Rogue Legacy is a side-scrolling, platformer, adventure/exploration game with several features that make it unique among the genre. For one, with rare exception, the Castle changes its layout every time you enter into it. In general, in the Upper parts of the Castle you'll come across the Tower. In the East, you'll find the Forest and down below you'll find the Underworld. The rooms are randomized in each area though. The enemies you encounter are too. You'll find certain types of enemies in each of the different areas, but which ones you run into, how many there are and their placement changes every time you play. There are spike traps of the obvious and hidden kind, wall cannons and floating spiked balls that are thrown in there too for good measure, but each time you go in, you don't know what to expect.
Scratch that. There is one thing you CAN expect and that is: You're going to die. A LOT! ...but that is actually a vital and important part of the game. I would go out on a limb and say there's probably no one on this earth that can pick up Rogue Legacy and start and finish the game with his/her first character. The LEGACY part of the game comes from the fact that your descendants retain your stat upgrades, your wealth, your equipment, your runes and can reap the benefits of the additions to the Manor in which they all live that were built in previous generations. As you play, succeed, earn upgrades, and eventually die, your descendants are the ones that get stronger and stronger. But if you pass on your stats, your weapons, your equipment and runes, don't your offspring play just the same as you? Actually, NO, no they don't!
Your three descendants that take on your Legacy, like any child, have unique traits. Maybe one has Color Blindness and sees the world only in Black and White. Maybe he or she is Dyslexic and can't read text very well. Dwarfism could run in your family; you can be born smaller with a smaller "hit box" but the ability to fit into areas others cannot. Maybe you were born with Gigantism and are huge with a huge hit box. Traits like being Gay don't affect the way you play and are just for fun, but those like Vertigo where the entire world flips upside-down and left becomes right... well THAT'S a whole different story! Maybe you are born with OCD where you feel the need to break every item you come across and are awarded with Magic Points by doing so. Maybe you suffer from Peripheral Arterial Disease where you feel no pain in your extremities and aren't harmed by spikes in the slightest! Throw in the fact that your kids can have none, one or two of these traits combined and two of them will hardly play the same AT ALL!
Just to add to the mix: There are different Classes your kids can take on. One can be an Arch-Mage that can choose the skill they want at will, are weak physically but have high Magic Points. One can be a Barbarian Queen that's a walking TANK that can take a lot of damage, but has low MP; this class also has a SHOUT! that will propel enemies away from them! Maybe your child grows up to be a Shinobi that is super quick, has 175% of his parent's strength, but never scores a Critical Hit. Maybe your child decides to be a Miner: He or She earns lots of Gold, but can't take much damage; they'll help future generations by providing money to build the manor or buy better equipment for the family.
This only scratches the surface of what Rogue Legacy has to offer, but the one thing that should strike you is: This game keeps you on your toes! You never know what to expect, your traits and classes are never assured. You can live for literally seconds after you start or feel an incredible sense of accomplishment for lasting long enough to explore a huge portion of the map and earning TONS of gold for your next of kin. Games that have the same areas, the same enemy patterns and placement, the hero that never changes can't match the sense of achievement a game like Rogue Legacy provides. The fact that it LOOKS like a pixelated 16-bit game but has sooo much else going on for it just makes it that much cooler!
Oh I love this, though I feel like I have done this enough times that you guys should know my answer.
I play games for thrill of interactivity I have with the character. The more things you allow me the player to do and if those activities are interesting and fun usually determins how much I enjoy a game. Taking my golden standard Zelda, I enjoy it most cause it has all the elements I look for in gameplay. It has plenty of action, the older ones were a lot more skill based which scraches my itch for a challenge. The key element though is the mix of action, adventure and puzzles, there is no franchise that does that better than Zelda. I want to explore large worlds, I want it to feel like I need to figure out how to reach that next location. I want to see a heart in the distance and say "how do I reach that?" I want glimpses of places I will go to in the future. I want that tingly feeling of awe when you reach a new area which will be your playground for the next few hours. But most importantly I want it to remain an experience I can't predict.
