Video Game / Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

"Go forth and conquer the unexplored underground Labyrinth of Refrain!"

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk, or Coven and Labyrinth of Refrain in Japan, is a first-person Dungeon Crawler RPG developed by Nippon Ichi. It was initially released in Japan for the Play Station Vita in 2016, ported to the PlayStation 4 in 2017, and localized for the PC, PS4, and Nintendo Switch in 2018.

In the game, you play as the Tractatus de Monstrum (Tractie for short). Or rather, you play a disembodied soul that has been shoved into the aforementioned book, who is used by a witch named Madam Dronya to explore a Labyrinth underneath the town of Refrain, using the labyrinth's magic to animate puppet soldiers that fight monsters for you.

While Labyrinth of Refrain is similar to games like Etrian Odyssey and Demon Gaze, it does several things that set it apart from the crowd. For one thing; party members can be assigned to "pacts", which not only allow you to assign different numbers of characters to a party slot, but also determines what types of donum (magic) they can cast. The game also has no Random Encounters; enemies can be seen on the map at all times, and can be avoided or tackled at the player's leisure.

A sequel, titled Coven and Labyrinth of Galleria was released in Japan in 2020, and was released in early 2023 as Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society in English.

This game contains examples of the following tropes:

• All There in the Manual: In some versions you can read the actual contents of Tractatus de Monstrum, in the descriptions for the trophies.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: Unclean Ornit, the Bonus Dungeon. Each "floor" is based on a previous dungeon in both design and general layout. Might be because they are those worlds, after being devoured by Velkuvrana.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Each Facet and gender has three skins each. Several locked chests contain "Third Palette" items, which unlock the fourth skins.
• Apocalyptic Log: There are messages left inside the dungeons, many of which take this format. It's implied they're written by the same person who wrote the Tractatus de Monstrum, AKA Calamity Witch Furia, as they travel through the labyrinth. Taking them together with the contents of the book, it provides hints on what their journey was like.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Played with. You have 5 party slots, but each party is a "coven" created by a pact. Similar to how Soul Nomad & the World Eaters had squads with effects and different positioning slots, each pact has 1 to 3 "attacker" slots and 0 to 6 "support slots" that do nothing but enable magic, get experience, and activate the given support slot's abilities. Each slot can give buffs, debuffs, exp bonuses and penalties, et cetera. At the same time, covens share DP (the game's mana system) and spell availability is based on the pact.
• Bad Future: The future where Velkuvrana hatched and fully matured. Mezzaluca and her companions send you to the past so you can defeat it while it's still a weak newborn.
• Beef Gate: You can access the lower half of Campanula as soon as you get the Wall Break ability. However, the monsters you encounter there will probably quickly murder your entire party. You're not supposed to go there until much later.
• Bizarro Elements: The three magical elements are Flame, Mud, and Fog. While Mud and Fog may seem weird, the flavor text of the spells explain the three are just different forms on Mana. Flame is ignited Mana, Mud is Mana in the form of liquid, and Fog is Mana in the form of gas.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Some Pacts have their descriptions be different than what the actual effects are. For example, the Charmer Pact description says it subtracts 50% of Charm from other stats, when the actual effect is the beneficial adding 50% of Charm value to other stats. Another Pacts description says it increases drop rate according to Luck, when it's based on Karma instead.
• Bonus Dungeon: Unclean Ornit AKA the insides of the fully mature Velkuvrana, only available after you defeat the Final Boss under certain conditions. It has 9 large floors, 8 of which are based on previous dungeons. It has some of the toughest enemies, but also has the best Pacts and equipments.
• Came Back Strong: At the start of the game Dronya drops a lamb that Luca tried to adopt into the well. It can be fought on floor 7 of the Cobalt Companula as an Optional Boss.
