Rogue legacy as the title of the game suggests, is a 'Roguelike' game. This game genre is defined by random level generation, permanent death and generally (but not always) 2-D style tile based environments. If done poorly, this will lead to frustrating and short lived play, due to the perma-death feature. However if done well, a roguelike game will offer hours of fun and a unique sense of progression, albeit with some frustration still.
Considering I have no sunk 80+ hours into Rogue Legacy, it safely falls into the 'good' category for myself. It's unique approch to the perma-death of a character is that you can choose 1 of 3 heirs for the death of your previous character. You earn gold throughout your characters life which can be spent on upgrades which in turn are then passed onto your heirs, these range from base health increases, to access to new weapons and even new classes with unique abilities. As you spent your gold your castle will grow adding more towers with further choices on what to spend your gold on giving you a physical representation of your progression!
When you choose to be succeeded by one of your 3 hiers it's interesting to note that not all heirs are created equal! Not only is each heir assigned a class with their own unique play style but there are smaller traits which can be beneficial or a complete handicap to them (not to mention hilarious). These range from dwarfism making your character tiny, shortsightedness meaning enemies at range appear blurry. A personal favorite is being clumsy meaning any destructible object you touch will explode! so rather than landing on a table over a spike pit safely, if your character is clumsy he will crash straight through it onto the spikes!
Each time you enter the dungeon it will be randomly generated but will have the same rough lay out with the tougher areas being joined to the starting area, I won't go into to much detail as to how as part of the joy of this game is exploring and getting your head around the mechanics. There are some really tough boss fights to which can be incredibly tough to get past considering even reaching them can be exceptionally challenging! Luckily very early on you will get the ability to 'lock' the dungeon down preventing it from randomly spawning again and enabling you to jump straight to the door outside a boss fight.
This game is an incredible amount of fun and considering how often you die very fast paced! if your looking to dip your toe into the roguelegacy genre this is a great place to start! check out Durr's failed attempts in the video below.
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