izigame.me

Pros:
+ Gorgeous art style and aesthetic! One of the prettiest in the genre imo
+ Just about the right amount of story I want out of a roguelike - not constantly bombarded with cutscenes, but enough lore to be compelling
+ Mechanically distinct characters with good-sized unique dice and blessing (relic) pools - enough to make runs not feel repetitive, but not so large that it's impossible to get a consistent build up and running
+ You can get robot buddies (and they're really useful in battle)

Cons:
- Reward rerolls are locked behind a blessing, which I don't love; I feel like the game should natively offer a reroll and maybe have the blessing increase the number of available rerolls
- It's a dice-based game, so RNG can and will screw you over sometimes - battle restarts will happen
- A little jargon-heavy; characters have a lot of different keywords which can feel overwhelming when starting out
- Not too newbie friendly; would not recommend as someone's first roguelike, is better enjoyed with experience in the genre

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If you enjoyed Slay the Spire, the game has a number of similarities, like the path-based map layout with events, unique character-based cards, and a 3 act format with a true final boss locked behind winning with each character. One of the characters you can unlock is also extremely similar to the Defect.

With that said, it manages to be different enough to feel like a game of its own. The dual HP system is a lot of fun; it heavily rewards high-risk high-reward strategies with the virtue system. There's nothing quite like repeatedly hitting yourself down to low HP to activate virtues, healing yourself, and then hitting yourself again to activate the same virtues. It really leans into HP as a resource, more so than any other roguelike I've played. Another neat aspect is letting you have up to 2 upgradable sentinels with their own HP bars and die, which can help you to fill holes in your build. I love my robot buddies <3

Each character feels mechanically distinct, which is pretty impressive since there are 6 of them. There's a DoT/damage over time character, one that focuses on buffing your sentinels (or killing them over and over I guess), one that focuses on forging and improving your dice, etc. - and each character also individually has several different builds you can try out (though there are some I can already tell I'm never going to be able to execute/won't be viable without a lot of luck). The early game before you refine your deck can feel a little rough, but you can usually start getting the beginnings of a build together by the end of Chapter 1, which is on-pace for this kind of game.

Despite it being dice-based, there's actually less RNG than I expected. There are plenty of ways to make your dice more consistent - you can forge them at shops or in battle to get rid of undesirable sides, you can get reroll dice or a reroll sentinel, and basically everyone has a reroll virtue. Plus, while corruption is usually the 'undesirable' side, some characters can use it to such excellent effect that you actively want some corruption in your deck. The safe/balanced/risky dice division lets you more consistently target specific effects too - if I have a specific effect I'm after, I can go after those nodes to try to hit those (like going to risky nodes to chase Serenity for Austra). Certain dice and blessings only being available in certain chapters helps to increase consistency (though I think some events ignore the chapter restriction).

I've already sank 20 hours into the game, and I can easily see myself going for 20 more! Beautiful game with a lot of depth and replayability.