This is a game that I have been thinking about reviewing for quite a while. I have played quite a fair bit of it (a little over 2 days worth at the time of writing this) and done damn near everything one can do in this game.
The story is a little light, your endless parade of knights is charging into the castle in search of some artifact that is supposed to cure the poisoned king. And that's about it. There's a little more but I'm not gonna spoil it. The story is told through journal entries found randomly throughout the castle as you explore. But this is good, a heavy story wouldn't suit this game well. Kudos to the developer for not burdening us with one.
So if that's all I have to say about it, you can assume I haven't been playing this for the story, and this assumption will make an ass of neither of us. I've been playing it for the nice mechanics. It's not a hugely complicated game mind you, there's only a few commands. Jump, swing the sword, cast your magic, use your class special, and (if you have it available) dash. Well of course also move. But that's it. That's all the things you do. But simple, is not necessarily bad. The fact the game is so stripped down makes it really all about skill and quick thinking. You learn enemy tells and attack patterns and get better at avoiding hits.
The overarching goal of the game is to defeat four bosses, one in each different section of the castle, and this opens the way to the final boss that you beat the game upon defeating. However, it is very unlikely, though not impossible, that you'll do this with Sir Lee, the first playable character. The more immediate goal of most runs is in fact to make money. Upon killing enemies, breaking furniture, and opening chests, you are rewarded with money. Upon the almost inevitable death of your character this money can used to buy new gear, unlock magic runes that grant various abilities (dashing, multiples jumps, improved move speed, and vamparism to names a few), upgrade base stats (like health, mana, armor, and damage), unlock/upgrade classes, and get new abilities (like reduction in mana cost, increased gold gain, and a small chance of not dying when you normally would).
The castle's layout is randomly recreated each time you enter it, unless you use the services of the architect. So each venture into the castle has you mapping the area out and hunting for new chest crack open and pilfer the contents of. Each venture into the castle also has you playing as a new character. Upon the death of Sir Lee, and all of his descendants, the player is given the choice of three children to play next (This can eventually be upgraded to allow one additional pool of three kiddies to pick from). The avaliable kids will have their class, magic attack, and traits randomly picked from all of them that you have available. There are 10 playable classes; knight/paladin, knave/assassin mage/archmage, miner/spelunker, spellthiff/spellsword, shinobi/hokage, barbarian/barbarian king, lich/lich king, half-dragon, and the traitor. Knight, knave, mage, and barbarian are unlock by default. All classes save traitor can be unlocked simply by spending gold on them. I'll discuss how to get the traitor a bit later on.
There are 10 different magical attacks (not counting the traitor's shit cause he doesn't play by the rules) some of which are class restricted. But more interesting than this is the traits. There are a whopping 35 different traits, of which you can have between zero and two on any character. The traits vary wildly in effect from something like "gay" which has precisely no change to anything, to something like "baldness" only a minor visual difference in your lack of hair, to "P.A.D." which makes spike traps not work, to "C.I.P." which hides your health bar, to "vertigo" which flips the entire fucking screen upside down. Some traits prevent having others, like "gigantism" and "dwarfism" cannot both be on the same character. But in general, most traits can be obtained with most other traits for odd and sometimes very useful, or very annoying combinations. But in the event you happen to hate all the children to choose from you can simply run into the castle and kill yourself on the first enemy to get a fresh batch of sacrifices er uhhh brave warriors to pick from.
So you may recall at the start of this post I said I'd done almost everything. This may provoke your curiosity to ask what haven't I done yet? Sometimes after the game was released the developers released a free update which added in some additional content. It's always lovely when developers do that (cough cough FTL cough). The additional content that was added to Rogue Legacy was the traitor, and the means to unlock him. If you're playing the game or plan to, and don't want to know how to do it then skip the rest of this paragraph. After defeating each of the four area bosses so gain the ability to obtain emblems that represent them. Presenting these emblems to Charon, who you must talk to each time you enter the castle, will unlock new more challenging versions of the previous bosses. Upon killing all of the four bosses older, meaner brothers you unlock a fifth additional boss fight. Beating this new fifth special boss will unlock the traitor class.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is that I do think the game looks quite nice.
This is a slightly better image that the one I used at the top of the post. You may not care for the visual style, but I think it's quite pleasing to look at.
So that's that then. Very little story, but it's not about the story. Some pleasing visuals and in fact a nice bit of humor in the game. It's simple, but what is there is crafted very well. The randomized characters and castle does mean that each time you play is a little different from the others. And the many different types of available gear and runes allows for different ways of playing which is always good.
Gameplay: 9 out of 10
Story: 7 out of 10
Visuals: 8 out of 10
Audio: 7.5 out of 10
Overall: 9 descendants out of 10
P.S. I do plan on doing a post on Fallout New Vegas: Lonesome road and in fact one on the game as a whole, but I wanted a small break from that, so you're getting a Rogue Legacy post now. The Lonesome road post will be forthcoming soon-ish.... probably.
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