Rogue Legacy 2

[ChrisBardon]

Didn't see a dedicated thread for this, but did anyone else pick this up?  It's been in early access for a while, but it hit 1.0 recently, and I've been playing the hell out of it on the Steam Deck.  Seems like a perfect game to have on a portable like that, with the possible exception of some tiny text, but it's great to be able to pick up, do a run, and then move on to something else. 

 

It's been a while since I played the original, but the sequel seems like it has a whole lot more to it.  There are a whole bunch of classes, and each of them seems like they play very differently.  So far I've been enjoying runs with Valkyries (attack in any direction), Gunslingers (hover/shoot in midair), and duelists (invincibility roll), but just about all the other classes I've unlocked so far have something fun to them.  There also seems to be more variety in the biomes, and a bigger space overall.  There's a new mechanic where you can permanently unlock fast travel points between runs though, so you can concentrate on a specific section once you've beaten a boss.  I finished off the third one last night, so moving onto a new (much harder) area.  Increasing difficulty does keep the runs shorter as well, which is really nice, since I remember runs in the original getting up to an hour long.  There are also a lot of systems in play.  I think I have my head wrapped around relics and resolve now, which are a little odd because equipping relics costs resolve, which can be over 100%, and below 100% it impacts health.  I suppose this means that at 0% it kills you, which might make more sense than -100%.  Still not sure what some of the traits do, but there are definitely a few that are kind of clever once, but that you never want to play with again (Nostalgic, Diva etc).  I think I'm getting close to a wall with upgrades and gold in runs though, but hopefully this latest area ups the rewards a bit more.  I suppose going back through old areas for chests is always an option to grind, and there are also gold bonuses for some of the negative traits, so the move may be to differentiate a grind run vs a progress run a little more.  Either way, there's still a ton of game here to enjoy, and it's definitely worth a look.

[ChrisBardon]

Finally managed to beat the final boss after about 30 hours of playtime without turning on any of the house rules.  Definitely a tricky game, but you can also grind out stat upgrades that help.  That takes a bunch of time though, and really starts getting repetitive after a while.  The gold bonuses for some of the attributes are pretty good though, and I actually had a really awesome run with a Pacifist (can't do any damage, but a 250% gold boost) where I managed to pick up a blessing of strength (change your weapon), which meant I could do damage again, but still keep the huge multiplier.  There are also way more classes this time around, and it looks like each of them has a variant that you can unlock that changes things up (e.g. the boxer class can get gloves that shoot fireballs, but the explosions damage you as well).  I started into a new game +1, and it seems to use a similar system to Hades with the Heat levels (Burdens in this case), but at each level you're beating the whole game again from scratch (although with all your stat upgrades/unlocks).  Not sure if I'll go back and play the entire game again this way. 

 

I'm also not sure whether I like the way the game is framed.  On one hand, you get three character choices, so you're forced to adapt.  You can't pick favourites necessarily, so you have to learn to deal with different options.  On the other hand, some of the classes aren't all that fun (I never got the hang of mages, astromancers, and barbarians for example), and especially when they also have random modifiers that may be terrible, you end up just starting/abandoning runs to get something that you can deal with.  Yes, there are ways to turn off some of the traits, and there are abilities to lock choices, add more options, or re-roll, but in the end you're still kind of at the mercy of the RNG.  Thinking about it now, I think it's great when you're starting out, but the deeper you get into the game, the more you want to be able to choose what you end up with.  For example, I only managed to beat some of the boss fights because I figured out a strategy with a specific class or two, so there were a lot of attempts that were burners trying to get the patterns down (because I'm not going into the final boss with a "one hit wonder" trait...). 

 

Anyway, definitely worth checking this out, and they do still have the "one more run" thing down to a science.