izigame.me

It is fun while it lasts. I enjoy these types of games, but a major recurring theme for their design is that the RNG can be mitigated through good decisions made throughout the run. It is possible that this game has that, and I am just missing it, but after 12 hours, I am not sure that is the case. It is disappointing because the game is very very close to being exactly what I desire from this whole "roguelike deckbuilding" thing that has blown up in the last few years. The elements are all there, but they're not quite to scale, and the randomness tends to ruin the parts that are really good. The maps are small, and there is little variety to the level design (though the art throughout the entire game is pretty damn great). Often, the floor consists of a few battles and a store (which only offers you 3 items to buy).
The game is structured through "episodes", which are increasingly difficult runs with different challenge modifiers added to the run. This was quite enjoyable as I was forced to change how I played in order to consistently win. This stayed true until the third episode (I had this problem with all characters around this episode). The difficulty ramp-up was so stark that it outran the ability to outplay the RNG. The game does not offer much choice variety in what equipment you receive throughout your run, and that makes it particularly difficult to mitigate bad rolls. You get just a few of those, and you've gone from full health to one quarter, in just a single battle. There were many times where I would die to the very first enemy on the second floor, and there was no way to stop it. In a particularly bad instance, I died to the second enemy on the first floor. Up until that battle, there was only one available chest, and it would always have one of two possible pieces of equipment (many times I died on the second floor after only reaching one chest too). Neither of those equipment pieces do anything to help actually win the battle. In this particular instance, I would almost always get one that gave you an extra gold piece at the end of battle.
There were no decisions being made by me that would affect whether or not I died, and that was a problem for me. More generally, there are only a few variables that you can even change up in regards to pathing and equipment choice. When there were options, and I would die, I would pick the other option on the next try, only to die again due to the RNG of both of our dice, as well as both of our debuffs. When you feel that your agency as a player has been taken away, you tend to not enjoy the experience at all. And I can't recommend an experience that makes me feel like I'm at the whims of randomness.
I would so love to be wrong, so if you are actually really good at the game, please comment and let me know what I'm missing. I could use another game in this vein to dump hundreds of hours into getting good at, and I thought this might be the one when I bought it.