Rogue Legacy

Rogue Legacy is a side-scrolling action platformer with procedurally generated maps and an interesting rebirth system.

What I enjoy most: Trying to fully utilise each player character to get as much bounty as possible

 
 
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setting

You play as a series of knights, going through the ever-changing castle generation after generation, in order to defeat the legendary knight.

 

Combat, Platforming & MAP

The gameplay of Rogue Legacy is relatively simple - it involves you travelling through a castle, jumping between platforms, killing monsters and collecting money and artifacts.

Your melee attack is very basic (a sword slashing downward), but you do have a subweapon (usually just one) modelled after the subweapons of the Castlevania series. The variety of monsters is not great, but is serviceable for the short burst of play this game is designed for. It rewards you for learning the pattern of each monster, and encourage you to solve any encounter whether there is a random combination of room layout and monsters.

The castle is randomly generated everytime your character dies, but always consists of four areas with their unique monsters and layout. The random map means exploring the castle is much less repetitive, and there is always surprises in each run. There are also rooms with mini-boss and special challenge (e.g. reaching the other end of the room without taking damage to gain access to a treasure chest).

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Legacy System

The main selling point of Rogue Legacy is the legacy system. Every time your character dies in the castle, you are offered a choice of 3 decendents of your character, whom you shall play the next time you go back into the castle. The charateristics of these decendents are randomly generated, and is the main source of variety (and fun) of Rogue Legacy.

The decendents (i.e. player characters) can be one of 9 classes - from barbarian to knight to dragon - some classes also has a basic and an advance version. They can also be tall or short, near-sighted or colour-blind, demented or dyslexic - or any of the 30-plus traits. All of these force you to change up your playstyle.

By collecting gold and artifacts during each visit to the castle, you can unlock character classes, skills, or boost your attributes. There is also a separate system for unlocking equipment and runes - the latter give you movement abilities (e.g. double jump) among other upgrades.

 

Conclusion

Rogue Legacy is a fun little game that is most enjoyable in short bursts. The combination of random player character and random castle means a new challenge everytime; and there is mastery in utilising the characteristic of your character to overcome both the monsters and the layout of each room.

(2018/10/19)

 
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List of metroidvania elements

  • Basic information

    • Name of game: Rogue Legacy

    • Developer / Publisher: Cellar Door Games

    • System: PC, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, and Xbox One

    • Year of publication: 2013

  • Mechanics

    • Style of combat: Melee

    • Use of magic: Yes

    • Combat-focus versus Platform-focus: Both

    • Death mechanics: New Character

    • (Fall damage): No

  • Progression

    • Levelling / Farming for XP: No

    • Farming for Gold / Item: No

    • Skill pick-up: No

    • (Skill-tree): Yes

    • (Stats allocation): No

    • (Crafting): No

  • Exploration

    • Free-roaming: Yes

      • Gated by movement abilities: No

      • Gated by bosses: No

    • Type of world map: Single map

    • World generation: Random map

    • Auto-map: Yes

  • Other elements

    • Legacy system