Money–whether we like it or not–is one of the most fundamental things we need to live. You need money to buy clothes, food, entertainment–you name it. Everything has a price. Knowing how to use it responsibly is a must if you don’t want to fall victim of debt or to become a slave of money. Having wealth is good; however letting that wealth and power control you and corrupt you is the problem. This is what happens in this first person roguelite arriving to Nintendo Switch: City of Brass.
In City of Brass, you play as a thief that ventures into a hidden kingdom inspired in Arabian Nights. This was a city like no other that prospered, and thanks to the wishes made to genies, it was filled to the brim with riches. However, the desire of power and having more wealth corrupted its inhabitants. Other cities stopped the trade, afraid to get cursed like them. Little by little the once prosperous city had fallen to a curse. There was gold and riches but no food, and then the inhabitants perished. However, their souls are trapped because of the curse, condemned to wander around for all eternity, guarding riches and attacking all that dare get inside the city’s walls to steal all their treasures. This is basically the story in a nutshell.
The game play is pretty straightforward: You move through the district, getting all treasures you can within the time limit. To do so, you have several tools at your disposal, like the whip (sadly is not the vampire hunter). The whip is used to stun enemies, make them trip to get treasures from afar and to traverse through pits. I really like the whip use in the game since it’s not there for show only since you can use it to pull enemies to traps or to activate explosive pots near enemies and have them blow to smithereens. It’s really satisfying since you can use items like jars to deal damage, and the whip is perfect to grab them and do it sneaky. You also have your main way of dealing damage, a Scimitar that you swing and make the enemies go back to a pile of bones, using the whip to stun them, then moving in for the kill is a move that gets the job done.
Being a roguelite means you will die a lot, and the time based stages are set to give you a good challenge. However, you will die a lot. Fortunately, there are some help “blessings.” Blessings are activated at the beginning of each run. Depending on the blessings you activate, you can make the game a tad bit easier (or super easy if you want to). Some give you more health, make your attacks stronger, give you more time and such. For those who the challenge on the game is not enough, there are the opposite of blessings: Burdens.
Burdens increase the difficulty level in each run. Some make the enemies more aggressive traps harder to see, less treasure among others. For those who like to suffer, these are made just for you.
Among the districts you can explore, you can find some genies that in exchange for the coins you find (treasures) can give you some upgrades like extra health better weapons and armor. It helps a little with the difficulty.
I like how the game looks. It feels like it was tailor-made for Nintendo Switch. The music is really good and sets the mood well for the main theme of the game.
The enemy AI is good, and I like the boss encounters every three stages. They are so different from one another that you need to observe them closely to learn their patterns and find the best way to beat them. Even for me that doesn’t like first person games (since they make me dizzy), playing in short burst help me enjoy the game the best I could. And the procedurally generated stages ensure that each run is different than the rest. This increases the challenge but helps a lot for the replay value.
Bottom Line: City of Brass is a recollection of ideas that mesh together to create a really enjoyable (or unforgiving) first person roguelite. I really liked it, and for fans of the genre, it’s a no-brainer. For those on the fence, the blessings mechanic is a godsend, so even if you are not used to hard as nail games these are what you needed.
A Review Code was provided for this review.