Rogue Legacy Review

Rogue Legacy could be one of the sleeper hits of this year. I genuinely would have overlooked this game if it were not for the fact I had to review it. Thankfully I was given a chance to play this outstanding title which has definitely cemented itself as one of my all time favourite games of the past five years.

Gleeful appreciation aside, lets set the scene of the game. Rogue Legacy is a “Rogue-Lite” game in the vein of what people have coined as ‘Metroidvania’ style titles, with the aim of avenging your lineage by defeating the bosses of a possessed castle, in which no two runs are alike.

Death is pretty much guaranteed in this title however, it’s rather lucky that your family tree is very adept in reproducing heirs in large quantities. Each time you die in the castle you may select one of three heirs in order to carry on your families quest of vengeance, although they may have some genetic deficiencies such as colour blindness, stereo blindness, tourettes and I.B.S or they may have a combination of the many disorders this game has set in store for you.

Your heirs will also be trained in different disciplines depending on how you have upgraded your manor. To begin with you’ll either have well balanced Knights or weaker Knaves which deal more damage. Further on you can unlock Mages, Barbarians and even Ninjas to utilise within the halls, each with their own benefits and disadvantages. Additionally with the manor upgrades you may perform, you can unlock the talents of a blacksmith, enchantress and architect.

The former two of the three aides should be self explanatory, find plans and runes for the two trades people and they can craft you upgraded items, the architect on the other hand is an interesting aide. You can tell the architect to lock the castle into position which means your previous ventures into the forever changing hell hole will be frozen.

This means you can retrace the steps of your ancestor and hopefully improve on their failed quest. The downside to this action is that the architect will take a percentage of all the cash you find in your playthrough for his services so be careful in making the decision to lock the castle down. Thankfully you can tell the architect to unlock the castle if you so wish to return to the randomness, and not have him steal a percentage of gold.
While on the subject of gold, you will also have to pay a toll on every playthrough to a character called Charon. This Death like character will require all your gold before entering the castle which is an interesting mechanic meaning you cannot just simply stockpile gold in multiple runs to mass upgrade your character and manor.

As I briefly mentioned before, each runthrough of the game is different as the castle layout is procedurally generated.
Though there are four main sections which stay in roughly the same location, these being the castle itself, the tower, dungeon and forest, the pathway to these four areas will be entirely different with every heir that attempts to take on the dastardly hallways. With armoured soldiers, floating eyeballs that fire bolts at you, ghostly mages with their frost balls, spike traps, ceiling cannons and even the paintings on the wall destined to halt your progress, you never really know what is waiting in the next room, or even what the next room will be for that matter.

I do feel that it is this persistently changing arena which compels the player to carry on past the early frustration barrier where heroes are dying in two to three rooms of the castle. You just want to see the next area, pushing yourself to earn more and more money in order to upgrade so you may survive that little bit longer.

It really does become so engrossing that you’re swearing at your flatulent, vertigo suffering barbarian for being such a useless upside down twat that you can’t wait to see what sort of fucked up offspring you’re going to be landed with next.

All of the above chaos is delivered in a wonderfully crafted display of 16-bit style goodness, yearning back to the classic pixel art style of the SNES and Megadrive console games. Nothing really stands out as looking ugly or out of place as everything melds together sublimely into one awesome package.

This visual art style, coupled with the quite fantastic soundtrack the game delivers, gives you one hell of a retro experience while still being challenging enough for the most seasoned of gamers. Even with the multiple deaths and re-runs of the castle portion of the game, not once did I tire of the same tune playing over and over again. This is testament to how good a soundtrack in a game is; if you’re able to sit through multiple renditions of the same track, enjoying the tunes even though it’s due to you dying over and over and over again, then you know your soundtrack is good.

Overall Rogue Legacy is a fantastic indie title with so much replayability that you’re just keep coming back for more, time and time again. For a paltry price tag that wouldn’t even get you into the cinema and have a drink with some popcorn, the game is available on Steam(link to the steam page) or $15 direct from the developers website(link website) which entitles you to a DRM free copy AND a Steam key; you couldn’t really ask for a more rewarding game. The hours that you will lose in this title is worth far more than what the developer is charging so grab your copy today.