In many ways, Rogue Legacy 2 aligns with the gold standard of the roguelite category by creating a highly engaging, dare I say addicting, gameplay loop that rewards multiple types of players. Newer players will find enjoyment in its accessibility levers and bite-sized progression while roguelite veterans will enjoy its deeper-than-expected class-based variance. Sure, you probably will die a lot, and you'll wish to have a greater connection with its world and the characters within; at the end of the day, its flaws are outweighed by the amount of fun that is to be had by experimentation and repetition. My nearly twenty hour experience felt like two hours, and I still itch to return for one more run. Regardless if you're a PS+ subscriber or not, Rogue Legacy 2 is more than deserving of your time.
The past few years have seen some fantastic roguelite releases. I think of Hades, RETURNAL, Have a Nice Death, Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, OTXO, and Crypt of the Necrodancer, just to name a few. These titles successfully innovated on the roguelite genre by creating highly engaging yet variable gameplay loops that kept me, along with many other players, interested despite the typical ticket to entry that demands dying again and again to progress. Yes, the best roguelites are those that make dying less frustrating.
Rogue Legacy 2 is another example of a fantastic roguelite. While it was originally released in Early Access on PC in 2020, it wasn’t “officially” released on the PC, XBOX, and Switch in April and November of 2022. Fast forward to June 2023, Rogue Legacy 2 is available for PlayStation owners, and is also available for FREE for those with PS+ memberships. Knowing all of this, the purpose of my review should answer the questions of whether PS+ members should consider Rogue Legacy 2, and if you’re not a PS+ owner, if the title is worth your consideration during a time where there are so many good roguelites available for the PS5.
The short answer? Yes, to both of those questions. Without a doubt Rogue Legacy 2 is worth the time investment and your consideration. I’ve spent over 20 hours playing Rogue Legacy 2 during my review period, and it’s honestly felt like I’ve merely spent 2 hours. Read on for the long answer as to why I loved Rogue Legacy 2 so much.
It’s clear that the Early Access system benefitted Rogue Legacy 2‘s development. Prior to reviewing the title, I thumbed through the prior releases and patch notes to discern what was added as the game grew. Cellar Door Games’ additions have been meaningful, adding additional depth and variance through new classes, enemies, and weapons to make players’ experiences constantly refreshing, unique, and fun. PS5 players have all of this content available right from the start, so no worrying about having to wait for upcoming content that PC and other console players have been enjoying all this time.
Rogue Legacy 2‘s gameplay loop is moderately similar to what you may expect from other roguelites. You’re presented with one of three heirs (more on that in a moment), you can build your base and unlock permanent character upgrades, visit some NPC merchants at the Docks, and enter the Castle for “one more run.” The Castle is a constantly shifting environment full of enemies, hazards, and platforming challenges of various difficulties. Six main bosses are scattered around the constantly shifting world, but you can’t reach them until you acquire the necessary character upgrade (in true metrodvania fashion).
Rogue Legacy 2‘s variance exists in many forms. In total, there are 15 classes of characters (like a ranger, assassin, gunslinger, and chef!), each of which with a class-specific weapon and a class-specific talent (special ability). The chef’s talent is Stew, a charge-based ability that restores your health and mana in a pinch; the archer’s talent is creating an Ivy Canopy, letting the archer fire arrows on a high and safe ivy ledge and granting the archer poisonous arrows when standing on the ivy ledge. Then, a unit can have a spell (of which there are 18), and a trait (no more than two from over 60) and/or a relic (no more than two from over 60). Spells, traits, and relics are randomly assigned, but sometimes a unit can have no trait or relic at all for a basic experience.
The heir selection process is where Rogue Legacy 2‘s variance shines. When beginning a new run, I was presented with three heirs to choose from at first. The classes are randomly selected, as well as their traits and relics. Sometimes a unit will have a ridiculously powerful combination of traits/spells, and others…not so much. You would think that choosing the “good” combination would be the best choice, but sometimes the unfavorable combination is worth it, as selecting the unfavorable combination gives you a high gold modifier. Sure, your character is a pacifist and unable to deal damage at all, but you get 210% more gold from chests! This presents an interesting choice for players, because trait/spell combinations are rarely repeated. If you enjoyed Have a Nice Death‘s method of instilling variance, than Rogue Legacy 2 will be enjoyable, too.
