Rogue Legacy

I'm not much of a fan of roguelike games since I'm not a fan of spending my leisure time getting my ass handed to me by a game whenever I try to do anything. But, The Binding of Isaac did open my mind to explore the genre a bit more and thanks to a pretty positive review from a friend I was willing to give it a go after +Ahmed Jadaa sent it to me as a gift despite the verbal abuse I gave him about it. I did apologize later though, all was forgiven.

Rogue Legacy is an indie game that found a pretty nice niche to to exploit. I was developed and published by the two brother team at Celler Door Games. Its available to play on all previous and current generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft as well being playable on the PC. I played the game on my PC through Steam.

The moment I realized I might be in over my head.

I think a big factor for me liking Rogue Legacy was that it wasn't a completely roguelike game and it kind of had a bit of room for mercy in the form of the fact that your next character carried over the wealth collected by the previous character. At the death of your current character you would also be allowed to pick from a varied list of 3 descendants (or six descendants if you pick an upgrade) who have different classes, abilities and genetic traits. This was something I enjoyed in the game since the different classes felt different and forced different playstyles. The genetic traits amused me as well since not all of them are beneficial as some are an active hindrance while others are just plain old hilarious to behold. Beyond that, the game stuck to the genre pretty closely. The gold you gather is used to progressively improve you characters so that you get further in the level, its level maps are procedurally generated every time you die, unless you pay to freeze a map temporarily, enemies are plentiful and painful and the boss battles are both a test of skill as they are a test of patience. The New Game + mode also ensures that the game will never end as you can simply reset the game and have it level up to your current level once you beat all the bosses which essentially makes the game infinite.

The artstyle and music choices in the game were most likely picked due to the size of the development team, but they do actually thematically match with the genre of the game. The 16-bit music and graphics are spot on to create that retro feel that most roguelike games go for as that was the time period of harsher games that were designed to keep you playing on your console or eat your quarters up at the arcade. The music was pretty forgettable for me, which I think is a good thing as it means it wasn't overly distracting or get in the way of me trying to play the game. The graphics on the other hand I enjoyed quit a bit since I don't play that many indie games that use this art style so it was a nice change of pace for me and like I said earlier it just felt right in terms of the theme of the game.

The shot of me beating the game in New Game+, I beat both the normal and this play through using female characters +10 to feminism.

While others may pick on Rogue Legacy for being for not being a true roguelike game, I actually feel that its these deviations from the genre that makes it better. The mercy it shows makes it is a far more accessible game than most roguelike games, the fact that wealth is passed on from one character to the next also give you a sense of progression every time you die, not that your deaths will be entirely frustration free. Where would the fun in that be though? I can give this game a pretty solid recommendation to anyone who wants to play it and it should give you a pretty solid 15-18 hours of solid fun, or at least that is what it gave me before I started to get bored of it.