A lot of games do exploration but have really strict rules so you know you will never do something outside the boudaries of the game. I think western game design sticks to these rigid structures too much which is why I have always favored Japanese game design where anything can happen. In Skyrim sure I will see amazing new locations, uncover cool storylines and battle big beasts. But I am never going to randomly end up in a fly a dragon mini game where I am burning down other dragons. I am not going to get into a arrow shooting mini game. Nothing will ever surprise me, the core gameplay is there 100% of the time. Zelda is not like that at all. You never know what new gameplay element will pop out. New items change the way you apporach enemies, puzzles even traversal. In TP alone you ending flying on the back of this flying monster. You end up in an old west saloon shootout. You are having a joust battle. You can of course fish. When I enter a new area I know something there will surprise me. My favorite games do that, Metal Gear Solid has the most crazy shit happening that is totally outside the core stealth mechanics. RE4 while never going away from the core gameplay mechanics, stretched that TPS in every single way possible so that nearly every new room you entered made the player use those mechanics in new ways. Mario Galaxy, Nintendo games in general, all have extremely strong fun gameplay mechanics but always keep changing the gameplay scenarios so that the experience feels fresh for the player.
Some games focus totally on that skill gameplay aspect I enjoy so much, the action games like DMC. Some games are great mental excersizes that test your puzzle solving skills, now this usually needs to be balanced with a fun skill based gameplay mechanic for me to fully enjoy. For instance a straight puzzle game like Proffesor Layton bores me. But Portal or Braid cause it mixes traditional gameplay elements with puzzle solving I enjoy those games a ton more. I do enjoy story as well, obviously I dont weigh it as heavily as the other elements but if you can get my blood pumping it can usually enhance any gameplay moments and when great design with a powerful story mix you get majic like TLOU and MGS3.
Above all keep me engaged as a player. Not as a movie watcher. Not as some emotional artsy experience. Engage the PLAYER, I am holding a controller to CONTROL the action. Make that aspect of the video game the best it can be.
Oh so this is a stealth Rogue Legacy thread. FIne. 
I started playing it a few weeks ago. I love the premise. Though the dying becomes a bit too repetitive. I think I would have perference a more metroidvania style than entering the same area randomized over and over.
Nope! Not a stealth Rogue Legacy topic at all! How many times did I mention Rogue games or CastleVania or liken it to anything else at all? That's what I mean. It's like trying to describe Resident Evil without using the phrase "Survival Horror." I just want people to be more descriptive when talking about a game to try and get a sense of what they REALLY like about it or what makes it unique!
I plan on making other entries when I have more time!
I look forward to it!
I enjoy Super Mario Bros primarily due to the thrill gained from death defying leaps over bottomless chasms, and squashing my enemies under my feet. The bright, cheerful graphics also put a smile on my face, while upbeat music makes my buttocks bounce happily in my seat.
Talking in rhyme? Start this again?
It was YOU who was against it, last week, my friend!
Nah, that was purely coincidence, Leo.
The Story in Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a gripping and emotional one and has not been approached in this way in a game before. If you have dry eyes at the ending of this game, you should locate the nearest mental health facility and get a check-up, post haste! I will get more into that and the gameplay later, but I wanted to illustrate a completely different reason why I loved this game so much. It has a device in it, used by its developers in a few previous games, that is so effective when paired with the game's time-period, DESPITE the circumstances going on in the game-world surrounding it, I just had to share it here... or should I say hear?
Let me start with my absolute favorite: Metroid Prime. I absolutely love exploration games, where you slowly gain new powers to progress even further. Metroid Prime does it better than any game. I love the element of surprise and delight that this game brings when you discover the main planet, Tallon IV. In screenshots, it looks boring, but after a few minutes of play, you realize it's quite special. The gameplay appears deceptively simple. It appears to be a typical FPS control scheme, but then the variety in gameplay shines through. Yes, you have your primary weapon and your secondary explosive weapons. You also have a variety of visors for scanning and progressing through. You can roll up into a morph ball to squeeze through to tiny spaces. You can even platform jump with almost as much finesse as...well, you know. The sense of immersion goes above any FPS.