Regardless of the variance in the form of traits, spells, and relics, the character classes themselves diversify the gameplay to such an extent that everything else acts as icing on the cake. You might gravitate toward melee classes more than ranged (or vice versa), but the classes themselves require vastly different approaches to gameplay. This is exacerbated in the later biomes where enemies are more deadlier than usual and platforming requires the utmost precision. Throughout my playthrough, I rarely felt like I was phoning it in because each new run was exactly that — a new run with a character whose strengths and weaknesses most likely differed from the previous unsuccessful run.
I mentioned earlier that Rogue Legacy 2 is a roguelite metroidvania. This means that you’re not expected to slog through multiple consecutive biomes in each run. Instead, you’re free to pick up where you most recently left off, should you feel prepared to continue. Or, you can retrace your steps but in a differently generated pattern thanks to its constantly shifting world. Boss battles are one-and-done, so if you manage to beat one of the bosses during any given run, you’re not expected to find it again and attempt to take it down.
I greatly appreciate Rogue Legacy 2‘s emphasis on bite-sized progression over a repetitive slog of progression with highly variable runtimes. This is where RETURNAL falls short in some regards, as a RETURNAL player is expected to rerun through at least one beginning biome in order to get to a biome from a previous unsuccessful run. In Rogue Legacy 2, you can instantly teleport to that previously unsuccessful biome’s entrance from the starting area in the castle. If you “froze” the castle’s configuration by consulting with Noah the Architect and accepting his fee, you can bypass the procedural generation altogether and literally retrace the steps you took in your last unsuccessful run. Despite investing nearly twenty hours in-game, my time and freedom were continuously respected. I could retrace my steps in their entirety for a fee, or I could plan on returning to the last biome and hope for a different path from the RNG gods and goddesses.
Some may argue that Rogue Legacy 2‘s methods of opt-in repetition takes the trial-and-error roguelite gameplay loops away from players looking for a challenge. Others may argue that Noah the Architect’s ability to literally freeze the composition of castle’s map will cut through the player experience and discourage players from new and unique runs. Sure, these arguments could be valid, but the price of Noah exists in a negative gold modifier. The more he’s used, the less gold you’ll be earning in your runs until you relieve him of his duties. Either way, his use is a win-win for players. In my experience, his services came in clutch when I was attempting to defeat a miniboss or a boss and didn’t want to have to retrace my steps over and over just to fight one battle. If I came across a new character with a ridiculously high gold modifier, I let Noah go and mucked around in the Castle to get a large sum of gold!
Rogue Legacy 2 has a small handful of sidequests that complement the main objective of slaying its six bosses to open the golden doors. At the start, side quests will feel more frequent simply because of how easy players discover new areas and encounter forgotten characters’ stories. These castle-specific side quests are all optional in nature, all of which worth it because of the permanent buffs they give you. If I could critique these side quests, it would be that I wanted more along the way. Once I got to the fifth and sixth biomes, the path forward was almost linear with very little reason to explore.
Other side content exists outside of the castle, most notably the Scars of Erebus and Rogue Legacy 2‘s incredibly deep postgame. Think of Scars of Erebus as challenge arenas, each with its own set of rules. Completing a scar grants you currency that can be spent on larger permanent buffs and more. Upon completing Rogue Legacy 2 for the first time, The Threads of Fate (New Game+) are unlocked. Think of the Threads as Rogue Legacy 2‘s version of Have a Nice Death‘s Breakdown levels and Hades‘ Pact of Punishment postgame challenges. Taking on additional threads drastically increases Rogue Legacy 2‘s difficulty and presents players with new challenges. Rogue Legacy 2 is chock full of content, so I can look past the lack of castle-specific side quests because of the additional content outside of the castle’s walls.
Some of you may be curious or concerned about Rogue Legacy 2‘s difficulty, especially coming from the first Rogue Legacy released in 2013. In many ways, it’s easier. There are 15 individual character classes on top of the spell, trait, and relic variance along with the metroidvania platforming and exploration variance. This means that there are multiple class-specific difficulty curves on top of the biome-specific difficulty curves. Even now, I feel confident in my ability to play as a chef, ranger, and gunslinger, but I still have little idea how to utilize the bard class in an optimal fashion.
