izigame.me

Rogue legacy 2 is... underwhelming. It's not that I would say it's bad per-say, but it's lacking in content and flawed enough to say that you should only play it on a sale. Even when I want to play it, when I come back, the various system flaws remind me why I feel this way.
It's all about repetition (it's a roguelike after all), but it doesn't have enough variety for this to work.
Each area has a notable lack of distinct tiles to use on the first full playthrough. As such, if you are grinding at all — which many people need to due to weird difficulty scaling on a mid-game sun themed area that's harder then the final area — then you'll notice this bad. When you beat the game, it seems like it adds more tiles based on the extra enemy modifiers you select.
There aren't that many spells, which also becomes a bore as most of them are too lackluster to warrant using over just attacking.
The weapons you find are usually just from other classes with the exception of fabled weapons, which are usually terrible or side-grades. This means that there is little point to swap except for a miserable 7% damage buff, so that you can kill tougher enemies in 7 swings instead of 7 swings.... Hmm.
The classes are terribly balanced. Early on the "chef" is overpowered, and then fades into uselessness on new-game+. Other classes like Valkyrie are strong all the way through. The balance issues on each class don't take long to figure out after beating the game, and from what I've heard it's expected that you beat the game 8 times?
The upgrade system is sad. That''s honestly the best word I could find for it: all of the castle upgrades are extremely basic stats that take increasingly ridiculous amount of gold due to the strange system that makes all upgrades more expensive as you buy any of them. This means that if you buy health upgrades (for example), then all of the other stat upgrades become arbitrarily more expensive. I expect this was again for new-game+, but it means that progression is unsatisfying limited on the first play-through. I find this to be a poor decision, as aside from some new armor and harder boss variants in new-game plus, I'm not finding much else new.
The resolve system is bad; it's a resource that determines how many items you can pick up, and if you take too many items and go below 100%, then it scales your max health down by equal percent below it. Thankfully.... most of the relics are also terrible and unsatisfying to use, so this also probably doesn't matter until later into new game+. Also for some reason they are hidden, so you can take relics with massive downsides that ruin the run, or are just mediocre and waste your resolve (and since you don't have much, it becomes a gamble often ending in some form of disappointment).
You can solve this with the "house rules" options to no loss whatsoever (both hiding and resolve), and I'd recommend removing the hidden effect, as some are practically run ruining for the progression (like the one that removes all gold and increases xp gain, which also makes opening most chests pointless).
Also, even though it wasn't too much of a problem for me, I can agree that a certain "sun" related area will be frustrating for most, as it has a suddenly massive spike in platforming difficulty, but only here. After this area, it returns back to normal, and it's confusing.
There are "big" secrets, but they are usually just an extra 15% damage to the area boss, which is depressing as that then compromises what I can only assume to be the major secret for each area. I didn't find them all, but still, I usually only found them after the boss was already dead, so it felt a bit pointless. Any other secrets are just regular gold chests.
I'd say this fails on most of the fun of each run's progression, as the repetitive and limited tilesets and bad itemization for upgrades and weapons in each run means that exploration is just to collect as much gold as possible.
At least the story is neat and the music is good I guess?
It's strange. I've tried to find where this game shines, but I can't; It's distinctly average. The combat isn't bad, and the boss fights are mostly decent (though some attacks like the "X" bone boss attack have very awkward animations for the size of what is thrown) but the lack of everything else makes this forgettable. I even forgot the traits system existed until now — it might as well not.
Maybe I'll try to go further just to see if anything finally pops up, but for now, it leaves little impression at all. I always wondered why no one ever talked about rogue legacy 2 for good or for bad, since I liked the first one quite a bit. I don't wonder anymore; It's not memorable and excels at nothing, but it fails completely at nothing either.