Rogue Rising

I'm dropping a positive review, despite feeling rather mixed on this. I do this to try and help the developer and encourage them to continue working on their project. I believe that a game can still be a positive thing that others may enjoy playing, even if I'm on the fence. First, I respect any solo developer who are putting in the effort to create something they're passionate about. I get the feeling this developer is no different and I wish them the best of luck with finishing this one. However I do need to speak truthfully regarding Rogue Rising in its current state. First of all the game has been translated into English which works fine for the Menus. However some of the tutorial instructions can be slightly confusing. This isn't necessarily a barrier, but something worth noting. Gameplay itself is fairly fluid with plenty of attack options and some handy mobility ones too. Something that immediately ruins the combat for me is the inclusion of contact damage (losing life when simply touching an enemy). There are plenty of games that pull this off and normally they're balanced with this mechanic in mind. However in Rogue Rising 2 of the 3 playable characters are melee focused and have relatively small hitbox attacks. This means you'll need to get right up nice and close to deal damage, but this comes with the very real possibility that you'll take a hit simply because the enemy stepped forward at the last second. Outside of the quick tutorial that teaches you what each button does, how to wall jump and pause time, there's nothing else to tell you what's happening. You enter the tower and begin fighting and exploring with no direction. Again, not a deal breaker, but for anybody who likes their Roguelites served up with some narrative or plot, I'm sorry to say I have no idea what this is about. Balance is currently a huge issue. As stated previously contact damage can make it fairly difficult for 2 of the 3 playable characters. However the third, an archer, has ranged attacks and can avoid contact damage. She goes a step further in that some of her arrows can even be fired straight through the environment itself, clipping through walls and killing enemies that have no way to fight back. This can lead to very easy cheese strategies of handling enemies from a distance, behind several walls, on the other side of the room, like a desert op sniper firing rounds through glass windows. I also couldn't tell you what any of the added abilities do. The tutorial tells you that these abilities can be used by using the trigger and shoulder buttons on your controller, but not what the abilities themselves are doing. Some obvious ones will fire an attack, but others will buff you with an aura. An aura which is doing... something. I have no idea what they do, but I use them every chance I get because... well surely it can't be hurting... right? Ultimately I think this game will improve greatly once more information is given and things become clear. What some of the currencies do and how to acquire them, what your abilities do & a narrative, even if it's small and takes a backseat to gameplay, can help a lot. As I said at the start, I want to be encouraging for the developer to continue working on this title to make it the best it can be. It's an Early Access release so all of these things I've talked about can easily be taken care of with time. Currently I think the asking price for the game is too high. It might be fair to sell it at this rate once the game fully releases and has more to it, but in its current form I do think it's a bit much.

All of the instructions are in Japanese, so you may want to wait until the translations are ready for English speakers. I don't want to say DO play it, but I also don't want to say DONT play it, either (I'll leave a positive review just to avoid negatively affecting the developer). It screams solo-dev game project, which means its got some really .. bizarre art choices, interesting gameplay/mechanics and balance is all out of whack. So, if you're in to that kind of thing, give it a look.

I hate that comments are disabled as the default option, you can’t even communicate on here as it is… but this is supposed to be about the game, and not the endless list of gripes I have with this platform. Read the review Beelz wrote (that goes for the Developers too!) it covers everything. I want to love this game, I can see where it’s supposed to be, but I don’t think it’s even possible to get anywhere without using the 3rd character who can shoot arrows. It’s like risk of rain, but better level design, I’ve only played a bit, haven’t been able to clear level 1 yet, and would like to know how to save up currency to buy unlockables, hopefully people will buy this and the devs don’t give up on it (which is yet another gripe because small indie devs are left out in the ocean to die as soon as they release their game… steam-no promotion from us, but we’ll take whatever money we get from the thousands upon thousands of shovelware garbage we release every week! FOR SHAME!!! Throw these people a bone, and show their game’s instead of burying them under crap!!!