How does its difficulty compare to the likes of Hades, RETURNAL, or even Have a Nice Death? It’s around the same level of difficulty as RETURNAL, and much more difficult than Have a Nice Death and Hades. RETURNAL‘s difficulty spikes in the first, third, and (for some) the fifth biomes. In Have a Nice Death, the difficulty massively spikes against Thanagers (bosses), with Major Warren Pliskhan taking the cake. Hades‘ difficulty spikes were boss-specific, too, often spiking against the Furies and Thesius/Asterius. For Rogue Legacy 2, each biome tests the player’s ability to utilize the most recently-earned biome-specific ability, culminating in a “final exam” that takes place during each biome’s boss fight. If you’re able to utilize your newest ability well alongside your current character’s strengths and weaknesses, you’ll be fine. Otherwise, a few more runs may be needed to get the hang of the attack patterns.
It’s common for roguelite players to experience frustration in harder-than-expected biomes or against bosses. I remember being incredibly frustrated against the Nemesis boss in RETURNAL because of its final phase. In Rogue Legacy 2, I rarely experienced that level of frustration. This is possibly because I realized during a boss fight or a platforming segment that my current character’s loadout was not optimal, and I should have simply spent time clearing rooms for gold and experience. It also could be because switching between multiple classes of characters at a time forced me to be mindful in how I played. Phoning it in via grinding wasn’t part of my gameplay experience, nor was repetition something I was consciously experiencing. If my current run wasn’t working out, and sometimes it wasn’t, trying again as a different class was often the solution.
If you’re still worried about the difficulty, don’t worry. Rogue Legacy 2 contains a myriad of accessibility options available through the “House Rules” options. If you want to fly, enable it! Enemy damage is too much? Decrease it! Enemies have too much health? Decrease that, too! I didn’t find the need to mess with the House Rules during my run, but the fact that they exist should be relieving for those who want to push ahead rather than the “one more run” mentality. Cellar Door Games has you set.
Rogue Legacy 2 has lore, but in very little ways is this lore a driving force behind the “one more run” gameplay loop. When I played Hades, I would often spend a run or two pushing forward just so I could hear what other NPCs had to say. In Rogue Legacy 2, the lore is understated. The nature of player character being expendable units in a grander narrative taking place in the upper echelons of players’ consciousness means that the player themself doesn’t see their actions as playing an active role in a story. Instead, the player’s position is a passive one, uncovering expository material and figuring out how the world came to be rather than what the player could do to change it. The player is surrounded by lore pieces but is rarely directly involved in them.
This is my biggest knock against Rogue Legacy 2, as the little story that’s told is an interesting one, albeit dark. The fifteen character classes could have served a greater purpose in telling individual stories, such as being descentants from a longer line of, say, chefs, or archers. Class-specific endings would have fit perfectly here, even to encourage folks to try experimenting as another class to get to the end and figure out the class’ purpose in Rogue Legacy 2‘s grander narrative. But, maybe the lack of lore is to its current benefit, as the gameplay was more than enough to hold my attention.
If you’re hoping for Rogue Legacy 2 to have utilized the PS5’s hardware to the best of its abilities, you’ll be relatively disappointed. At the same time, if you’re looking for games that utilize the PS5’s DualSense, you’re probably better off seeking out a first party title than a multiplatform title such as this one. There are appropriate haptics, but adaptive triggers are nonexistent. There are some loading screens, but you won’t be sitting through them for an egregious amount of time while the game loads. The game is quite stable, however, as I don’t think I experienced a gamebreaking bug despite Rogue Legacy 2‘s immense mountain of variance and opportunity for things to go awry.
As I wrap this up, I still cannot believe that I’ve spent 20 hours playing Rogue Legacy 2. It hasn’t felt like it, not one bit. If you read my Final Fantasy XVI review, you’re probably familiar with how aging has impacted my ability to feel excited and commit to a title given my “adulting” duties on the regular. Rogue Legacy 2 is another recent title that has caused me to think about my next runs even when I’m out and about doing my house husbandry duties. Several nights this past week I lost track of time playing and realized that it was 3:30am and should probably go to bed. It’s that engaging, even with its small flaws.
In many ways, Rogue Legacy 2 aligns with the gold standard of the roguelite category by creating a highly engaging, dare I say addicting, gameplay loop that rewards multiple types of players. Newer players will find enjoyment in its accessibility levers and bite-sized progression while roguelite veterans will enjoy its deeper-than-expected class-based variance. Sure, you probably will die a lot, and you’ll wish to have a greater connection with its world and the characters within; at the end of the day, its flaws are outweighed by the amount of fun that is to be had by experimentation and repetition. My nearly twenty hour experience felt like two hours, and I still itch to return for one more run. Regardless if you’re a PS+ subscriber or not, Rogue Legacy 2 is more than deserving of your time.
A review copy of Rogue Legacy 2 was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
