Project Moon’s new occultic sequel, Limbus Company, is now available on mobile and PC. It’s the highly anticipated continuation (but still an excellent entry-point) to classic hits (scoring 9/10 on Steam), Lobotomy Corporation, and Library of Ruina. These games are known for delivering a gruesomely dark story, high mechanical complexity, all tied together with exceptional writing and beautiful hand-drawn art. A lot of care is placed in this series, and for the first time, you can experience the brilliance behind Project Moon on your favorite Android phone. Of course, due to the deep and complex game mechanics, we’ve created a handy beginner’s guide to help players get acquainted with Limbus Company’s core gameplay.
How to play Limbus Company
The story unfolds in stages, and entering/clearing each stage consumes Enkephalin, which recharges over time and increases with manager levels.
Tap Drive to select the stage; each chapter has a set of stages that include narrative, battles, and sometimes dungeons. Completing these nets rewards like Lunacy, the currency needed for acquiring more sinners.
Acquiring and deploying sinners
The sinners are units that fight in battle. Leveling these units makes them more potent, while uptying (upgrading the tier) adds stronger skills and abilities. You can review every sinner’s skill effects, passives, attack types (slash, pierce, or blunt), and amount of skill copies by tapping and holding the sinner’s portrait in the Sinners menu. Portraits outline the sinner’s typing or affinity with one of the seven sins (wrath, envy, pride, etc.).
Tap on Extract and choose a limited-run banner or standard extraction (permanent banner) to begin the gacha.
You need Lunacy to extract or extract ten times with a ticket. Please note this game has gacha, but the gacha system is much more forgiving since Limbus Company is primarily a story-driven experience.
How to battle in Limbus Company
The best analogy for how the overall battle system works is that it plays like a card game. You choose your hand, the starting sinners for every battle, and these units all have a typing that adds to your resource meter, and building up the meter grants the E.G.O, the ultimate ability. But just like a deck of cards, each will have values determining offensive power, defensive power, and special effects that can turn the tides of the battle.
Chaining skills and activating resonance
Matching 3 of the same color (skills) causes absolute resonance, where the total damage of that skill increases. Dealing damage reduces the enemy’s HP causing them to stagger; staggered enemies will have their physical resistance reduced to enable fatal blows. Finally, remember that three attack types, slash, pierce, and blunt, work like a rock-paper-scissors system for how strong or weak your attacks/enemy attacks will become.
Guarding, evading, and sanity explained
Outside of attacking, you can guard (take less damage based on shield value), counterattack (unopposed attacks generating affinity resources), and evade (avoid attacks if the evade value is higher than the enemy’s attack — could still take the full strike if lower). These defensive abilities may save you from a lethal blow against unfavorable matchups.
Be aware that actions in battle may deplete the sanity meter, which means the affected sinner may go berserk and not follow command inputs.
Unleashing E.G.O and gathering resources
E.G.Os deal devastating blows but may require consecutive turns to build up to; each unit has its own E.G.O and needs resources to unlock. You gain affinity resources by attacking with skills corresponding to that affinity type. So by turns 3 and 4, a sinner’s portrait will highlight when they’ve acquired sufficient resources to unleash their E.G.O.
For example, to activate the E.G.O Crow’s Eye View requires 1 point of wrath and 3 points of sloth. You need to use sinners with wrath (red) and sloth (yellow) skills to acquire these points; before each battle, plan the affinities by checking the numbers listed by the sin symbols.
Targeting
During stages 1-11, a tutorial teaches you how to target specific Abnormalities (enemies). Selecting favorable and dominating matchups is the best way to deal damage; eventually, you’ll encounter bosses that require destroying body parts that all have unique affinities and power levels.
Limbus Company is an exhilarating experience on Android
Limbus Company prides itself on being a narrative-driven, mechanically focused game though the story is certainly not for the faint of heart. However, this one shouldn’t be skipped if you’re already a fan of occult horror themes on Android. Unfortunately, the game has had a bit of a shaky start, but thankfully Project Moon is rolling out performance fixes — which is why we’ve given it the green light by including the download below.
