Child of Adventure: A Rogue Legacy Review
Rogue Legacy is the kind of game you didn’t know you wanted until you hear about it. I put in 15 hours over 3 days playing it (helped by a vacation) and I still wasn’t done – and I still couldn’t stop.
Describing the game accurately probably requires one to describe its, well . . . Legacy.
Rogue Legacy is a Roguelike. You enter a random castle with a random character on a quest – in this case to defeat four bosses in order enter a sealed chamber to unlock a mystery.
Rogue Legacy is a descendent of Ghost and Goblins or Ghouls and Ghosts. It’s a side-scrolling adventure with a cartoony/retro look and sound and very challenging monsters.
Rogue Legacy is proud relative of Castelvania, where your explorations yield secrets and treasure and weapons – and freaky enemies.
Findally, Rogue Legacy is the illegitimate lovechild of Dark Souls/Demons’ Souls because you will die a lot, and that’s an integral part of the game.
When your character dies in Rogue Legacy – which you’ll see a lot but won’t truly get used to – one of their children takes over. Every child has a random class and traits, which affect the gameplay in various ways. Colorblindness means the game is black and white. OCD means that your character loves cleaning things up and you get mana for breaking scenery. Ectomorphs are skinny and get knocked back easy while Endomorphs are hard to knock back.
This is a game where you can travel a random castle as a gay bald Barbarian, or a Litch with OCD. Just don’t get too attached to them because there’s a good chance you’ll end up playing one of their kids after an untimely death. In fact, you may end up making several suicide runs to gain gold or find bosses to move you forward in the game.
Of course as you battle colorful 2D monsters in the castle, you’ll need to think about the equipment and training the next generation will need. You’ll uncover blueprints to build equipment, mystical Runestones to enhance equipment, and gold to build your family manor. Enhancing the manor increases the traits of current and future characters,unlocks new classes, and brings in allies to help you (including the Architect who can “lock” the castle” so it doesn’t change). Equipment equips your character for battle, and Runestones add a variety of capabilities and enhancements that can change the game substantially.
All very simple elements – but all coming together to create a deeply complex, rich, and fulfilling game. There’s always some new ability to unlock, some new equipment to find, some new room to discover, some new ability to experiment with. A character death usually isn’t frustrating so much as you feel stupid for it happening – and you learn and adapt.
Then of course there’s always the urge to play “one more time” when a perfect descendent is rolled up – or just an unusual one you’d like to try out.
Rogue Legacy is a game by and for gamers. It’s so many things we’ve loved in various games combined into one near-perfect package with a great sense of design and humor. It’s worth your time.
Rogue Legacy is available on PC, Mac, and Linux on a variety of platforms. At about $15.00 you can’t go wrong.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