• Character Class System: The puppets you create each have a class, here called "Facet". Each Facet has its own stats growth, weapon proficiency, and passive skills. By using Soul Transfer, a puppet's level to 1, but you can change their Facet while inheriting some passive skills they've learned, allowing for some degree of customization. There are eights Facets, most of them have male and female variants.
  • Aster Knight is the straightforward physical attacker. It has good physical attack and survivability, but low Donum power. It specializes in using Lances.
  • Shinobushi is the ninja-type class. Its attack power is just average, but it has high Agility and Dexterity which lets them does critical hits often. It's also capable of Dual Wielding weapons. It specializes in using Swords.
  • Theatrical Star has low defense and HP, but its high Charm makes them rarely targetted by enemies, and when they do, its high Agility can let it dodge the attacks. It also has above average Donum Power. It specializes in Bells, letting them hit a group of enemies.
  • Marginal Maze is the Squishy Wizard. Low defense and low speed, but its Donum Power is the highest among all Facets. Surprisingly, it has good HP, so it's not as squishy as it seems. Specializes in using Lamp-type weapons.
  • Peer Fortress is the tank class. High HP and defense, but very slow and next to no magic power. It has many skills that increase the effectiveness of defending, and can even take hits for more fragile allies. Specializes in using Katars.
  • Mad Raptor is the Fragile Speedster Mage Marksman. It has low defense, but above average physical and magical attack power. It's also fast, having skills that increase its battle speed. Specializes in Crossbows.
  • Gothic Coppelia is unlocked halfway through the third dungeon, and it's the only Facet which has Neutral gender. It's a classical Mighty Glacier, with low speed but high attack and defense. It's usually among the last to act but it finally does expect some heavy damage. It specializes in using Hammers.
  • Demon Reaper is unlocked after clearing the fifth dungeon, and it's only available as Female. It's the ultimate Glass Cannon, with very high attack power, but extremely low HP and defense. It specializes in using Scythes, which lets them hit a group of enemies.
• Chunky Salsa Rule: Puppets may take damage to their body parts that take off points from their max hp until you repair them back at the base, but if a Puppet Soldier's head is destroyed, their max HP is reduced to 0, which means you can't revive them until they get repaired.
• Color-Coded Elements: Each of the six damage type are represented with colors.
  • Slash damage is light-blue.
  • Blunt is yellow.
  • Pierce is purple.
  • Flame is red.
  • Mud is green.
  • Fog is greyish-white.
• Continuing is Painful: If you get a total party wipe, you'll be booted back to base without any of the mana you collected, most of your puppet soldiers will lose body parts (forcing you to pay to have them fixed), and you might lose a couple items you had collected. (This can be any item you own, including the paid DLC items, not just items you picked up during that excursion.)
• Critical Existence Failure: Zig-zagged. A Puppet Soldier can continue to fight until it runs out of HP, but "Gore Criticals" can permanently damage a puppet's limbs, reducing max HP until they can be repaired. However, if the head is broken, that puppet is immediately taken out of commission, and in the event of a Total Party Kill random body parts across the team will be shattered.
• Cultural Translation: The skill "Eros" (sexual attractiveness) was culturalized as "Charm" for western markets. This stat makes enemies less likely to attack you, except for certain rare spawns with a certain rare prefix. The name of the rare prefix of monsters that specifically target high "eros" characters? "Hentai." ("Deviant" in the west.)
• Decoy Protagonist: While Dronya is very important, the story of Refrain is ultimately not her story. It's Luca's. This becomes even more important in the postgame, where Soul Witch Mezzaluca runs the show.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • In the first dungeon, there's a spear being lodged on the ground. If you can find a way to pull it out, you're rewarded with a spear weapon that you usually won't find until the fourth dungeon. It can easily one-shot most enemies at this stage unless they're resistant to Pierce.
  • The entrance to lower Campanula is available very early on, but because of the much stronger enemies you won't be able to actually explore it until way later. That is, unless you spam Silver Spoon, which prevents enemies from spawning for a while. If you do this you can find equipments that are way above what you're supposed to have at this point.
