Rogue Legacy 2 Preview (Steam Early Access)
Rogue Legacy 2 is what you’d get if you mashed Rogue Legacy and a sequel together. Every time you die, your children will succeed you, and each child is unique. Your daughter might be a Colourblind Archer, and your son could be a Pacifistic Chef. Either way, one of them is getting conscripted.
Pros:
- Beautiful cartoon graphics and cutscenes.
- Download size.
- Controller support.
- Can rebind keyboard and controller inputs.
- Graphics-fullscreen and quality preset.
- Roguelike gameplay.
- Levels are more open and vertical.
- Plays out on a 2D world.
- New traversal techniques from spin attacking lanterns to travel up to shortcut pipes and aerial recovery techniques.
- Tutorial pop-ups as you play.
- Lore desks to find.
- Gameplay loop-you Play as a Knight and go through a castle, upon death, you come back as one of three heirs with each one truly unique and usually having a good trait and bad traits.
- Coins- collected in-game and used to buy upgrades and use the skill tree.
- Skill tree-put money into it and upon buying skills it builds up your castle in the background.
- Main hub/town part before a new run where you can use unlocked merchants and services.
- Blueprints-find these to unlock new blacksmith recipes.
- You lose any unspent gold when traveling back to the castle.
- Minimap that’s easy to read and uncovers rooms as you explore them.
- Every castle run is randomized.
- Teleporter-used for fast travel.
- Breakable objects and treasure chests for loot.
- Every knight plays completely different.
- The end of the run gives a breakdown of enemies killed and your route in the castle.
- Easy to play with simple controls.
- Damage numbers pop on screen.
- Addictive and fun.
- Knight’s traits can directly impact the world like no lighting, Colourblind mode and so much more.
- Traits may not always be visible when selecting a new heir until you pick them, once you have used them they are then visible at the knight selection.
- Armour and weapons can be found-they are then saved with the blacksmith in town and you pay to equip them each time.
- Many secrets and hidden routes.
Cons:
- Slow starter.
- Feels like the same set of knights/heirs keep coming up.
- Loads of annoying enemies that can fire and move through the scenery.
- Feels like a reskinned version of the first game.
- Difficult.
- RNG makes or breaks the run.
- Doesn’t explain the whole lot.
Summary
Months, I lost months of my life to Rogue Legacy, I bought the game on every platform as it came out, rogue Legacy captured and destroyed the roguelike genre but built it back up stronger and more robust than before. Enter Rogue Legacy 2 and the bastards have only gone and done it again! They have taken the first game and gone you know what? We need to make this sexier, more difficult oh and make them graphics pop with some of the cartoon-like graphic stuff… Enter Rogue Legacy 2 and within an hour of playing you will not believe its an early access game, its polished smooth and stupidly addictive. Sure it has the same hooks and mechanics going on as before but who gives a flying fuck, if it works don’t fix it add to it and they do that with the addition of new character traits, new merchants, and abilities like runes. You can play levels and find loot to have it available to equip on future characters, the levels are just as devious and clever as before, the enemy and boss encounters continue to annoy, frustrate and please you in equal measures. I could not stop playing the game and every quick go turns into a marathon and I love every minute of it. If I had to complain it would be the character traits don’t randomize enough and enemies that can attack through walls can go do one but Pfft got gud innit. Rogue Legacy is back and better than ever!
