Rogue Legacy

[Kapol]

After beating it five times and collecting every upgrade, blueprint, rune, and buying literally everything, I've decided to make a thread for this game. Who else has played it? Has anyone else gone as mad as I did? Did anyone else get to New Game + 2 and see the horrors that lie within?

I clocked in at 282 children and like 28:29 in terms of time. My firth run had me at 99 children. And it was about 50 each game after that.

One thing I found fairly neat is the character cards were basically MTG cards in structure.

[Darkobra]

I've only beaten it once and that was around level 200. I liked the exploring and it being randomly generated every time made it like a new game every time.

I could have very easily beaten it a few times if I was to just run and gun but that just takes a lot away from my personal enjoyment. Once I managed to beat all four rooms without dying and realising I wasn't going to get any new armour or weapons that way, I moved on to NG+.

Now I'm there and collecting more armour, still in the castle and beaten the first boss. I should be moving on to the second now but I'm still armour and weapon hunting in the castle.

[Dominic Appleguard]

I beat the game three times and got every thing that money can buy, but now I'm not sure whether I want to play anymore. Without the money incentive it just seems a bit hollow.

[Kapol]

Now I'm there and collecting more armour, still in the castle and beaten the first boss. I should be moving on to the second now but I'm still armour and weapon hunting in the castle.

Armor and weapons are the most annoying things to find. Eventually you just have to beat the mini-bosses to get them. But I do think that going further into the new games makes them appear more. Could be wrong on that though.

I beat the game three times and got every thing that money can buy, but now I'm not sure whether I want to play anymore. Without the money incentive it just seems a bit hollow.

That's pretty much my issue. After I beat it again, I just stopped playing. I think I might just restart the game from scratch and see how hard the first runthrough is after having played with all the advanced forms for so long.

[Darkobra]

You're definitely right that going further in gets more. Before I had full guardian as my max. Got into NG+, got full dragon and some parts of Royal or Imperial or something in the space of an hour.

[deathjavu]

I'm digging this topic back up because I just spent 20 hours of my weekend playing this, and by god someone's going to listen to my babbling.

NG took me 42 heroes, at level ~110ish, 12 hours. NG+ took me a further 17 heroes, and up to lvl 162, 17 hours. At this point, having gone in expecting post Wrath of the Lamb- Binding of Isaac level difficulty, I was almost disappointed.

NG++ was the game I was expecting. Absolutely effing brutal. My willy-nilly stat allocation hadn't done me any favors, either.

Some thoughts:

1. Half-dragon mode = easy mode, flying and unlimited ranged attacks is OP. (if this isn't available, spellsword is my second favorite)
1a. Half-dragon mode turns several of the bosses, especially Herodotus, into total chumps. It even makes Johannes/the Fountain super easy.

2. The higher tier armor doesn't unlock until NG+, and the very best stuff is super rare until NG++.

3. Might just be my computer or my imagination, but I had frequent problems with unresponsive controls. Sometimes I would continue to skate left after taking my finger off the arrows. Sometimes my attacks were late.

4. I bet you could make a giant table of all the assets copied from Castlevania. Dem skeletons...

5. Charon is a jerkface.

6. I love the story and the journal method of presenting it, but the actual writing left something to be desired. That might just be because I'm a writer though.

7. I think this game might actually be better if it was more Binding of Isaac style, with you only having to rely more on the resources of your individual run rather than accumulating wealth until you're a god. Buying stuff as you go rather than beforehand. Because as everyone noted, once you buy it all there's nothing left to do.
7a. Also, because this style leads to the pressure for each run to at least come back with money, which is annoying if you have a character you don't like.

8. Along those same lines, it could use more content like BOI as well. Alternate forms of the levels. More enemies. Something that would give more variety to the runs.

...I wanted this game to be another Binding of Isaac so badly, which might have been unfair. It's still good, just not BOI good. Certainly not post-Wrath of the Lamb good.

[Genghis Ares]

I bought it during the Christmas sale and I've played it for a few hours. I really like it, but I've only killed the first boss I think. I definitely need to go back and push more into it.

