a mixed bag; the battle theme in refrain was a banger and they have multiple battle themes here but somehow they seem much less inspired.
Unlike some, I really liked the soft reset and a change to a steampunk aesthetic for the second third of game, as well as the randomly-geneated dungeon. There were a lot of little issues, that together really add up though. For one the dungeon generation isn't the greatest and really should've been given better boundries as I've had two-room floors and absolutely massive ones, as well as sometimes on new floors it'll put me in a room with no doors so I was forced to spend reinforce or mud out. Also they really needed about twice the enemy variety they had - there's literally 2 enemy types for about first 16 floors or so.
Towards the end of the last third of the game the difficultly really ramps up, and unless you are exploiting multiple poorly-explained systems you will have a really rough time. Like nearly monster you meet doing full party attacks that do more than your max hp kind of thing.
--Game Length--
To give you an idea just how long this game is: Refrain was already a really, really long game. Right now some in the games media are complaining about the upcoming indiana jones game having 4 hours of cutscenes. Refrain had about 9 hours of cutscenes for an average reader! Galleria has nearly 16 hours, all fully voiced! The game is absolutely massive!
--Wrapping Up--
The gameplay is more refined here. However, the story, edgy enemy designs, and difficulty balancing of refrain was better. However, I can't really go back to refrain and wait 5 minutes a turn where it slooowly does 6 full party attacks a turn slooowly spending several seconds on character getting attacked, so in that aspect it is nearly unplayable. If you had refrain with the gore system and battle speed updates, and maybe a couple extra randomly generated dungeons thrown in that would be bliss.

If you have an interest in this game, it's a pretty easy recommend both for people who have played the first Labyrinth title and people who haven't. The 2 games both have standalone stories, so you don't need to play the first one to understand the story for this one.
Labyrinth of Galleria makes a lot of improvements from Refrain, both from a QoL and general gameplay standpoint. Previous issues like not having a bestiary, no autosave, not having access to in-game tutorials, etc. are all issues that have been fixed in Galleria, and while there are still a few strays that didn't get fixed, it is overall a HUGE improvement and makes for a much smoother experience.
Gameplay has also seen some much needed improvements with new mechanics that round out some of the rough edges from Refrain. Stun is an actual bar that you fill up now by attacking instead of just something you can randomly proc sometimes. Classes feel more unique now by having active skills that are unique to them. The player character has some nice new exploration focused skills now that smooth out dungeon crawling. The list goes on.
Overall, while I love Refrain I find Galleria an easier recommend for people who want to give the series a shot without committing to both titles immediately, these are pretty long games after all. Both games have fantastic stories that are well worth experiencing, but Galleria is just a cleaner package overall.
Also this game has a cat class. Play it. Now.

If you liked Labyrinth of Refrain, chances are you'll like this one too.

Warning: this game is LONG and features many frustrating mechanics.
I'm recommending it because it genuinely is a neat experience underneath all that.

The dungeon exploration and combat gameplay have gotten a massive upgrade
and finding your way around is half the fun, if a bit confusing- as exploration should be.
Sadly the story feels very weird, and there are bits in there that make me wonder
if the localizers did some foul play with translation. (I.e put in whatever they wanted instead)

P.S that stuff some people mention about "losing your puppets"? it's just temporary.
you get them back.

I pirated this game in the past and I had a fun time with it, so I bought the game for real.
For a person who played the Etrian Odyssey games in the 3ds and DS like me, I would suggest you give this one a try or try the first game when its on sale, since the first game is cheaper when it sales.

Completed true end, 100% achievements. Man oh man. What a game. Overall, an incredible experience with some (legitimate) gripes that can cause some extreme dips in enjoyment.

+ An absolutely insane story that twists and turns to a degree I was not ready for. I don't just mean insane in the pace or twists. I mean legit insane. It will even prey on your confusion as a player in what it keeps from you. It hits mature themes and surprises you with content fitting its M rating. Be ready to be stunned. It does not shy away from its rating.
+ Dungeon design and challenge is amazing. I felt great exploring the (premade) dungeons. Finding the curios was an adventure I was driven to complete. I have gripes about the randomized dungeons below.
+ Art design is great for enemy and players, though facets could have used more color options.
+ Combat is deep and involved, continues to evolve in complexity even dozens of hours in.
+ Facets (job system) were all super unique and fun to experiment with.

OST is pretty standard fair for Nippon Ichi. If you've heard a Disgaea OST, you've heard a variation of this.

- Randomized dungeon design does not present enough unique charm or challenge to be engaging. All floors feel the same, even when the colors on the walls change. This would be fine, until you see how many floor of it you have to go through.
- Skill system is obtuse and hidden behind menu of menus, and it's critical to success. It needed more work.
- When reincarnating puppets, it doesn't easily keep track of prior facets that puppet has been without a ton of menus or personal record keeping by the player. Multiply that by keeping track of it across 40 puppets by the end of the game, and you see the issue.
- 3-attacker covens are how most people will want to play, but the offerings for them are slimmer to others without tradeoffs for less-attacker covens being worth it (imo)
- Difficulty spikes and bosses that require a VERY SPECIFIC and VAGUE set of conditions to fulfill (IYKYK)

Overall, I was a fan of Coven of Dusk, and Etrian Odyssey games. If you're in that vein like me, you already know you will enjoy this. I will admit, I put it down very close to the end hitting a boss gate, but gave it a rest for a month or two and drove it home happily. It has moments of fairly high frustration on what otherwise has an amazing level of engagement and polish.

I say in the end "Recommend", because if we ever see a third Labyrinth of Galleria game, this game has convinced me that I would want to give it a shot. With some UI fixes and dungeon design rethinks, this game would have easily been one of the best to ever do it. They're very close to dominating this space, with a strong showing from The Moon Society.

One of the most heartfelt and heartbreaking stories I've had the pleasure of experiencing. This game is a once in a lifetime experience despite its flaws. 9/10