• Dual Wielding: Each puppet has a right hand and left hand equip slots, and everyone can equip two one-handed weapons each. However, without Shinobushi's Dual Blade Expert skill, the weapon not in the dominant hand is effectively a Stat Stick. It's better to equip a shield for a chance to guard and nullify damage.
• Eldritch Location: The Labryinth. Not only is it full of monsters, miasma and mana, but it also connects to other dimensions. Refrain itself is also one being a Purgatory for the souls of sinners.
• Everyone Is Bi: As far as your puppets can have sexuality anyway. The highest Rapport a unit can have with another is "Hopelessly in Love", and this is regardless of either units' genders. This might be justified since you can change a puppet's gender anytime with Soul Transfer, and rapports carry over between transfers. Additionally, there's a Pact called Eternal Love, but the requirements are simply the two Attackers be Sun Sign and Moon Sign, with no gender restrictions.
• Experience Booster: Pacts can modify the amount of experience received by each unit slotted into it, both positively and negatively. Some notable Pacts that are useful for grinding:
  • Parasitic Pact severely weakens the two Attackers and make them receive only 20% EXP, but the one Support unit can receive 185%. Symbiotic Pact is a stronger version of Parasitic. It weakens the three Attackers even more and make them receive only 5%, but the Support gets 350%. These two aren't as good as the others but they're available pretty early, and useful for new units to catch-up.
  • The Metal Slime Lord Pinya can drop Heaps of EXP Pact, which makes the one Attacker receive 220% EXP, while the two Supports receive 160%. The even rarer Grand Duke Pinya can drop the better Heaps of EXP G Pact, which has three Attackers receiving 360% EXP and three Supports receiving 220%.
  • The Moonlight Pact, dropped by one endgame boss. The sole Attacker only receives 35% EXP, but the three Supporters get 180%, 220%, and 240% respectively.
  • By far the best experience-boosting Pact is the 666 Pact, which multiplies EXP received by all Attackers and one Support by a whopping 666%. However, you can only get it in the postgame, and only units with even Lucky Number can be assigned to it.
• Fetch Quest:
  • Apprentice's Notes is where Luca put in the requests of the villagers asking for certain items to trade with other items. Several items, like the Frail Pact and Great Sage Key are only available through them. You need to complete all main game requests to fight D.E. Machina, one of the Superbosses needed for the true ending.
  • While exploring the labyrinth, some NPCs will stop you from progressing until you complete their requests. However, you can choose to just kill them instead, in exchange for Karma penalty.
• Fission Mailed: The multiple Dead Ends. There is no actual way to avoid these "Endings", as they are part of the story itself. The alterations on a reload are due to Luca meddling with the course of events after stepping back in time slightly.
  • Enraged by Dronya's glamours apparently not actually being magic, Maylee snatches Dronya's dagger and murders her with it. The game prompts you to save, and suggests doing so in a separate slot, before booting you back to the title screen. Loading this save, expecting a New Game Plus, will instead continue from just before the scene except Dronya is no longer carrying a dagger on her so Maylee simply beats the hell out of her before forcing her to drink a transmutation potion.
  • Later Juliet, hating Dronya for being thought of as a more beautiful woman than her, hires the two guards who had previously attacked Dronya to do so again. They attack her and damage her eyes, leaving them able to rape and murder her, then dispose of the body in the well. The reloaded version of the scene has someone knock over a broom, allowing Dronya to defend herself and drive them away.
  • Once the truth of Refrain is revealed Dronya attempts to escape and ends up falling after her artificial leg gets snagged. Unfortunately this fall shatters her leg, forcing her to drag herself to safety until aided by Nemto. Meanwhile Fritz ends up being caught by an Unclean One, and the personality shift in Nemto as a result has him become like Totopepe, ripping Dronya apart to have his way with his "dolly" and snapping Neldo's neck for trying to save her. The second time around Luca directly accompanies Dronya to keep her leg from breaking and saves Fritz to keep Nemto from going insane.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Trolls aren't really the type to wear pants, or anything else for that matter.
