ElegantTrout Reviews - Roguelands

Roguelands. This was a pretty big surprise to me when this came out on Steam. Didn't hear any PR or news about it. I knew it seemed familiar the first time I saw it. Took me a few seconds but it came to my head almost immediately -- It's like... Magicite!

Now, Sean Young, the creative mind, director and developer of Pixel Kingdom, Magicite, and Roguelands has proven to be an impressive individual. Magicite was good fun, decent solo play but fine quality when it came to multiplayer. Roguelands seems to be in the same breadth of it's predecessor, it's a pixel art RPG roguelite with cool customization and a permadeath reward system. Various races/classes/items to choose from, so many to fit almost all kinds of play styles. What Magicite got wrong, however, Roguelands has done beautifully right.

Instead of crafting things like pickaxes to mine ore, or axes to chop down trees, this game introduces droids. These droids are a game functionality godsend, as anything you click, they harvest. Pretty simple. Don't have to worry about repairing or creating new tools. Just create up to three droids to serve you and they'll do your bidding. Nifty!

Also, gameplay is a lot, lot, LOT more fun. Even considerably more fun playing through it on single player. The game maps have more... y-axis to them. More up and down. The bosses are also improved, with some bosses having multiple moves to them which make them rather interesting to fight. Of course, there are some straight forward bosses, but many of them are relegated to the beginning maps.

The crafting system is more intricate too, but not overly difficult. You can craft things with ingredients or emblems of the ingredients, combining three different ingredients to create either a potion of some kind at the alchemy station OR an equip item at the forge with three different emblems. Each combination yields different results, but they don't change, and you can easily re-craft them by looking at the recipe list and simply clicking on it. User friendly, by all means. Storage is also friendly as well. It starts off with 3 tabs of space, but you can purchase many, many more spaces with in-game currency. More space than you'll probably need.

The combat is great. You can toggle between a non-combat mode and a combat mode. When you enter combat mode, a reticle appear and you can now attack with your weapon, and there are various types of melee and projectile weapons to keep you interested. There's also a combat chip selection where you have passives or actives that you can gain and equip, which helps you spec for a character and does wonders in combat. You start off with a chip that makes you faster, but you can get some that can shield you and your team, throw grenades, and do special melee moves.

NPCs are generally wonderful. They randomly spawn in levels, and talking to them and yield certain items for you, maybe even their own special weapon. They are so visually appealing, it's fabulous how they're made. I particularly like the pyro guy with a flameblaster. He's cool.

On top of that, there are ultimate weapons that have a special property to them which add a whole new aspect to the game. They're game changing. One reduces damage by a certain amount, one summons turrets when you use a combat chip, one makes forging rarer items easier, and so on. At the end of each stage, you get experience which you can use to upgrade a certain equip of yours. At max level, you can use prisms to turn it into an ultimate weapon.

Now, death reward is a strange mechanic in this game as it seems to almost incentivize dying, but it works. There are chances to get different races, classes, or other things when you die, all of which can be used to add another layer of gameplay to your runs. Not bad, but it seems hard to let go of a really high leveled character I spent hours.

I realize I've rushed this review and I don't really spell check anything, or format things well just yet, but I'll be straight up.

This game is great. It's got potential for dozens of hours of fun, and for the price, that's absolutely fantastic. It's a fun game to go through with friends, and it's got more updates along the way which I'm sure will add more content to the game. A must buy for anyone interested in roguelikes.

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Stuff I Like:

- Cool gameplay mechanics -- interchangable combat chips

- Interesting NPCs, though I wish there were more interactions with them

- Different challenge modes for maps to keep things fresh

- Nice and coherent pixel art style

- Various play styles and character customizations

- Intuitive crafting system

- More storylines and end-game content to come

Middling Stuff:

- Soundtrack

- Rewards for dying (I admit, it's good to have, but it's hard for me to get used to)

- Boss variation -- I'd like to see more bosses with unique movesets

Stuff I Don't Like:

- Melee seems to be under-powered compared to most of the ranged options

Recommended For:

Fans of the roguelike and platforming genre. Fans of Magicite would love this game, as it's the spiritual successor. It's a proper evolution of it's predecessor.

Personal Score:

8/10

#RPG #Indie #PixelArt #Action #Roguelike #Game #Review #VideoGame