Replica was an utter and complete surprise. It’s an obscure South Korean indie title that is carefully constructed to be both an entertaining short story with multiple endings and an excellent social commentary on the future of technology and big government. It was even more surprising to find out that it was only the beginning of developer Somi’s “Guilt Trilogy”. Now we’re back to talk about the second game in that trilogy, Legal Dungeon, published by Playism.
Legal Dungeon is both entirely in-line with the concept of Replica and also a complete divergence. Replica takes place entirely within the smartphone of a single character. Legal Dungeon instead puts you in the shoes of Jane Blue, a Lieutenant and new team leader in the Central Police Station’s Criminal Division II. Your job is to take over as Team Leader and sift through evidence in cases in order to ensure that the accused are rightfully convicted. In other words, you’re a paper pusher!
If you think being a bureaucratic police functionary sounds a bit tedious, well, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The vast preponderance of Legal Dungeon involves you sifting through pages of text testimony and finding salient points that reinforce the judgments you are making. But this isn’t Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Your job is to put the accused behind bars and raise the conviction rates for your department and if you screw up, they go free. No linear pathways for you!
In Legal Dungeon, you’ll be presented with an entire case file. The crime is detailed, the testimony is presented, the background files are available and you are given a series of prompts. Find the correct items within the testimony to build your case and once you have amassed enough evidence and linked that evidence to previous cases to determine precedent (all done by simply clicking on the correct sections of the case file) then it’s time to interrogate the accused by entering the Legal Dungeon.
Your interrogation takes place in the Legal Dungeon, a small window on the right hand side of the screen and is shown as isometric views of Jane and the accused in each case. For every correct response, a sword rises up and stabs them visibly, knocking off hit points. For every wrong answer, the accused manage a rebuttal, stabbing you back. The dungeon ends when either you or the accused are reduced to zero hit points.
Once that happens, a verdict is rendered and you get to watch while the court system processes your conclusions and interrogation and decides whether to support or overturn it as well as finding out what happens to the accused. Depending on the outcome, your performance ranking may go up or down, you may gain additional hit points, and your department may come out looking better when evaluations roll around depending on your Precise Legal Execution Level. Fail and it might be game over and you’ll have to go back to the start of the case to try again.
In between each case there are discussions by your team (you never talk though, Final Fantasy protagonist syndrome or something) about the cases, the state of the department, and why this thing or that thing is utter BS. Honestly, Somi has done an amazing job making the banter sound human and realistic, much like a real police station’s shop talk (and yes, some of us have spent enough time in them to know) only much, much more sinister. Let’s not mince words, you aren’t working for the good guys and while this might be the way police talk in some instances, it’s certainly not the content that they would normally discuss. This isn’t the place for that discussion though.
Now at this point you might be wondering why any of this is at all interesting. There are no real visuals to the game aside from the actual Legal Dungeon and even that is limited at best. This is a game that’s essentially entirely text based with no character images, no backgrounds, no visuals of the crimes, nothing. Just old-style ‘80s computer text, a ton of stuff to read and click on, and some interesting and rather disturbing cases. That’s the key here though. Legal Dungeon is, at its heart, a social commentary on the dangers of legal system and the way they prosecute ‘criminals’. As you wind your way through the data, ensuring that a crime has been committed and reading the words of each defendant, you start to wonder if what they have done is a crime at all. Do they deserve the rather harsh sentence that is mandated by the National Police System and the Prosecution Office? Are you, a police Lieutenant, a good person? What happens if you change your approach? Will it affect the service? Will it affect the accused? Which way is the best way?
This deeper philosophical subtext is the real meat of Legal Dungeon. This is a game that succeeds not because it’s incredibly fun, but because it’s fascinating and it truly makes you think. Sure, there’s some humor injected, especially with the Bacon Shits of the first practice case, but really, you’re meant to be thinking about the actual justice system. Should you be able to be jailed for throwing your meal at someone out of frustration? In some countries you definitely can be. What’s the difference between arresting someone for taking a free item and executing them for not having a beard? Or mandating legal constraints on how they use their own body. Just as in Replica, Somi has shown mastery of the current events of the world in a way that seems much like a simple text-based video game with some fun light elements around the edges but manages to shine a harsh spotlight on inequity in our legal systems. Pretty impressive considering that this is an entirely made-up legal system!
It’s obvious that Legal Dungeon wasn’t really designed for the Xbox. This is definitely a game that would be better with a touch screen to zip back and forth between pages of documents and tap on highlighted text. But it’s more than playable on a traditional console as well, and the content of the game itself more than makes up for any small amount of patience required to navigate without tactile controls.
Normally there would be an entire section of a review on visuals and sound, but Legal Dungeon is about as minimalist as things get. There are a few fun little tidbits thrown in, such as the store to buy different icons and the cutesy kawaii look of the virtual assistant but by and large, this is all text, all the time. The point here is to make you feel like you have no good choices either and lovingly detailed animations and characters would ruin that. It doesn’t matter how you feel about the defendants. It doesn’t matter how you feel about the system. You are a cog in the machinery of the National Police System and cogs keep turning. They turn until they break, or in this case, fail. If Legal Dungeon leaves a bit of a sour taste in your mouth, then it has done its job.
That being said, Legal Dungeon is definitely not the game for just anyone. This is a very text-heavy experience that requires critical thinking and a degree of insight to experience and there’s not a lot of payoff in visuals or overall gameplay. If you’re not up for that, it’s understandable. Not everyone will be, and that’s a shame because this is an important game for these times. Somi deserves some real credit for boldness here and while it isn’t the most exciting game out there, Legal Dungeon is subtly smashing game boundaries by changing the way we use games as a medium. That’s really something. If that’s your kind of experience, you owe it to yourself to check out Legal Dungeon (and Replica while you’re at it!). For ten bucks, it’s definitely an experience you won’t soon forget.
This review was based on a digital copy of Legal Dungeon provided by the publisher. It was played on an Xbox Series X. Legal Dungeon is also available on Switch, PS4, mobile platforms, and Steam.