Rogue Heroes Ruins Of Tasos Review (Steam)
Rogue Heroes is a 1-4 player classic adventure game with modern rogue-lite elements. Team up with friends to combat procedural dungeons, explore an expansive overworld full of secrets, and take down the Titans to save the once peaceful land of Tasos.
Pros:
- Nice pixel art graphics.
- Download size.
- Steam achievements.
- Controller support.
- Graphics-fullscreen and resolution.
- 3 ways to play- Single player, local co-op, and online co-op.
- Can rebind controls.
- 3 save slots and you set your icon and color.
- Character creator-skin/hair/cloak colours.
- Optional tutorial.
- Takes a lot of ideas and designs from Zelda.
- Stamina-goes down with attacks and blocking. If you run out it will regen slowly but your attacks will be weaker.
- Beautiful animations.
- Pop-ups happen when you find new points of interest, fast travel points, and even mission/task/achievements/rank progress, and it’s satisfying to see.
- Altars act as fast travel points.
- Can see enemy health bars and their difficulty rating.
- Break pots, chests, barrels, and bushes for loot.
- In dungeons, you can buy shortcuts to floors.
- Simple hack and slash combat.
- Co-op is 2-4 players.
- Town-you can buy and place new shops and homes in the town.
- Home-you can unlock and place/decorate your own home whenever and however you like along with making it bigger.
- Death-puts you back at home.
- Map and points of interest fill in as you play.
- Main quests along with optional side quests.
- Dungeons randomize the layout and loot.
- Day/night cycle with rain.
- Thread shop-once bought you can unlock and change classes with more classes available as you play. Eight in total.
- Forge-allows you to spend gems so you can upgrade your sword.
- Fitness Centre-once built you can upgrade your stamina with gems.
- Clinic-once built you can upgrade your health with gems.
- Excellent fun in multiplayer.
- Book of beasts-kill enemies with it to enter their details and discover weak points.
- Produce stall-here you can sell your veg and the price changes depending on demand.
- Glass items/weapons-these are things you can use only until you die.
- Room clear-this is a bonus that happens if you kill all enemies and find all/any secrets in a room.
Cons:
- Slow initial load.
- Constant difficulty spikes.
- Hit detection is horrible in terms of snakes in bottles as they always get a hit in.
- Slow starter.
- Dungeon tiles repeat themselves often.
- It is fine in single-player but it’s not as good as in multiplayer.
- Can easily get lost on the world map.
- Clear yet annoying roadblocks to gate you off.
- Graphics - 9/109/10
- Sound - 8/108/10
- Accessibility - 8/108/10
- Length - 8/108/10
- Fun Factor - 9/109/10
Summary
When I started this game I had to remind myself that it wasn’t a Zelda game, it looked and played like one but had a sense of being greater in scope. This is Rogue Heroes and it is a roguelike game with a central goal of you defeating evil but also building a town as you go. To build you need crystals and you can only earn these in du geons, dying there does let you keep earned crystals but any left when you re-enter get lost forever. It sounds stupid, like keeping crystals somehow cheats death but truth is, the fear of death is still high as building costs go up so you need to stay alive to get them crystals. Dungeons will have a big boss at the end that grants new rewards but the dungeons themselves will randomize every run. Rooms love secrets and rely on them a lot, you can break pots and crates, loot chests and enemies drop items. In terms of your arsenal, it again takes from Zelda as you have what is clearly a hook shot, a wand for shooting fire, bow and arrow, Bombs and so much more. The clever thing here is you don’t need to wait to try out these items as they drop all the time but in glass from. What glass form means is the items can be used as much as you want but they break upon your death meaning you need to find them again in future runs. Eventually, you get the real deal versions and they are more important for outside dungeons as you use them to open up the game world. I didn’t like this too much as the first dungeon took me hours and then I was stuck in the new area trying to find a way through as the map and directions are not good, a lot of back and forth, and so on. The game is one of those where it will drain game hours without you realizing it, the grind for crystals gets addictive as you build new stores allowing you to buy upgrades to your stats with each element of your stats having their own skill trees that add even more. You can trigger side tasks by building homes for new residents to move in and they have jobs for you. This is all culminates into a game that is easy to get into, adds a lot of depth but keeps the challenge bar high enough that you are engaged the whole time. Honestly, it takes a lot from the Snes Zelda game but you could easily say this game is the gap between the gameplay of link to the past and breath of the wild, it has so many awesome mechanics and such high replayability all served up with a charm that it’s hard not to fall for.