• Game-Favored Gender: Downplayed. In terms of individual stats, male and female variants of each Facet are identical, and there are no gender-specific equipments. However, there are gender-specific Pacts, and there are more female-specific Pacts than male-specific ones. In addition, the Demon Reaper Facet is exclusively female with no male variant.
• Glass Cannon: The Moon Stance turns characters into this, at near Crippling Overspecialization levels. To wit: Moon Stance increases STR and DMP (Physical and Magical Attack) by 30%, increases your weapon mastery by 2 ranks... but reduces your Maximum HP by 40% and gives you a permanent -30 luck penalty (making it far easier to hit you with crits and gore crits). This leads to a character who can do large amounts of damage, if they survive the AOE damage later monsters throw out. If.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Lucky Numbers. The only aspect of the Puppet Soldiers that you cannot change later, Lucky Numbers are left unexplained. Some puppet abilities claim to use them without any details, and some rare pacts require a given number - positive or negative - to use. There is a fairly equal ratio of rare "needs odd" vs "needs even" pacts until the postgame, wherein one particularly useful Level Grinding pact with huge Experience Points boosts can be obtained — which always requires an even number. Thus, experienced players know to only make puppets with even lucky numbers for this late game bonus.
  • The Luck Stat in general is needlessly complicated, and the game never tells you what they do (increase and decrease chances of critical hits/gores, inflicting and recovering of status ailments). Instead of displaying the values outright, the game instead opts to use descriptions like "Despair", "Mediocre", and "Fortunate". There's also how a puppet's initial Luck value is based on their name on creation. And when you do Soul Transfer, there's another calculation on deciding the puppet's new Luck. There's an entire guide on Steam dedicated on explaining all this.
  • You need to beat 6 optional bosses to unlock the The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. While some of these are straightforward, others are either difficult to reach or can only be damaged under very specific circumstances.
  • Umbra and Amadeus have a bit of event flag hunting going on.
• Hard Mode Perks: Playing the game on "nightmare" mode awards more Mana and lowers the exchange rate on Mana you bring into the dungeon, which makes items more likely to drop.
• Heroic Mime: Tractie can't talk, but it can emote in response to dialogue options, similar to The Witch and the Hundred Knight.
• Hero of Another Story: The Great Witches in the postgame. Mezzaluca has had 100 years to fight a losing battle against Velkuvrana alongside them — which you do not see and ultimately barely hear about.
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • You can get the Great Sage's Key around 60% through the main game. If you backtrack to previous dungeons and open the chests locked with this key, you can get equipments that you normally won't get until the regular final dungeon. In addition, these gear are guaranteed to have Legendary rarity. You'll be using the gears for quite a while.
  • Charmer Pact, found as random drops in Umbra, roughly halfway through the game. Despite that it's one of the best Pacts in the game. It has three Attackers and three Support slots. It increases all the stats of the Attacker units depending on their Charm stat. It also has a very good selection of debuffing and damage Donum skills.
  • White Rose Pact, found in a treasure chest in late Rosatempus, is one of the best Pacts in the game and you'll be using it until the end. It has full 8 eight slots, buffs all three Attackers' stats by a whopping 48%, and a very good selection of Donum, including the strongest elemental spells, a full brigade heal, and a buff skill. You can even get a second one through Apprentice's Notes, although that one won't be available until the final dungeon.
• Lilliputians: The second dungeon, Astrom Kingdom, takes place in a kingdom populated by miniature-sized gnomes. To them, you're titans rampaging through their cities. Their houses serve as destroyable obstacles, their tents can be looted for items, and an entire platoon of them is counted as a single enemy.
