Rogue Legacy

When it comes to Rogue-lite games, Rogue Legacy is extra lite, but that's not really a bad thing. It's got an interesting randomized character feature and the graphics are nice. Gameplay is solid - tight controls with a controller and decent platforming. My only real complaint with the game is grind. It feels like you go through the content of the game much faster then the upgrade system so it gets to the point where you constantly running low-risk, but repetitive trips into the castle to upgrade your character and equipment. The main problem is a core mechanic to the upgrade system - Whenever you buy a upgrade, it makes all other upgrades more expensive. The only thing this really does is slow down progression to make the grind/game longer, but it feels unnecessary and artificial to me. Personally, I'd give this game a 5/5 if it was a concise experience, but I think a 3/5 is appropriate as someone that values their gaming time.

I really like the idea of this game on paper. You picture this Metroidvania game with a persistent fortress you upgrade through repeated forays into the randomly generated enemy territory. You can imagine unlocking more and more items and skills as you play, and when that combines with the potentially infinite areas to explore and enemy formations to test yourself against, that sounds like a pretty amazing thing. However, the reality is you're playing a really clunky beat 'em up with an overwhelmingly amateur feel to it. Jumping is floaty, more like your sprite is being dragged around the screen than actually leaping around, and there's usually no sense of connection with attacks. You're there, apparently damage was done, you die. Your sprite was unmoved but you are dead. Then weirdly, some other attack stunlock your guy for several seconds. There's no real rhyme or reason to it. It's a wonderful concept with gameplay that stinks, floaty and weak controls and a horrible sense of dull repetition that soon sets in despite the promise of all the systems in place. Avoid this game and just play some actual roguelikes that are free, or any of the fantastic Metroid and Castlevania series.

Controls are floaty and unresponsive. Gameplay involves walking into certain death repeatedly until you find a chest or two, unlocking upgrades, and repeating until you eventually unlock blocking and dodging, which might allow you to play the game if the controls worked. Randomly generated rooms can have inaccessible parts. I enjoy both roguelikes and difficult platformers (e.g. Risk of Rain, Super Meat Boy) but this is neither. Just pure luck-based grinding with the illusion of progression.

This is an arcade game. If you're not good at arcade games (like me) you may find this game very frustrating. I would have given them three stars but for their claim that this game is rogue-like. Game play based on reflexes and timing are the very opposite of what a rogue-like game is.

If you're looking for a challenging sidescroller, look no further, this is it. And that's in my opinion what makes it great, but aside from that, the games becomes quite boring quickly since every time you start over, the "new" randomly generated castle, is actually the same castle with slightly different architecture, but it looks the same, the enemies are the same, the music is the same... sure you get to play with very different characters every time and most of the power ups are quite cool, but yet, this doesn't save it from feeling repetitive. I would say go for it if all you are looking for is a real challenge.