Very little is cooler to me in a video game than looking back after playing it for hours (or days, or weeks…) and seeing just how far you’ve progressed. Whether it’s amassing huge amounts of loot, gaining ridiculous abilities, and/or becoming so powerful that enemies that were once a challenge spontaneously combust when you look at them wrong. This is true of roguelikes, too; I’m typically not a fan of games where you don’t at least retain some kind of incremental power from your runs. I’d say this is the reason Rogue Legacy is easily at the top of my list of greatest roguelikes, and in fact it’s likely my absolute favorite. From equipment to stats, you’ll almost always end up more powerful each time you enter the castle… it’ll just cost you a long line of children to become mighty enough to take on the most ferocious foes.
Gameplay is rather simple: you enter the castle, break everything you can find trying to get money, health, or mana, kill enemies for the same reasons (and so the enemies don’t kill you!), and try to get as much loot as you can before dying. You’ll do platforming, you’ll hack and slash and even pogo on top of enemies, and you’ll use various magical abilities and special skills depending on what spell you have and what class you are. Ultimately you want to take on the four bosses of the castle to unlock a sealed door, but you’ll end up burying a lot of your family in the process. When you die, you’ll keep all the gold you had and choose which of your three children you’ll play as to take the castle on again. Each child has a class and usually at least one trait, which can be a good or bad thing. One may be extra large, and another may be extra small, both of which have pros and cons. Maybe they’ll have Congenital Insensitivity to Pain so you won’t ever know how much HP you have, or Alektorophobia (fear of chickens) so sometimes healing items (chicken legs) will instead be mini chickens that attack you. Dementia will make you see enemies that aren’t there and that can’t hurt you or be hurt, and being near-sighted or far-sighted makes part of the screen blurry. Some are merely silly, such as The One which makes the backgrounds look futuristic or hypochondria which massively increases the number shown when you take damage (but doesn’t actually increase damage taken). Some are even good things, like O.C.D. where you get 1 MP every time you break anything or P.A.D. which makes it so you won’t set off the spike traps when you get near or on them.
Once a child is chosen you’ll get to upgrade your manor. Here you’ll get to select what stats you want to permanently upgrade, what classes you’ll want to unlock, and what special things you’ll want to alter. Unless you have a horrifically terrible run you can usually afford at least one or two upgrades, and on particularly terrific ones or when you beat a boss it’ll feel like a shopping spree! You start with only one, but as you upgrade or unlock a spot for the first time you’ll typically add on to the manor, earning more things you can upgrade or unlock, until the entire manor is completed.
As you run through the castle you’ll often come across rooms with special treasures in them. These can require you to do crazy things like get through a room full of enemies or spikes without getting hit, reach a treasure without jumping, or kill all the enemies in the room… but they’re behind a wall and require specific magic spells to kill. If you succeed you’ll either get a permanent increase to a stat or unlock a rune or a piece of gear. Runes and gear must be bought after they’re unlocked from the blacksmith and enchantress, and there are loads of each type. There are five types of equipment: swords, helmets, chest armor, limbs, and (to Edna Mode’s chagrin) capes, and each category can have one piece of gear and one rune equipped at a time. Equipment is rather straightforward aside from some giving you less (or even negative) stats in exchange for other bonuses, but runes are where the real customization comes into play. Runes can give you extra gold, allow you to gain HP, MP, or both from killing enemies, make enemies easier or harder, allow you to jump additional times or even fly, among other things. Runes seem entirely random each time you get one, whereas you’ll get new equipment depending on what part of the castle you’re in.
There are two additional NPCs to deal with before tackling the castle. The architect, once unlocked, can “lock down” the castle before you go in for a cut of your gold earned that run. See, the castle is a magical place, and in addition to the treasure and enemies within, the rooms themselves shift around each generation. The layout is procedurally generated each time unless you put the architect’s services to work, in which case it’ll be exactly the same as it was last time. The enemies will return and opened chests will remain empty, but it’s a great way to go directly after a boss when you’re well prepared or try to get the challenge chests you previously failed to get. Finally, the last NPC is Charon, the spooky guardian of the castle. Charon will take all of your gold (or a percentage of it once you unlock that perk in the manor) before you can go in, so you’ll want to spend as much as possible before you go in.
As you explore the castle you’ll also come across notes from the first adventurer that sought out “an item which will cure any ailment”. This son or daughter of the king went into the castle before their siblings (the line of characters you take on) were able to, and these give tips about the castle and hints about the story itself. The story isn’t deep by any means but it’s more than enough to be keep things interesting as you explore. All the notes you find are stored in the entrance of the castle so you can reread them individually any time, like I just did for this review!
Of course there’s much more to the game, like special types of rooms, the dozens of types of enemies you’ll come across, and the number of very different classes. The game has a lot of variance, which is great since you’ll be running through the castle for many, many generations before uncovering all of its secrets and completing the game. But even then you’re not really done since there’s a New Game+ mode that greatly increases the difficulty of enemies, adds remixed boss battles, and even some better gear to go for. Oh, and if you beat New Game+ you’re not done either because then you’ll find New Game+2, and then New Game+3, and so on and so on seemingly forever! And it’s likely that’s exactly what you’ll want to do, because the balance of difficulty and upgrading with the numerous variations of offspring you’ll choose from is spectacular!
Rogue Legacy is available on Nintendo Switch (reviewed), Xbox One, PS4, PS3, PlayStation Vita, and Steam (Windows, Mac, and Linux).
A review code was provided for this review.