Ziggurat 2

Zig 2 is a really good roguelite that really deserves more attention. Zig 2 is everything that a sequel should be, and that is everything the first game was and more. If you're a fan of wizardy, roguelites and fast paced twitchy FPSs then I'd definitely recommend this to you. I'd give it a B+ :) There's tons of different combinations of characters, weapons, amulets, and perks that keep the game feeling fresh each run. Mechanically this game is very solid and makes good use of procedural level layouts with tilesets. Milkstone definitely found their own voice & style here with Zig 2 compared to Zig 1. The first one wore its heretic vibe more on its sleeve, where you can still kind of see the resemblance here but its more stylized. I like both games for slightly different reasons, but both of them have that great oldschool charm to them that I personally find appealing. Zig2 has great combat mechanics & an elemental system that lets you exploit certain monsters weaknesses. The arenas here have great variation to them and will often have modifiers that add just a bit more depth to combat encounters. It does a really good job at incentivizing you to try out new / different weapons and that ultimately keeps combat feeling pretty fresh. Each of the environments are visually pleasing and make great use of color & dynamic lighting. They make really really good use of verticality too. The game runs very well and is quite optimized. Sound design is pretty good. All of the spells, canons, wands and staves feel rightly punchy and swoopswoopy. The music is quite good too. Skill ceiling is definitely high, but you are rightly rewarded for sticking to it and aiming better! That said, it is not perfect. I'll briefly summarize my grievances : - I miss the original's Diablo-esk health orb UI - I miss the secret rooms from the original, I know that they replaced them with the blue key fragment system but personally I would rather find the secret room outright than re-trace over the entire level multiple times to find the 3 blue keys. The rewards you can get do not quite feel as worth it in this one either. - You cannot skip boss cutscenes - At times, runs can feel like they drag on and on. They do have indicators for how long a session may be depending on the mission you choose, but man they can go on for a long while. There are multiple things that play into this as well, damage scaling, waiting for your wand to recharge, that wand's recharge rate, the rate at which you recover your other weapon's mana (ammo), the enemies health, how many enemies there are in your room, their spawn rate, ect. While the gameplay pace is not slow by any means, these things do ultimately slow the game down and can make the experience feel like it drags on. - While many of the perks are fun and can lead to some interesting builds, a chunk of the perks are kinda just meh. There really isn't much build crafting to do, you just pick the best one in your particular isolated circumstance (usually some sort of health recovery or damage+). I want a few perks that mix up the gameplay, flip it on its head, ones that alter how my projectiles function, projectile count, make my projectiles bigger or smaller. For the theme, where the premise is magic can really do anything, I feel like creatively many of the perks kind of drop the ball a bit. I know that Zig2 was likely not developed to be a build crafting type of game with its perk system but I do think it could be better. - Often it feels like I hit the power ceiling quite fast in a campaign run. This is a side effect of some of perks being a little undertuned & underwhelming. I wish we were allowed to get outside of the box more during the campaign, in endless mode it feels pretty decent. - Metaprogression (other than unlocking new characters & weapons & amulets) feels meh. They're all essentially percentage boosts to your ammo count, damage, and resistances to elements. Because of that the metaprogression feels a bit tacked on. Kind of just a boring number go up. I would have liked to see more individualized upgrades for the weapons & characters, a way to augment their abilities, a way to upgrade them or unlock new abilities for them or something, y'know? - Needing to do sidemissions to unlock most of the weapons & perks can get to feeling a bit laborious at times. I would rather have it be a combination of side missions + natural discovery, if you pull a new weapon in a chest and take it to the end of the mission with you, you've unlocked it. Or maybe a new perk you haven't seen before appears in the shop. You buy it, you get to use it & unlock it at the same time. Anyway, Zig2 is a great roguelite. They have much to be proud of here, and I definitely hope we get to see Zig3 at some point!

Improves on the first in every way.

