izigame.me

Roboquest is a very strange experience, and I wish I could give it a "Mixed" score. It has some of the crispiest gunplay and movement you can find in a roguelite, but it feels terrible to actually play the game as a roguelite. Let me explain.
Many of the upgrades you can receive for each different class mid-run are incredibly shallow and basic.
"Increase fire-rate by 15%"
"Increase *insert primary ability/secondary ability here* damage by 20%"
"Increase Elemental damage by 10%"
"Increase critical damage by 10%"
Some of them are more class-centric and allow you to do things like spawn an extra drone, gain reload and movement speed after your teleport, or gain an extra charge on your missile ability, but you never really feel the impact of them beyond niche situations. You also have no options to banish or remove certain upgrades, and it takes ages to unlock the base camp upgrades that give you a pitiful amount of reroll tokens (2). If you want more, you need to get them from passive items you pick up during the run.
The actual meta-progression is laughably bad, as it's just increasing the likelihood that you'll have access to a shop or weapon "upgrade" station during certain points in your run. I sure do love grinding meta currency for hours just to buy an upgrade that only affects the CHANCE to spawn a shop.
You also have upgrades that increase the rarity of the weapons that come out of chests during those same sections that the shops have a chance to spawn in, but they seemingly do fuck all because you'll have a maxed out base camp (the name for the main hub area where you purchase upgrades and select a class) and still have half of your initial starting weapon choices be the lowest possible tier.
The rarity of the weapons is indicative of how many "affixes" the weapon has rolled on it, so a white weapon has no affixes, while each higher rarity gains an extra affix. Unfortunately, these affixes are just as boring as the level-up upgrades with such gripping options as:
"15% chance to shoot twice"
"20% more crit chance"
"Deals *insert elemental type here* damage"
"15% increased magazine size"
"25% chance for a bigger explosion"
and more!
Enemies will shit out guns of varying rarities, though even with the upgrade to increase the rarity drop it's VERY often just greens and blues, so you'll never find yourself getting excited. A majority of the time you just fly past it because there's almost nothing it could have rolled to make it worth swapping out for.
The stages are all incredibly similar in layout and design until you get to some of the final levels, and you'll probably find yourself forgetting where you are if you don't pay close attention. The actual aesthetic of the game is great, but it doesn't feel like the art design for the stages ever really went beyond its initial stage.
A lot of the moment-to-moment combat ends up feeling repetitive and same-y between runs, as even changing classes just doesn't do enough to help distinguish the actual gameplay from the others. It's not that there aren't any differences, as I would be lying if I said that. It's just that the differences aren't pronounced enough to really make it feel like you're playing a whole new class. Your approach to combat isn't likely to change much even when you're using different weapons and classes.
Ultimately, I want to recommend Roboquest, but I just can't at the moment. You have better options for movement shooters. You have better options for roguelites. You have better options for co-op. It's the kind of game I find myself leaving play sessions feeling frustrated rather than happy. Roboquest is a game that I feel like I WANT to enjoy, but I can't seem to find that same spark and excitement that I get from similar titles.
I never get the feeling of a god run, nor do I get the feeling that I'm getting shafted by RNG because everything you acquire during a run is so surface level in its functionality and presentation. It feels like a lot of the mechanics that are meant to encourage replayability and potential for unique and different runs just don't do enough or even exist at all.