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[WealthyRadish]

The generational stuff is a neat idea, but I feel it's not executed in enough depth to actually be more than a gimmick. All of it seems to be either putting on filters, gimping movement, changing size/shape, or some trivial fluff. Most of the game's time is spent wandering around looking for the boss rooms, and then locking the castle and killing off characters until you get a class you want. Alternatively, you spend hours grinding incremental stat upgrades until you can just derp into the boss and win with tons of health and damage. It's a poor way of covering up balance where only two or three classes matter, unless you put enough hours into mindless grinding. It's also a terrible port (works poorly on keyboard, no mouse support, almost nonexistent options menu, clunky interface, etc), horribly optimized, and has a few game breaking bugs that pop up. That what is essentially a flash game in terms of graphical fidelity can't run on many non-gaming laptops or low end PCs is a sign of either lazy or rushed development.

But hey, it's a cool concept, hopefully we'll see more games like it. At least they have a demo.

[CognitiveDissonance]

The generational stuff is a neat idea, but I feel it's not executed in enough depth to actually be more than a gimmick. All of it seems to be either putting on filters, gimping movement, changing size/shape, or some trivial fluff. Most of the game's time is spent wandering around looking for the boss rooms, and then locking the castle and killing off characters until you get a class you want. Alternatively, you spend hours grinding incremental stat upgrades until you can just derp into the boss and win with tons of health and damage. It's a poor way of covering up balance where only two or three classes matter, unless you put enough hours into mindless grinding. It's also a terrible port (works poorly on keyboard, no mouse support, almost nonexistent options menu, clunky interface, etc), horribly optimized, and has a few game breaking bugs that pop up. That what is essentially a flash game in terms of graphical fidelity can't run on many non-gaming laptops or low end PCs is a sign of either lazy or rushed development.

But hey, it's a cool concept, hopefully we'll see more games like it. At least they have a demo.

Ehh... I never bother with the architect, and I try to make my genetically challenged offspring into gold making machines. I haven't experienced any of the issues above.

[Anvilfolk]

I've been debating whether to eventually get this game, but it seems like this system is very similar to roguelikes with tidbits of "metagaming", like Spelunky and Desktop Dungeons. Roguelikes are meant to kill you, and to be hard, sometimes impossible. What you *can* usually do, as you learn the game, is to mitigate risk.

For instance, in Spelunky you get to unlock the different areas the more you play. Every run allows you to drop money into tunnelling directly towards the next area, but before you get there you're going to have to "grind" the first area quite a bit.

Desktop Dungeons only allows you to play certain classes or new dungeons after you've completed challenges. There's a definite metagame progression going on.

Stealth Bastard Deluxe is another game, not quite as roguelike-ish, that gives you advantages after you grind levels to perfection, and you go back to the early levels and try them again with advantages.



All of these games received pretty wide critical acclaim, which makes this difficulty, dying and retrying, getting little metagame bonuses each time you retry, a perfectly legitimate game mechanic. The complaint you have against Rogue Legacy can easily be applied to any of the above games.

What might happen, however, is that the gameplay itself is not enjoyable to you, in which case it's not a fault with the metagame stuff: it's just that the gameplay itself is boring to you. We "grind" Spelunky and Desktop Dungeons because the gameplay itself is interesting, i.e. the grinding itself is enjoyable. The metagaming simply adds to the enjoyment, as we get a further feeling of accomplishment. If you don't like the gameplay, no amount of metastuff is going to work for you.

So, is the gameplay boring? Not enough enemies, not enough variety, the platforming doesn't feel good? What is it? If I remember correctly, Spelunky only had a handful of enemies types, for instance.

[WealthyRadish]

In my experience, what separates quality progression from grinding/padding is the diversity of possible upgrades. It can't be argued that this game has much in terms of diversity. There's dash and double jump, standard armor or blood armor (I didn't play enough to see if there are any more diverse armors, but I'm assuming they're run of the mill past silver), the classes, and the four stats (the weight capacity upgrade cannot be defended as anything but padding, and magic is only upgraded if you have money for nothing else). You can get dash and double jump on the first run, shinobi (or whatever it's called) on the second or third. Past that, you're upgrading health and damage and buying new equipment which mostly consists of boring increases or blood armor to help you... grind for gold to get more stat upgrades?

That's an incredibly weak progression system. I'm not arguing that progression is in itself a bad thing... overused, often completely unnecessary, and frequently abused, yeah. But in this case, I can say for me personally that the game is too weak to carry padding like that. Complimenting games provides very little information relevant to someone looking to buy it... tastes are too subjective regarding what's good, that one can only describe what's bad and hope to convey a sense of the game. It's not a bad game, but it's simplistic and has too many flaws for me to recommend it.