The pacing, flow of this game is just perfect. You're constantly discovering new areas with hidden power ups. You don't need half of your morph ball bombs or missiles, but the fun of finding then entices you to find them all. Each area, which are the typical desert, lava, snow areas are realized so fully, connected so flawlessly, that you believe that this world is real. Each area has this creepy, alien type feel, a feeling of real isolation. The feeling of exploration by scanning objects adds to the atmosphere. You can read and discover tons about the planet and the creatures that inhabit it by scanning different types of lore. It really has the best atmosphere in the game by just observing the tiny details like how the creatures are scavenging for food or how the plant life has overgrown and taken over certain alien built institutions. I find myself standing in awe, observing the world around me at times.
The music certainly adds to the sense of isolation like the slow melodic piano in Phenandra Drifts, or the moody, claustrophobic sound from Magmoor Caverns. Each song perfectly fits the area. I get a little smile on my face each and every time I discover a new missile upgrade. That five note melody just makes me feel victorious.
Enemy bosses, just like everything else are incredibly varied. Whether you are using an x-Ray visor to find a hidden enemy or morph into a ball to roll underneath an enemy to plant a bomb. There's really nothing quite like the bosses in Metroid Prime. Most are not pushovers either. I love that sense of anticipation when you know you are about to enter a boss lair and know you're gonna get your ass handed to you a time or two. These bosses practically scream, " Get good or get the hell out!"
There is so much variety, so much detail, so much to discover and explore. I'd give anything to experience this like it was my first time playing it again.
Maybe it's unique to Ubisoft Montpellier, maybe it's a French thing, but the combination of the artistic style of the game, the story and world created around post cards written during World War One, along with time-period and location-relevant music --AND-- gameplay that's actually in sync to the beat of that music... it just adds a level of interactivity not often seen in other games... The fact that you see glimpses of happiness and small human victories despite the tragedies going on around these characters, it just makes the game THAT much more memorable! AWESOME!
travo said:Let me start with my absolute favorite: Metroid Prime. I absolutely love exploration games, where you slowly gain new powers to progress even further...
Now that's EXACTLY the kind of entry I had in mind when creating this topic! Not that anyone's else's is wrong I just meant that level of detail for a single game at a time!
Pfft, reviewing a game without comparing it to another? Easy. Try reviewing a game while comparing it to a book.
Your review score couldn't be anymore accurate.
Lol my comment in that review! Now I have read Fahrenheit 451, amazing review!!!
That said the part where you say how can Samus hope to overcome the space pirates... Cause she is fucking Samus! She easily kicks all their asses, as if she broke a sweat during MP. Plus she kept getting more and more powerful as you played, by the end she is super girl.
Dvader said:Lol my comment in that review! Now I have read Fahrenheit 451, amazing review!!!
That said the part where you say how can Samus hope to overcome the space pirates... Cause she is fucking Samus! She easily kicks all their asses, as if she broke a sweat during MP. Plus she kept getting more and more powerful as you played, by the end she is super girl.
But Samus is me, and I shit myself!
Foolz said:But Samus is me, and I shit myself!
And she is me too! And I am a badass that wont die!
How good are we at describing the real reasons we like games? It's easy to say the game has good graphics or it reminds you of Zelda, Resident Evil, Metal Gear, etc, etc, etc. What if we couldn't refer to other games when describing what we like? What if someone asked you: "What exactly about the graphics do you like so much?" I challenge everyone to pick a game they are playing, have played recently or is one of their long time favorites and describe --IN DETAIL-- what exactly it is about the game they like so much without referring to other games or falling back on such well-worn phrases like good graphics or smooth animation. This could either be super tedious or very eye opening, but give it a try!