[b]Pros[/b] [list] [*] +Solid gameplay with a variety of weapons [*] +Decent character variety [*] +Plenty of ways to upgrade your characters, though upgrading your skills can get grindy [*] +Good enemy variety [*] +Variety of perks, but some are just basically small stat buffs [*] +Multiple game modes [*] +Solid soundtrack [/list] [b]Cons[/b] [list] [*] -Shops sometimes don't appear on a floor or even during an entire run, which feels bad if you're holding a bunch of money [*] -Unlocking a lot of perks and weapons dilutes the loot pool, making it harder to target specific gear [*] -Can sometimes be hard to tell which element an enemy is strong/weak against [*] -Overall dungeon structure feels similar between runs, even if the biomes are different [/list] [h3]Gameplay and Mechanics[/h3] Ziggurat 2 is a roguelite first-person shooter where you choose from several heroes, each with their own unique abilities and passives. You also have a variety of weapons and items to utilize, though you’ll need to unlock most of them first. Both movement and combat feel solid; the controls are responsive, and the weapons are fun to use. In the campaign, you'll start by clearing procedurally generated dungeons, but completing main missions unlocks new side-mission types, such as surviving multiple enemy waves instead of standard dungeon exploration. The game can get quite challenging. While some enemies simply target your current position, others track your movement and predict where you are going to land their attacks, making dodging tricky. Fortunately, there are five difficulty settings to choose from, and you can switch between them at any time during the campaign without penalty. [h3]Progression and Systems[/h3] Your main method of getting stronger in the campaign is a passive skill tree that boosts your health, damage, and other stats. To earn skill points, you need to level up your characters, weapons, and items. Every time you start a run, the game randomly assigns an XP bonus to a specific character, wand, starting weapon, and item. This helps you level them up faster and unlock more of their individual passives, which effectively encourages you to experiment with new builds. While I only played through the campaign, it looks like you can unlock characters by playing other game modes, though I am not sure if perks, weapons, and items unlock there as well. [h3]Visuals and Presentation[/h3] The graphics and art style are pretty good and the general presentation is great. The UI is clean, the weapon and enemy animations look nice, and the environments look good. Performance was smooth throughout my playtime, and I didn't encounter any bugs. [h3]Narrative and Sound[/h3] The story is largely forgettable, but the game doesn't focus heavily on narrative. On the audio side, the soundtrack is solid, and the weapon and enemy sound effects are good. [h3]Comments and Verdict[/h3] Ziggurat 2 is a very good game, but it can get repetitive after a while. Since the dungeon layouts remain largely the same despite the different biomes, the runs eventually started to feel similar to one another. That said, I still enjoyed playing this game. Overall, if you are a fan of first-person shooters and roguelites, I definitely recommend taking a look at this game.

I loved the combination roguelike+magic+fps. I would love to see more update of this game or a Ziggurat 3.

Sorry ;) The idea of a 3D Wizard roguelite game, and even fast-paced, is something that made me reeeally excited And even though I had a few hours of fun playthrough, I think it failed for me personally, for my roguelite standards The game generally feels underpolished - maybe the UI was going for an old-school vibe, but either it didn't fit for me, or there's just something about it that feels underdone. The battle mechanics themselves seem a little off for this type of game. Maybe the mobs feel spammy, or maybe there's something that lacks about the weapons I'm given. It's hard to fairly compare to Risk of Rain 2 because that one is 3rd-person and not fast-paced, but either way, there the fights felt more fun and rewarding, and not like its just spamspamspam And tbh probably most importantly - the upgrades aren't fun. It's just "this type of weapon will deal N% more damage" or "you will have N% more health". It's not engaging to keep coming back to the levels over and over, if I can barely feel the changes I'm supposed to feel The weapons aren't that fun - only the hammer with the homing attack was something exciting and that I wanted to explore how to play around with. The other weapons were either too similar to each other, or just not that pleasant to fight with Overall I feel like the game could've been so much more fun if the action mechanics were a little reworked. In terms of level design - wow, the locations look so cool, and the monsters too. Also, easing into the game for new players should be done much better - I don't want to right away have access to 4 different weapons with 5 stats each, and need to choose when starting the next dungeon. Ofc I can get used to it, but felt rough at the start