• Lilliputian Warriors: The gnomes of Astrom Kingdom have a pretty aggressive military that serve as the Mooks of the dungeon. At certain points they'll ask you whether you're hostile or not, but then attack regardless of your answer. They also has various soldiers, from basic platoons, knights riding caterpillars, to hot air balloons. The most disturbing ones are their Titan soldiers, heavily implied to be regular humans they capture, enslave, and lobotomize.
• Macro Zone: Verdant Phenom, the fourth dungeon, takes place in a forest where you've been shrunk. Here you can find Ogre Fleas, monsters so small the game needs to show pointer arrows for them, as regular-sized enemies. Pecoros, the weakest monsters in the first dungeon, are now gigantic monstrosities.
• Metal Slime:
  • Ringa Metallia, found in certain areas. They're very resistant to everything except Blunt attacks, and even then have a high chance to Guard against them. They'll escape if you don't kill them fast enough. If you can kill them, however, they give 7800 EXP each. For comparison, entire enemy groups in regular fights hardly reach 5000 EXP until near the end. There's even a special Donum skill whose effect is just killing them.
  • In the Bonus Dungeon, there are Gold Bitterns, a stronger version of Ringa Metallia above. Like the Metallias, they resist everything but Blunt, have high Guard rate, and can escape. In addition, they can use Gold Flash on the first turn to Startle your entire party. However, they drop a whopping 38000 EXP when killed, and they can appear in groups of five.
  • When you're in Mana Over condition, you can encounter Lord Pinya instead of the Reaper. Like Ringa Metallia, they're resistant to anything except Blunt and will run away if not killed quickly. However, it drops 26000 EXP and can drop the Heaps of EXP Pact. Even rarer, is the Grand Duke Pinya, with a whopping 165000 EXP and drops the even better Heaps of EXP G Pact.
• New Game Plus: The game has a traditional NG+ mode, unlocked upon clearing the game. Getting the 6 Black Pages from the Superboss fights in each dungeon unlocks a postgame, during which you can wish to "End Everything," which amusingly immediately ends to the Fission Mailed ending credits and a new cycle.
  • In universe, there are hints that something similar might be going on: The Cold Open of the game, with a pre-designed party ending poorly to a trap in the dungeon, is ignored outright after you play through it once. That is, until Luca calls a sheep "Bah-Bah," which is a name she gave to it during the cold open but not during the real game proper. This is your first hint that something odd is going on, although several other characters mention that this isn't the first time Tractie has been in the dungeon.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Third Palette items actually unlock the fourth skin of the facets. Curiously, in the artbook the unlocked skin is listed as the third, so the actual third skin might be added later in development.
• Optional Boss: Several optional bosses can be found and fought. Defeating them usually drops a unique Pact that can't be found anywhere else.
  • In Campanula you can find Great Fairy Domina. Particular dialogue choices will trigger a boss battle with her. Defeating her will give you a hefty Karma penalty, though. This fight is missable if you did her sidequest first, as she'll simply go away.
  • After clearing Astrom Kingdom, you can find Pecorino, who has been turned into a Titan soldier in the "Labor Camp" area.
  • After the confrontation with King Alice in Umbra, you can find him in his true form as Maggot Alice in one of the basement rooms.
  • At the bottom of Campanula, you can find the White Sheep Tyrant AKA the lamb that Dronya dropped into the well in the prologue.
  • Throughout the labyrinth, you'll find many NPCs that hold items you need to progress. You can decide to fulfill their requests, often in the forms of Fetch Quests, or just fight them and take the items by force. However, this will usually reflect badly on your Karma Meter.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling:
  • A certain room in Melm has a high enemy spawn rate, and they occasionally spawns a single Ringa Metallia.
  • The fifth floor of the second tower in Umbra also has chances to spawn Ringa Metallia, but this time in groups of three or four.
  • In the Bonus Dungeon, the Azu-Umbra floor can spawn Gold Bitterns in groups up to five. This is considered the best grinding spot in the game.
