Rogue Legacy 2 (2023) [PS4]

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

-misattributed to Einstein

A full decade after the original game’s release, I have now had the opportunity to play Rogue Legacy 2, an action-platformer roguelite with an all-new procedurally generated castle domain to explore, unlock, plumb, and ransack. Anyone familiar with the original Rogue Legacy of 2013 will feel right at home with the sequel: this is the kind of follow-up that seems to meaningfully build upon its predecessor without trying to change up the formula.

That formula bears explaining a bit, since confusion is easy to come by with the roguelike/roguelite games and their mixes of mechanics. You’re given a hero character to enter the castle with, armed with a weapon, a spell, and a talent, and your goal is to find and defeat bosses in order to open up a huge door and finish the game. Of course you’re not going to do that in one run, oh no. Rogue Legacy 2 knows even Korean FMF fans aren’t that good!

There is a permadeath feature in place, be forewarned. Again, nothing new following in the footsteps of the first game but it’s a warning sign for some players that reads DO NOT ENTER. Meta-progression guarantees that all of the gold you picked up in the castle gets carried over. Just as no two thumbprints are the same, every heir is unique. After your hero dies, you have the opportunity to select from one of their randomly generated descendants and spend your gold to increase permanent stats or unlock permanent bonuses. Your stats are increased incrementally in this fashion, as are obscurer traits like maximum weight limit or rune capacity.

You’ll also have the chance to unlock new classes. More on that in a bit.

However, some key differences from the first Rogue Legacy include the layout of the castle, following a general order as in the first game, but with additional realms following east, north, and south, and realms even past them. For instance, in the first game, you could travel east and hit a forest and then that’s that. In Rogue Legacy 2, heading east unlocks a rainy cityscape ruin called Axis Mundi, and past that lies both the tundra-like Kerguelen Plateau and the vertical Sun Tower.

In the original game, I was soon clearing out the entirety of the map to get my gold late-game. In this sequel, I’ve still got a ton of areas to explore.

Perhaps more easily noticeable is the change in art style. Rogue Legacy used 2D pixel art whereas Rogue Legacy 2 has a hand drawn appearance with 3D cartoon characters and animated backgrounds, placing it closer to Hollow Knight in appearance than its own ancestor. By this logic, Rogue Legacy 3 should be fully 3D… Here’s a comparison of the sequel to the original.

Rogue Legacy 2 also gives you a few other things to do beyond beating your head against the inside of a magic castle. A modest town of helpful villagers can be built up with wares and weapons for sale. A new series of challenges involving something called Empathy serves as addition, non-roguelite-run challenges. A variety of unlockables that do not draw from your hoarded gold await your generous donations. You can even learn to cheat Charon out of his ferryman’s fee.

Ah, yes, the classes. Rogue Legacy 2 features 15 to the original’s 10. A few of my favorites are no longer here, like Liches, darnit, but there are some awesome new additions. They are so awesome that I find myself consistently re-rolling and retiring heirs until I get the classes I want. There’s Assassin, Astromancer, Barbarian, Bard, Boxer, Chef, Dragon Lancer, Duelist, Gunslinger, Knight, Mage, Pirate, Ranger, Ronin, and Valkyrie, but of these, Gunslingers and Astromancers are by far my favorite, with Rangers and Pirates occupying my third and fourth favorite spots, respectively.

Call me a coward but being able to dish out death from a distance with a bow or a revolver or a frickin’ cannon makes me feel a lot safer than trying to get all up in some enemy’s bizness.

As classes come with randomized traits, as well as the occasional random relic or even weapon, some of the random heroes can seem like a match made in roguelite heaven. For instance, a vampiric Gunslinger can keep her health high with every precious bullet draining enemy HP.

Other times it takes a clever approach to turning a weakness into a strength. Even the Pacifist trait, which prevents your hero from doing damage of any kind while offering up a whopping 150% increase to gold gains that stacks with other multipliers, can become a prize from RNG if you manage to find a Curio Shoppe that swaps weapons.

Gold multipliers can be a double-edged sword, as you can see. A character may be able to nab more gold but suffer from a lack of invincibility windows or have their vision affected or be able to only do damage on crit hits. Knowing how to get the best use out of a character and their debilitating traits is key to a whole lotta wealth.

This give-and-take style trickles down to the relics system. Relics can provide powerful and unexpected bonuses when found on a run, but each relic lowers your hero’s resolve. Lower it below 100% and your maximum HP begins to decrease. You can even go as low as 1HP without resolve!

My only real complaint of a game that’s so polished mechanically is its insistence upon a storyline that’s hard to care about. While heirs can spelunk the castle halls as much as they wish in a quasi-prescribed Metroidvania-esque order, culling bosses with linearity, there are books and hidden tomes that give some insight into the background of this world and its regenrating castle. Bravo to the storytellers to actually come up with a premise and concept for a castle undergoing a shift of rooms, but it can feel so unnecessary to stop and read some lengthy and rather cryptic journal entries when the gameplay has got your adrenaline surging. Ah well, the humor in the writing is quite good, at least.

For fans of the genre, there’s a lot to love. I wasn’t a fan when I encountered the first game but Rogue Legacy taught me how to love games in the Rogue tradition. Rogue Legacy 2 continues that… uh legacy with gigantic, eventful boss encounters, tight platforming and combat controls, an array of new abilities and classes to experiment with, and a set of randomized playstyles that could really suit any player.

This is the kind of game you can take at your own speed and play in bouts, one castle run at a time… if you could ever put it down, that is. Allow yourself to be frustrated and ease into the RNG addiction knowing that that’s just part of how this genre works.

Special thanks to Cellar Door Games for providing us with Rogue Legacy 2 for this review.

PIXEL PERFECT

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Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, streamer, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Mage Cast podcast, on Twitter @thewellredmage, or on Twitch at /thewellredmage.