Friday, August 16, 2013

Review: Rogue Legacy



The only place where the Gay Dwarf with ADHD is king!

Rogue Legacy is an arcade-style platformer with an emphasis on fast-paced gameplay. Your father entered the castle in search of a cure for the ill king, paying Charon’s fee of all his family’s wealth to do so. Now his heirs must enter the castle and find out what happened to their father who never returned.


The goal of the game is simple; defeat the four bosses to unlock the door to the throne room. Reaching that goal is a mammoth task and you will fail many times in your enduring quest, but that won’t stop you. When you die, your children will carry on the quest, using the gold you earned in the castle to buy upgrades to the family castle (which in turn unlocks abilities and upgrades). With that said though, your children may not always be the most perfect of warriors, many of them will suffer or benefit from a variety of conditions and afflictions.

Each time you die, you must select one of three randomly generated children to be your heir. There are various classes and traits your children may have, but you can’t choose what you get except from the three picked out at random. There are many different classes which include Paladin, Mage, Lich as well as Awesome Dragon and while most need to be unlocked through upgrades, many have a second upgradable version to make them more powerful. Traits are also randomized and range from cosmetic afflictions such as baldness and Colour-blindness, to the more play altering conditions such as ADHD (move faster) and Muscle Weakness (enemies don’t get knocked back). You’ll learn to avoid certain traits that impair you too much, for me it was Vertigo, where the game turns itself upside-down. With most you can adjust your play-style to suit but some can be very useful such as O.C.D. which gives you a little mana when you break objects. The same goes for the classes with each one demanding its own play style, it’s up to you to find what suits you the most. For me, my preferred was the Hokage, the upgraded assassin, I was great at getting in close and getting the hits in, usually killing enemies before they could attack back.


The upgrade system is very well designed and suits the fast-paced gameplay perfectly. You can only upgrade after you die, and because you have to pay Charon’s fee (ie, all of your money) to get in the castle, you have to choose your upgrades carefully before each run to waste as little money as possible. You can also unlock the blacksmith and the enchantress to buy equipment and apply runes that you have found in the castle, these become essential later on. Various equipment applies different stats, and runes grant various bonuses such as extra mid-air jumps or health drain from enemies.

Rogue Legacy requires a controller; keyboard control will let you down greatly. The controls are fluid and feel right. There is a general arcade feel throughout the game and everything reflects this, from music to colourful graphics. The randomized castle rooms were a joy to run through and each area of the castle was superbly designed and generated. Completing the game unlocks New Game+ which fills the castle with the hardest enemies possible, just in case you weren’t getting killed often enough.

It’s great to have a fun game that is easy to pick up, sports a fresh design and reminds us of the old arcade games of the day.


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