• Playable Epilogue: You beat the Final Boss and clear the main story by the eighth dungeon. Normally you'd get sent straight to New Game Plus afterwards, but if you did certain things you unlock the postgame instead. Here you can tie up one final loose end, that is,helping Mezzaluca defeat the mature Velkuvrana in the Bad Future, by traversing the Bonus Dungeon.
• Player Mooks: Puppet soldiers, whom you can customize and name at your leisure.
• Pre Existing Encounters: Enemies in the labyrinth are depicted as floating black spheres with an eye, and touching them will trigger a fight with the actual group of enemies. Red-eyed enemies are basic enemies and they move randomly. Purple-eyed enemies are stronger and more dangerous, but they move in a fixed pattern. Both types can spot you and chase you around, unless you're overleveled, in which case they'll run instead.
• Random Drop Booster:
  • The more Mana you collect in the dungeons, the higher the enemies' drop rates are. Later on, you get the ability to bring Mana with you into the dungeon for higher drop rates from the start.
  • Some Pacts have effects to increase drop rate based on the assigned unit's Luck. The Treasure Pact is focused on this, with the effect of all four slots being that. It also has two skills to increase drop rate, one affect all enemies and the other only affect one enemy but has bigger effect.
• Relationship Values: Your puppets have "Rapport" with each other. High rapport means higher chance of triggering Echoes and Resonances. Rapport can be increased by battling together, and Theatrical Stars can make the values grow faster. Having a Total Party Kill, however, will lower the team's Rapport.
• Shop Fodder: The "Loot" type items exist either only to be sold, disassembled into Mana, or sometimes turned in for sidequests.
• Shout-Out: One of the "loot" items you can obtain is the Overlord's Ring, which is stated to be prized by demons. In the Disgaea series, the Overlord's Ring is an stat-boosting trinket.
  • Takehito Harada's iconic character, Pleinair Allaprima, makes an appearance as an unlockable appearance of the Demon Reaper, a late game puppet class. Unlike her other incarnations, this variant of Pilenair is Ambiguously Brown, wearing a stripperific outfit (scarf + bikini bottoms + thigh high latex stockings), and dual wields scythes.
  • Similarly, one of the default male Aster Knights is Ash, with a spear.
• Skippable Boss:
  • When you confront King Alice at the end of Umbra, he'll give you a choice to side with or against him. Choosing to side with him will skip his boss fight, and he'll even give you a unique sword that can't be found anywhere else. The plot outcome is the same, however, regardless of whether you fight him or not.
  • At the bottom of Campanula, you'll find the Fairy King. Normally you'll need to fight him. But if you helped Domina back in floor B3, he'll thank you for helping his daughter and give you the items you're looking for without a fight. As a bonus he also gives you a unique weapon that you can't find anywhere else.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Unclean Ornit / Azu-Cardia, the The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. The background music is the same oddly dissonant music from the puppet shows. Until it stops, abruptly.
• Starter Equipment:
  • The single-member Pacts you obtain at the start of the game. They're good for the first dungeon, but you'll quickly ditch them after you start getting more multi-member Pacts.
  • Each newly created Puppet starts with a "Worn" weapon of their specialty (Lance for Aster Knights, Sword for Shinobushi, etc.) and a Brigadeer's Coat as armor. These are the weakest items in their categories.
• Stealth Sequel: Despite not being advertised as such, the game is a Non-Linear Sequel to The Witch and the Hundred Knight, what with it's dark themes, a storyline revolving around witches, and featuring a Heroic Mime playable character who can only emote who is a minion bound to the game's actual main character. It certainly helps that Metallia is a postgame boss.