[nenjin]

I think this game really comes down to how you feel about platformers and how comfortable you are with them. I have a threshold beyond which 2d platforming is not entertaining for me, it's not a medium I want to spend hours and hours in. I love Metroidvanias, but only because of the combination of platforming and exploration/mechanics.

And the last two aren't something I feel like RL does exceptionally well. Mechanically it's very straight forward, and grindy, and the rooms, while being not any less more involved than SotN, are less complex because they're randomly generated. Neither are games where intentionally where you get an intentionally painful platforming challenge every 5 rooms. Not until late game anyways. I wasn't crazy about the art style when I bought it, and I find that the back drops are enough, but nothing you really feast your eyes on. That's a big reason why I can still replay SotN when I feel like it, because of the environments.

The generational gimmick would have been better if, if it was more developed and there were more of them that mattered.

So it's a decent game that's subject to taste, although its appeal is still pretty broad. I think I'd like it more if I could use my USB Logitech Controller without needing to install 3rd party software.

[Neonivek]

The generational stuff is a neat idea, but I feel it's not executed in enough depth to actually be more than a gimmick

Well that is because it is a gimmick.  I don't think the game is hiding the fact that it is just a gimmick.

[Aoi]

I think one of my problems with this is that there's sort of a significant not-so-sweet spot where I feel I'm too weak (or unskilled...) to tackle the next section so all I can do is grind away and buy two or three stat boosts on each run, and each run takes 20 minutes or so. And if you happen to be just under the threshold for buying anything, well, that pretty much all gets wasted since it resets on your next entry.

[Neonivek]

I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to attempt to gain skill at the game in a run though. A lot of enemies are very hard unless you put concerted effort into learning to fight them.

The Fireball ghosts for example gave me a lot of trouble.

[Chattox]

Woo, just killed the first boss How is everyone making so much money per run, by the way? I must be terrible, I generally just scrape 1000 gold each time

[Neonivek]

Woo, just killed the first boss How is everyone making so much money per run, by the way? I must be terrible, I generally just scrape 1000 gold each time

Every area has a LOT more gold then the last.

Once your in the forest for example your gold increases like crazy!

[Chattox]

Woo, just killed the first boss How is everyone making so much money per run, by the way? I must be terrible, I generally just scrape 1000 gold each time

Every area has a LOT more gold then the last.

Once your in the forest for example your gold increases like crazy!

Is there a way to skip straight to the forest after I've beaten the castle boss?

[Aoi]

Woo, just killed the first boss How is everyone making so much money per run, by the way? I must be terrible, I generally just scrape 1000 gold each time

Stack your gold runes. I get 20g per coin now. A full castle+forest run, plus whatever stuff I can grab in the next two yields upwards of 13000 for me now.

Edit: 16000 off ~80% castle and ~70% forest this last run. Whee~~~.

[Rowanas]

The biggest mistake I made is buying the Half/half upgrade (the final one). It suuuuucks. They suck really hard. Make it your last buy, because that cash can be spent better anywhere. P.S. Lichking with retaliation earns the hp boost if it kills inanimate objects, so spiked balls can be used to power level you lichking max health/max mana. Just be careful to replenish your hp using crows in a crowded oom every now and then. Goddamn, crows are overpowered against everything, open certain fairy chests and restore ridiculous amounts of health with vamps or balance.

[joey4track]

Is there no official forums for this game??

For some reason when this first hit, I didn't like it from what I saw even though I feel like it should be right up my alley. Then I tried it and didn't like it at first. Now I think I do very much like it but my main thing is that the controls feel a little too floaty for my tastes.. For example, compared to Spelunky it does not have a solid 'feel' if that makes any sense. In RL you are just kind of flying all over the place with no resistance and it ends up feeling cheap and flimsy.

Or if you are a guitar player, it's kind of like playing with very low action and using 9's whereas I like to play with higher action and use 11's... But the game is pretty fun nonetheless.

[GlyphGryph]

I really enjoy the game. But let's be honest, there's no question about what the "best" class is. And this:

(the weight capacity upgrade cannot be defended as anything but padding, and magic is only upgraded if you have money for nothing else)

is just completely false. Magic is BY FAR the best stat (both damage and mana), with health a close second. Because the best class is dragon, esp. if you get a dwarf dragon and a spell swap pedestal.

Yes, you can in fact get a dwarf dragon with conflux, or who breathes scythes, axes, or daggers. It. Is. GLORIOUS.