Ranking of Roguelikes #9: Rogue Legacy

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Rogue Legacy is an important game. It almost single-handedly created a branch of the Rogue-like genre, the Rogue-lite. As far as I can tell, it was the first to use that term in its marketing and it stuck. It's probably responsible for the proliferation of Rogue-inspired games of the 2010s and it definitely inspired creativity and innovation in the space. The concept of meta-progression in a Rogue game, slow but consistent growth in your character that makes later runs easier than the first, is a genre staple now. It's hard to overstate its influence.

Is it any good? That's what we're here to find out.

How far did I get?

I spent a little over 12 hours with Rogue Legacy on my Switch 2. I played it when it first came out on Playstation but that data is lost to time. This time, I was able to beat two out of four bosses and unlock the entire upgrade tree. I was not able to come close to maxing out every upgrade in the tree. I played with every character class and upgraded all of them.

How does it play?

Rogue Legacy is a side-scrolling 2D platformer. You're tasked with entering a castle that your ancestor thought contained the secrets to eternal life and you're there to finish what he started. Unsurprisingly, the castle is full of dangerous monsters dedicated to stopping you from completing your quest. You have a sword, a spell, and grit. When you die, which you will, your descendants will take up your journey. They'll use the gold you gathered to build up their decrepit manor and strengthen themselves before starting the cycle again.

Your descendants are all hampered in some way by your genetic legacy. Maybe they feel no pain, so you have no way of knowing how much damage you're taking or how close to death you are. Perhaps they are afflicted with tremors, making the screen shake at random intervals. They could be color blind or lack stereoscopic vision, or be nearsighted. Sometimes these traits are positive: lacking a foot pulse means you don't trigger traps on the floor, or breaking things in the castle restore MP due to your OCD. These positive traits are great when you get them, but the randomness of everything means they're often paired with some of the weaker classes or don't have any synergy with the class they're attached to. There are no easy paths here. You're dealing with flawed, imperfect people and you must do your best with them because a better one may not come along for a long while.

This is very true to the ethos of Rogue and I think the game deserves credit for it. In addition, I think this is a clever narrative reason for the mechanics of what you are doing. Every choice they've made in the design seems to reinforce this and creates a coherent, believable world for these bumbling heroes to do what they are doing.

The problem is that I don't think it's a very good game. The controls are floaty and imprecise. This leads to plenty of unavoidable hits that deplete your pitiful health. Deaths are frequent and progress is slow to come by because of the contradiction between the way you move and the way you need to play. You're extremely quick to move and jump, but you need to advance cautiously and take your time or you'll run headlong into death. It reminds me of the early Sonic games: they're supposed to be all about speed but the level designs punish you for moving too quickly with unavoidable enemies or traps. It doesn't feel good or appropriate, it just feels cheap.

There are systems in place to mitigate this somewhat, the titular "rogue-lite" progression that Legacy pioneered. You pay for upgrades with gold from a failed run, but upgrades rapidly become so expensive that very little can be done without a very good or lucky run. There's no real way to stockpile gold for the future, since you're robbed of your gold by Death every time you start anew. There's an upgrade to keep some of that, but it's one of the more expensive ones and takes ages to pay for itself if it does at all.

You can strengthen yourself with new equipment, which tends to be cheaper in the short run and gives you more than equivalent upgrades, but there are similar frustrations here. Getting better equipment depends on finding the runes in the dungeon to teach the blacksmith how to make it, then saving up enough money to buy it, then having a high enough weight limit to be able to equip it. You've been neglecting the weight limit in favor of the health and attack power you've needed to survive just a bit longer? Time to grind for some more upgrades, then! This means that there are many, many runs where you'll make no progress, meta or otherwise.

There is intention behind these decisions. The name of the game is Rogue Legacy, after all. It's telling us outright that this is a project that is going to take generations to complete. You do gain in power and knowledge as you play. It does get easier once you've found a equipment loadout that fits your style and the character you choose. You will get better, but it's not enough to be better. Until you get sufficient upgrades you have to be flawless, especially with some of the squishier classes. I almost invariable chose the Barbarian just because its higher health pool let me survive more than two or three hits.

This feels counter to the ethos of Rogue. Single mistakes should be dangerous but not fatal with skillful play and knowledge of the systems at work. Rogue Legacy just doesn't have enough variety in your toolkit to allow for that. You've got a sword and some spells and that's it.

Ultimately, while Rogue Legacy is an important part of the history of the genre, I find it hard to recommend it very highly today. It gives you a toolkit that isn't well-suited to the tasks it asks you. It builds grinding into every aspect of the progression and there's no guarantee that any particular grinding session will help your progress. It commits wholeheartedly to its ideas and I respect that. I just wish it wasn't as tedious as it eventually becomes.

Where does it rank?

Caveblazers is more faithful to the Rogue formula, and Dicey Dungeons is an overall worse game. Rogue Legacy is the new #6.