For more on this series, check my initial blog here.

After further consideration, I decided to eliminate the "multiple solutions to problems" category, since it's a little too close to the "experimentation and improvisation" one. I replaced it with something that should have been there from the beginning: the "just one more run" factor: how likely are you to jump into another run immediately after success or failure?

As always, I welcome any feedback you have.

Ranking of Roguelikes #2: Has-Been Heroes

Time Spent: Around 15 hours

Cleared main campaign? Not exactly ("completed" 4 runs)

Platform: Switch

Has-Been Heroes is a fascinating experiment, a blend of tower defense and roguelike. You're in control of three washed-up heroes escorting a pair of princesses to school through undead-infested lands. As you travel the map, you come across shopkeepers that sell you spells, chests with better equipment, random events, and battles with the undead.

It has a pretty poor rating on metacritic as of this writing, and it deserves better. It has an extremely steep learning curve. Once you grok the flow of combat you start to make significant progress each run, but I understand why people might have given up before then.

Combat is hectic and unforgiving. You can't just spam attacks and win, you have to be careful and and cleverly manage your cooldowns and attack sequence. Enemies attack in three lanes, each one guarded by one of your heroes. Once a hero attacks, you can switch lanes with another hero to continue the attack or position them for another one. In order to defeat the waves of undead, you have to "break" their stamina. Your heroes have a specific number of attacks they make: the nimble rogue hits three times, the wizard hits two, and the warrior only once. An enemy with three stamina points needs to be hit exactly three times to be stunned, at which point you can hit them for full damage and remove one of their stamina points. If you hit them more times than that, like attacking with the wizard and then the rogue, you'll knock them back slightly and their stamina resets.

Each level ends with a fight against a boss that has some special trick up his sleeve: maybe he constantly summons shades of himself to confuse you and waste your attacks, or sets up totems around the field that you must destroy before you can hurt him. These fights are supreme tests of your skill and cunning, and you'll lose them far more often than you win.

How well does it reward experimentation and improvisation?

The game does the bare minimum to introduce you to its mechanics. There's a brief combat tutorial, and then you're dropped into the thick of it. In this way, it rewards you for experimenting by showing you what works and what doesn't. It teaches you what you need to know by making you engage with its systems.

The heroes' spells offer a lot of opportunity for unique and creative solutions to problems. Spell damage comes in elements of water, fire, ice, and lightning, and those damage types can interact with each other in interesting ways. Get enemies wet and hit them with lightning and it will arc through everyone. Freeze them and hit them with fire, and they'll take extra damage while they burn. I think there are some hints about this on the title screen popups, things like "try different combinations of elemental damage to see what happens."

There are also quite a few combinations of items and spells that can make a huge difference if you use them properly. For example, critical hits bypass enemy armor and do extra damage, and the rogue has a slightly higher chance for them to trigger. Load her up on extra critical chance, and he can take out weaker enemies in one attack! Add an item that gives bonus damage to melee attacks, and she'll become a lethal assassin.

The one problem is that the game dribbles out new unlocks at a slow pace, and that limits your ability to find and exploit combinations until much later in the game. There are a staggering number of spells and items, but it takes quite a while to unlock them and some are locked behind finishing a run. This makes the early game less dynamic, and that's something that might discourage players from continuing.

What's the risk/reward calculus?

Has-Been Heroes does very well in this category.

Each map has multiple routes to get to the boss. You have to weigh the chances of getting more gold and items against the very real possibility that you won't survive a battle. It's the classic rogue conundrum: stay on the current floor and try to get everything you will need for the later levels and risk starvation and death, or rush for the exit and hope you have enough to survive.

Once you find a new item or spell, you'll have to decide who gets it. This is complicated by the fact that the first time you find a new item, you don't know what it does. You're able to make more educated choices in later runs, but the first time it's a real gamble. Some people will hate this, but I don't. Unidentified items are a staple of Rogue and I enjoy the callback to it.

How well does it teach you from your failures?

Has-Been Heroes is a game that will kick you in the teeth, repeatedly and for no other reason than it can. More than one of my runs ended in humiliating failure after the second battle. I got distracted, or I didn't plan properly, and that was that. These runs did teach me one important lesson: play with attention and intention. Every move you make matters.

It's difficult but not completely unfair. I could always see how I could have done something differently, and in the next run I tried not to make the same mistake.

The boss fights are definitely teachable moments. I was rarely able to conquer a new boss the first time I fought them. They're tough puzzles to solve, but never impossible.

What's the "just one more run" factor?

I found it to be pretty high. Runs are relatively short, especially if they end early. It gives you a chance to see more unlocked items and spells and to try different ways of using them. I felt like I understood the game a little better each time, and I was eager to put that understanding to the test.

Where does it rank?

It's far more interesting as a roguelike than many out there, even if it suffers in the reviews because of its difficulty. There are some genuinely interesting ideas, and once you engage in it on its own terms you start to see how clever it is. It's not going to be everyone's favorite game, but it's a great example of the genre and something I think more people should give a chance. It's better than Crown Trick, so for now it ranks #1 on the list. Congratulations, Has-Been Heroes!