Rogue Legacy 2

 

Release: 2022

Developer/Publisher: Cellar Door Games

Gameplay Stats: 33 hours, NG completed

A highly anticipated follow up to one of the first good rogue-lites! I played the crap out of the first one, how's this one hold up?

Aesthetics: Big shout out to the music. I know all the pieces here are simple but I still have them bouncing around my head even though I haven't played the game for almost a week at this point. The little town/docks theme I believe is the same as the first game but it's still a banger. As far as looks go, they deliberately kept the style the same as the first game. I think this was a weird choice because the first game was limited so much by the available technology at the time. I wish they had done something more. The game looks good, don't get me wrong, but I think it could've looked way better if they had gone in a different direction or updated the look of the enemies a bit more.

Plot: So, this being a game with 2 in the title, I figured that this was going to be a sequel. I didn't really see the connection in the plot at first so I figured it was more of a spiritual successor. Spoilers ahead! I was really surprised at the end of the game that this was actually a direct prequel to the first game. It might've been foreshadowed well but I didn't recognize any character names or anything. It was a neat little thing! Each of the bosses also had little vignettes about their motivations leading up to them being a boss which was conveyed by journals. I liked that it showed a bit of the characters I was squaring up against, but I wish they were scenes instead of journals.

Gameplay: Pretty standard side-scrolling action platformer. The minute-to-minute gameplay was fine but I wouldn't say it was groundbreaking. I enjoyed playing this game as a podcast game so I didn't really like the journals. They made me focus more than most of the rest of the game was asking for. It was easy to get into a flow state while going through all the rooms in this game but I think the journals broke up the game in a way that wasn't very fun. I liked the info they provided, but I wish it was conveyed a different way.

Standouts?: I really liked that each time you started a new character they would have positive or negative traits that you could choose from. Some of the negative traits came with bonuses as well, so it felt more like a tradeoff which was cool. Do you take a bad trait that makes your gold worth more? Interesting choices. After that initial choice though I don't think the game had too many interesting choices included which was a little unfortunate. Many of the classes and abilities didn't really feel meaningfully different to me which made the game feel a bit bloated.

I'd say this game was good not great. They did do more of what was in the first game, but they didn't do as much new/different as I was hoping for.