• Subsystem Damage: Called "Gore Criticals," this is a separate type of critical hit that permanently damages a specific body part. Enemies and Puppet Soldiers each have 5 "spots" — uniquely named for enemies, but they are Legs, Torso, Left Arm, Right Arm, and Head for Puppets. Enemies taking a Gore Critical can have abilities disabled or severely weakened and take massive damage. Puppet Soldiers that take a Gore Critical have the given body part (and it's equipment) disabled, their max HP reduced, and their relevant stats reduced. The exception is the Head slot — taking a gore critical there disables the Puppet Soldier until they can be repaired at base, and instantly kills enemies.
• Superboss: One in each dungeon; Devon, D.E. Machina, Empress Junon, King Pecoro, Overlord Furfur, and Zlavec. You need to defeat all of them in order to access the True Ending. There is also Metallia as a post-game boss.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: For all of the talk about witches and their magics, Dronya (or rather Velnya) is about as mortal as anyone else, and the Dead Ends highlight this with her swift, brutal and rather cruel murders and rapes. It also plays a very nightmarish scene far straighter than one might expect, as Klaus raping her is so traumatic in the details we get that it's anything but clean to be as sickening and inhumane as possible.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: The post-game is one for Luca. Or rather her future self, Mezzaluca. She sent Tractie's soul to the present to prevent Velkuvrana and save her past self and the world, knowing full well that it would have no effect on her Bad Future. After defeating Velkuvrana before it could reach its full power in the main game and learning about the plight of her future self, Luca, with the help of Newton, decides to send Tractie's soul back to the future to give Mezzaluca a fighting chance.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: A particularly nasty one in Phenom. While exploring, you may find one innocuous-looking exclamation mark sign. If you examine it, you'll be forced into a fight with the Superboss of the area, whom you're not supposed to fight until much, much later. You can't escape from the fight either, so you can only watch as the boss annihilates your party. No, there aren't any hints beforehand that this will trigger the fight. It's particularly egregious since the other Superbosses are either well-hidden or have story scenes that make it clear you're not supposed to fight them.
• True Final Boss: At the very end of thr Playable Epilogue, you fight Velkuvrana's Heart. Defeating it triggers another ending, and gives you the achievement for fully completing the game.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Dusken Tanis, the town of Refrain itself, corrupted by the power of Velkuvrana. The final boss location? The Well of Khalaza, the very entrance to the labyrinth.
• Weapon Specialization: There are eight Facets and eight weapon types, with each Facet specializing in one weapon. They use the specialized weapon in their artwork, start with that weapon when created, they have innate S-rank for that weapon, and they have skills that only activate when that weapon is equipped. While any weapon can be equipped to anyone, it's best to stick with their preferred weapon until more customization options open up.
• With This Herring: Played straight for the most part, since you begin the game with only a couple puppet soldiers with weak equipment. Subverted in the Umbra chapter, where the Grand Duchess gives your party several full sets of legendary gear for you to take down King Alice with.
• What Is Evil?: One of the recurring themes in the story is sin and the retribution for that sin. Dronya commits vile acts and pays for them in due time. The denizens of Refrain commit vile acts and pay for them in due time. Tractie even has the option to commit vile acts only to pay for them in due time (either as higher enemy crit rates or as increasingly accrued damage in certain areas). Petrone even brings up this topic as he reveals the truth about Refrain to Dronya. While all the denizens of Refrain are ultimately good people, the fact that they're in a purgatory for sinners must be proof that they're not nearly as good as perceived. That being said, simply rejecting sin is not enough, since in the late game Tractie bears the sins of the denizens of Refrain after hearing their confessions of those sins, thus maxing out its karma. You don't even get rid of the karma gained in the labyrinth through the Scapegoat Witch Petition; instead, you pass it on to a flock of sheep, thus making them the bearers of sin. Dronya and Funa claim that only humans are prone to sin and that taken to its logical extreme, every human is a sinner. Meanwhile, Funa claims that as witches (i.e. as something other than human), Dronya and Funa are exempt from sin and are free to do what they wish, regardless of the consequences. However, they both learn the hard way that no, they are not.

---