So, I don’t really like roguelikes and roguelites. I’m not fond of randomly or procedurally generated content and would always take a wonderfully hand crafted shorter experience over it. But there are occasional projects that grab my attention. And the original Rogue Legacy did grab my attention. There was something interesting and fresh about the idea (quite new at the time) of mixing the “fresh run” nature of roguelikes with permanent upgrades, plus there was enough metroidvania-ish charm to the exploration of the locations to get me interested, even if said locations were randomly generated each run.
Yet, a lot of games since then have done the same and combined the exact same basic concepts and I’ve not enjoyed any of the ones that I’ve tried. Thankfully, Rogue Legacy 2 turned out to be fun.
Just like the original, Rogue Legacy 2 is an exploration focused action adventure with randomly generated dungeon layouts, permanent character death, upgrades that carry over between characters and different character classes, traits and unique abilities. You always start the “run” in the castle where you must choose your “heir” from a selection. After that, you can see your skill tree, represented as parts of the family castle, and afterwards you have a small “village” you can buy other types of upgrades at and talk with characters, before you inevitably give all of the remaining money up to travel to the location of the main gameplay, where you will attempt to explore several biomes, kill their respective bosses, collect gold and cool stuff and try to survive as long as you can. Until you die and start the process again, except now you might have more money for upgrades, a different selection of heirs and new equipment to get.
The main Igavania-ish gameplay hasn’t changed much either – you still explore different configurations of rooms, kill enemies, avoid contact damage and projectiles, complete optional challenge rooms and unlock unique permanent abilities. Every biome has its set of enemies (though some repeat across some of them), some unique gimmicks and an overall focus on specific ideas.
But despite the base concepts not changing drastically, everything around them did and got much better. Classes are now extremely different and varied, and while I didn’t find all of them fun to play for the way that I play, I admired how inventive they all were. Traits are now also often less about a silly gimmick and often provide curious additional challenge, although you can still get a trait of just farting a lot. The screens can still get pretty busy, but the game feels less bullet-hell and often easier to parse, plus the movement feels very responsive and fun. Visually the game is also fantastic, to the point where when I looked back at the original I was shocked to remember how plain and simple it looked in comparison. The way they handled 3D objects in 2D perspective is fantastic. Oh and where soundtrack of the original was just kinda “neat”, the one here is simply awesome.
It’s not without flaws, especially for people like me who don’t get as excited by the “challenge” of such a game as much as about the unlocks and exploration. Some room configurations can be rather obnoxious, occasionally with just purely “no time to react” situations, even though it’s rare. One of the biomes was hell for me, because it focused heavily on a mix of bullet hell elements and precision platforming – two things that I can’t stand and avoid whenever I can. And the game does require you to beat it multiple times for even some story content, which I get, but cannot help but feel like a grindey idea. That said, the game also contained a welcome addition of the “House Rules” options menu, which allows you to tweak some of the difficulty options to make the game less challenging in some ways (what I did end up using for that troublesome biome), or more challenging (no thanks, but I’m sure some people will love that).
I liked my time with Rogue Legacy 2 and eventually I will probably try to find time to play all of the new game plus runs as well. For people who are really into this genre, I’m sure the game will be even more enjoyable, so definitely check it out.