[Kapol]

7. I think this game might actually be better if it was more Binding of Isaac style, with you only having to rely more on the resources of your individual run rather than accumulating wealth until you're a god. Buying stuff as you go rather than beforehand. Because as everyone noted, once you buy it all there's nothing left to do.
7a. Also, because this style leads to the pressure for each run to at least come back with money, which is annoying if you have a character you don't like.

8. Along those same lines, it could use more content like BOI as well. Alternate forms of the levels. More enemies. Something that would give more variety to the runs.

...I wanted this game to be another Binding of Isaac so badly, which might have been unfair. It's still good, just not BOI good. Certainly not post-Wrath of the Lamb good.

Honestly, I greatly prefer Rogue Legacy over BoI. I found BoI to be pretty dull after the first few tries. The levels never felt that varied, even post WotL. But what there was a lot more of was secrets to find. If you kept playing, you're pretty much always find new stuff. Rogue Legacy was much more straight-forward. You always had an idea of what to expect, for better or worse. I do think that some DLC like the WotL would help the game out, even if it was just a fully new castle.

Your 7 point is one of my big likes about the game. Yes, you keep getting money. But you don't keep the money from run to run unless you buy the overly expensive and relatively useless upgrade. It's rarely enough to make a big difference, especially if you have a bad run.

But at the same time, being able to buy upgrades when you have a good run means that there's a constant feeling of progression. Unlike BoI or Spelunkey, I don't feel like any run where I came out without enough money to buy something, anything really, was a wasted run. When I die in BoI or Spelunkey, especially due to a random event, I get pissed because it just turned the whole thing into a waste of time. You mentioned that there's a pressure to come back with money. That's true, but in other games there's just a pressure to not die at all.

[deathjavu]

Don't all games have a pressure to not die at all? That seems pretty baseline to games as a whole. I prefer that pressure- for my game skill to improve- rather than the pressure for me to make the run worthwhile monetarily.

As far as purchases, since enemies are based on your level and your level is based on your # of purchases (as far as I can tell), ideally you'd only buy stuff that benefits your favorite class/build, with all your points in either STR or INT. That means half the heroes you can roll become super weak, and less fun to play.

I guess my biggest gripe is that it's already getting pretty rote after NG+ once and NG twice.

[deathjavu]

Came back to this game this weekend, finally beat NG++ with my magic focused setup. Dragons beat Ponce De Leon and Herodotus, a spellsword beat Alexander, and Khidr is such a chump I don't even remember who I beat him with. Then another dragon for Johannes/Fountain and that was game.

48 Children, playtime 14:26. Either I discovered the secret tech (magic is OP) or I'm just good at vidjagames.

I also beat Neo-Khidr, Astrodotus/Herodotus, and Alexander the IVth (holy balls this one was hard. Neo-Khidr took 3 tries, Astro/Hero 2, and Alexander the IVth took so many tries I stopped counting.) Ended up leaving a shadow on one side and flashing through the spikes to the other side, but there's a big element of luck as to whether or not any skulls are in the way when you use those skills.

My biggest regret is that I haven't found Ponce's obol yet, because now I have to try and search NG+++ for it. And I spent most of NG++ just running past every room I could looking for the bosses.

Other thoughts: the leveling system encourages you to specialize in either phys/magic, since the investments in your manor are your level, and enemy levels scale with your level.

HOWEVER, this means that you will be offered totally useless characters- physical classes when you're specializing in magic, or vice versa. I had 5-10 characters that were just chest-runners and sometimes even deliberate suicides because every option was physical based and I'd been specializing in magic. These physical characters were totally useless.

I think I'm going to get my physical focused game through NG++ as well, hopefully finding all the obols this time in a safer G or NG+ environment. Then there's just messing around with the traitor class and I'm done with everything...

Edit: Just beat NG+++ with only 4 more characters. Spellswords are hilariously strong against...well, everything really, and I got pretty lucky with the placement of boss rooms for Ponce and Herodotus.

Empowered Chakram deliberately fired into the wall, then dodged so it sweeps the entire floor in Herodotus' boss room? Hilarious. With two vampire runes it almost wasn't fair.