Welcome to the first real post on my blog… thing. You know how some games like to make you feel like you’re this unstoppable bad ass who wrestles bulls for a light workout and who doesn’t need to fear failure. Rogue Legacy is only half of that. You don’t really need to fear failure because you’re descendants are going to replace you, but you most certainly aren’t an invincible super soldier.
The very premise of Rogue Legacy is an intriguing one. You enter a castle and kill the inhabitants. Ok, that’s not really that interesting, but it’s the way you do this that makes it so novel (unless you’ve played Infinity Blade). You see, every time you die, you’re character stays dead. Their progress is halted and it falls to the next of kin to use the knowledge and money that their predecessor made to ready themselves for another assault. That’s basically how the entire game plays out. You fight through the castle, find money, blueprints and runes, then get curb stomped by a random monster in most cases. If you’re extra lucky, the curb stomping might be done by a boss.
Basically, the game takes its main gameplay element from the genre which it is named after. Roguelikes are games in which when you die, you stay dead. There’s not a checkpoint that you can reload from and you have to start again. In most cases, each time you start fresh you’re a little better equipped thanks to something that you did in a previous attempt. This is the main pattern that most roguelikes follow. It can be seen in games like FTL: Faster Than Light where reaching certain milestones or completing certain tasks will grant you a new ship to use, as well as Risk of Rain where… Stuff happens. I can’t actually remember, but it is definitely a roguelike. Some games put a small spin on the idea, but most of the time it’s the same sort of premise. The key behind a fun and replayable roguelike is randomization. I love roguelikes but I think that I wouldn’t as much if every time I stormed a castle or began a journey across the galaxy, it was the same castle or galaxy. Almost all roguelikes have some sort of randomization element so that each time you play again you can bring the same skills in but have a wildly different experience.
The trade off for this is that in all roguelikes there are sometimes massive and unexpected spikes in difficulty (for games that already beat you with a baseball bat). Rogue Legacy is no exception to this, but thankfully doesn’t suffer from it nearly as badly as some other games that come to mind. The way that Rogue Legacy tries to avoid this problem is by having a main entrance styled area to the castle. It’s a generic brick and mortar affair, but serves its purpose superbly, by having the level of randomization desired. Each time you enter past the first room, it’s a totally different layout. You basically know where the celling lies on difficulty in this area after a while, but that by no means makes it predictable. Whilst the room layouts are generated from a set of many basic templates and structures, there’s always a layer mystery in almost every room, keeping it exciting. After a while and with a few upgrades, you’ll be able to traverse this part of the castle with relative ease, picking up gold as you go. That’s where the harder areas come in. When you get far enough into the castle, you’ll find an entrance to another area. These new locations have different looks to them and sport way harder enemies. The first time you enter one of these areas whether you’re prepared for it or not, you likely won’t last long. You’ll probably take down a few enemies before getting smeared across the wall.
Each area has a boss in it from what I can tell, and these are the games ultimate challenges. The first one that most players will meet is a giant eyeball. Try not to get too much blood on the carpet as you get wiped on the floor. It took me a solid four or five goes to eventually beat the boss and claim my prize. As hard as the eyeball seemed at first, looking back it’s actually a relatively easy fight. Certain runes make it a hell of a lot easier like the one that lets you jump multiple times. Having two such runes equipped allowed me to jump right over the boss making his one hard to dodge attack an almost non-issue. Whatever sense of accomplishment I felt was obliterated when I met another boss about an hour later who swiftly reminded me of my place in the world. But that’s why we like Roguelikes. Getting plastered on the wall is par for the course and just makes you more determined to fight on and claim your victory.
Before I go any further, I shall mention the story. There is one. That is all I know. It’s not that it’s complex and difficult to understand, its just that I skipped all the elements where the story looked like it might be about to appear. Take that for what you will.
Every time you start Rogue Legacy, you pick from three randomly generated offspring, each with their own class and strange traits. Well, I say their own class, but I did have occasions in which all three choices had the same class. Speaking of classes, you start with a handful of basic ones with no read distinction outside of their basic stats, but once you upgrade your manor you can unlock new classes or upgrade ones that you already have. This is why dying doesn’t feel like you’ve wasted your time. When you die you pick your successor then pick how you want to upgrade your manor or equipment. Early on the upgrades are cheap but can start to get pretty pricey before too long, leading to a few moments where I did feel like I’d died for basically nothing. This usually wasn’t the case though as I would often come back with the ability to unlock at least a small upgrade to one of my base stats.
There’s a hell of a lot that I could talk about in regards to Rogue Legacy. The fact that I like it but am really, really bad at it. How it masterfully blends harsh penalties with fair rewards. That time that I walked into a boss room for a boss I’d already beaten and found myself in a Tron-like environment with a way harder foe inside that proceeded to have its way with me. For the sake of anyone reading this however, I won’t. All you need to know is that if you don’t own Rogue Legacy but think that it sounds even remotely interesting, you need to buy it. It’s great. It has problems, not all of which I touched on, but to be honest, the best way to experience this game is to not know everything about it. I’ve given you what I can, now you need to decide if you want to be turned into soup by a ridiculously overpowered flaming horse who you didn’t even want to fight and were trying to jump over by accidentally hit the wrong key and attacked it instead leaving you right in it’s path and resulting in your organs being liquidized. Happy Easter.
Y, Though? 