Recent reviews by archmando

First run felt absolutely terrible. Enemies were easy enough, but since this is definitely a meta-progression game, killing anything took ages of boring kiting. Felt boring as hell. I got enough progression stuff to unlock a bunch of stuff, and the 2nd run already felt quite a bit better.

Differences to the first one:
-Gearing up is now another layer of meta-progression.
-Enemies have some sense in them and may try to dodge your shots. Or they might have skills to use.
-You don't lose everything once you die (gold, materials).

All in all feels quite a bit like the first one. Huge minus from the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trap rooms that are still a thing and are more than likely to end your run.

Far from finished, maybe let this one cook a bit longer.

It's mostly just Slay the Spire copy paste. They even call your item selection your 'deck'. Instead of drawing hands of cards, X amount of items from your deck are thrown in the claw machine per round. Instead of costing more energy, the better items are bigger, so likely you'll catch less of them. In principle anyway.

The balance is all over the place. For the duration of the run, it's kinda okay-ish. Endless mode after it highlights really well how limited are the ways to scale. Items can be upgraded once, where the damage count usually goes up by 5 or so. You could also add items in your deck, that increase damage for items in their vicinity by 5. Or you could just add that strength ring which, upgraded, adds 4 damage to everything every time you pick it up, stacking endlessly. Multiple perks allow you to gather coins with ease, and another gives you max hp per coins. This is essentially only way to achieve meaningful hp increases, which later on become meaningless, when enemies start dealing so much damage, your best bet is to dodge every hit anyway.

The few original ideas here are quite unfinished. Items have a material type, which can be changed with alchemy vendor. Mostly it matters with magnets, that clump metal items together for easier pickup. Otherwise it's mainly whether or not the item floats if the claw machine is filled with any fluid. Flooding the machine may affect what you can grasp, but is largely pointless, as is changing the fluid to lava or poison, which mainly adds an effect to the filler fluff in the machine (negligible damage, or one stack of poison). You could add more fluff with certain items or perks, to in theory get a build out if this, but currently it's just a waste of space/perk.

Everything's been said already. Just go play it.

There's maybe 3 hours worth of sensible content here. Rest of the up to 12 total hours goes to grinding (AFKing) achievements.

Lots of features are low effort.
There are thieves stealing your stuff. Hiring a single guard solves that, until more than one thief show up. Then you'll just gear the guard up (pay money), solving the whole thief aspect from that point onwards.
Toilets need to be researched quite late. There's just nothing you need them for before the research. Customers start complaining about missing toilets the moment you can build one, and that's the whole of that aspect.

Live service rot is here.

It's fine.

The fighting is very simple and can get frustrating. It probably isn't the strong suit or main point of the game.

The knowledge based progression is pretty cool. Seems like most of the attraction in the game is looking for the secrets. Some of the clues feel obscure, so if you get stuck and don't have the patience and instead search for the answers outside of the game, that can very easily ruin it.

Is it good? Yeah.

Worth buying? Sure, though it might be worth waiting for full release.

Better than the first one? Currently, probably not.

Manage resources with the buildings and buffs you're given randomly from your pool of unlocked options. Games are over just before the tedious endgame of building games where you'd just repeat what you've already done.

Meta progression unlocks new features to enable different tactics at a perfect pace: If everything was unlocked to begin with, you'd be overwhelmed with options. On the other hand the gameplay isn't that complex.

Even in early access, it's already 10/10

Very much like Slay the Spire, though easier and with currency system for permanent boosts.

I did enjoy my time in this game, but got burned out. Still, it's probably worth recommending.

At ~50 hours into the game I feel like I've seen enough to drop the game, even though I haven't finished the story, probably haven't seen most passives or cards. Quite a bit of currency-unlockables left as well. I did finish achievements though (so not much to achieve here).

The issue seems to be how easy it is to completely break the game, but at the same time how the design forces you to it (at least on higher difficulties). For example your max hp will be something like 100-200, while enemies will start hitting for thousands. You'll need to block everything or (much more often and easily achieved) kill everything in the first turn.

Designed to be grindy as hell. Gameplay is clunky and feels really unpolished or even outdated.

Still, I like it. If you liked the first Rogue Legacy, this should be good for you.