A vast improvement on the original game in basically everyway. Ziggurat 2 if the title of the game wasn't obvious, is the sequel to the Roguelike FPS, Ziggurat. Developed by Milkstone Studios it seemingly takes places after the first game as a new threat has completely annihilated the Brotherhood and now the remnants strive to rebuild and fight back against the threats plaguing the land. The game basically took the basis of the first game, and simply improved and add upon what was there. As simple as that game plan is for a sequel, it does wonders to the gameplay loop making each run far more enjoyable. The general basis of Ziggurat has been preserved from the first game, you got randomly generated dungeons with multiple rooms, fighting a boss at the end to get to the next floor, and occasionally having a challenge encounter ever few rooms. Enemies drop Exp crystals that allow you to level up and get powerful perks and there is a insane variety of weapons in 4 distinct categories, wand, spell, staff, and alchemy. The main new difference that's introduced in the sequel is the campaign mode. While there are extra modes that are similar to the first game's structure, this new campaign mode gives Ziggurat 2 more of a Roguelite structure. As before starting a run you're given multiple different missions to choose from that list rewards ranging from new weapons, skills, etc. While this type of unlocking new content IS basically the same as the previous game, each level doesn't always demand the insane length that the first Ziggurat did. So you're able to complete shorter runs and gain new items, removing the need to either die or complete a long run to get new stuff to play with. In general you're often just given a lot more freedom of choice with Ziggurat's mechanics, Such as when you level up you get a small boost to health, mana, or barrier/shield, two new systems that act like overheal and regen armor. Oaths allowing you to pick between 2 or more options instead of it being completely luck based. As well as a new accumulative collectable, insight, that's earned at the end of each run, successful or not... usually. that allows you to PERMANENTLY upgrade stats in the campaign. While this is only available in this most it does allow more expressive freedom to how you experience Ziggurat 2. There are also two other "modes" given to the levels, such as horde that is basically one long enemy gauntlet and a version of the normal dungeon format that is completely linear. Style wise, there has been more of a focus towards a more cartoony/cel-shaded artstyle for the game, instead of the mixture of both that and realistic from the first game. And save for a few of the playable characters, it works out pretty well! As for the environments, thanks to the game not taking place inside just the Ziggurat anymore, there is a much wider variety of locations to have the game randomly generate. From Crystal Caves, to Village Towns, and Egyptian Tombs, even though you'll see familiar room layouts throughout your many, many runs. You'll at least have a lot of variations to look at. Overall, Ziggurat 2 is simply a bigger and better version of the foundation that Ziggurat layed down, which is pretty common of sequels to be honest. Everything from the gameplay loop being more rewarding given the change to how runs works, with said rewards from runs allowing you to further upgrade yourself, and the increased variety of visuals to play thought, easily makes it stand out from it's predecessor. It's such a shame that Ziggurat 2 released in 2021, as by then the "Retro FPS Renaissance" had already well been on it's course and by that point we've already gotten a ton of Retro FPS Roguelikes. With some having really standout and unique gameplay loops to that, in comparison, makes Ziggurat 2 look pretty plain. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but kinda makes it feel like it's missing some extra "oompf". But hey maybe a "Ziggurat 3" could work on that eh?

Snooze fest

Great sequel and great game. Improves upon everything in the first, love the hexen style weapons, each char has their own skill, good times

[h1] Move fast or get swept away! [/h1] [i]"If you have time to stop and look at the scenery, you have time to dodge that fireball."[/i] [hr][/hr] [b]The Training Ground:[/b] Ziggurat 2 doesn't waste time with long tutorials or emotional stories. You enter a magical dungeon, you get a weapon, and you are expected to perform at maximum efficiency. It's frantic, it's brutal, and it's the closest thing to my daily morning routine. [h3] The Disciplinary Evaluation [/h3] [list] [*] [b]Pacing:[/b] Excellent. The game rewards speed and punishes hesitation. If you stand still for two seconds, you are dead. I wish everything in life had consequences this immediate. [*] [b]The Arsenal:[/b] Magic staffs, spellbooks, and alchemy weapons. They all require good aim and quick resource management. No room for sloppy mistakes. [*] [b]The Structure:[/b] You enter a room, you clear the mess, you move to the next one. It’s highly organized, even if the floor is covered in dangerous traps and angry carrots. [/list] [h3] A Note on Difficulty [/h3] It gets tough. Very tough. Some bosses will make you want to throw your keyboard out the window. But bad strategy leads to bad results. If you fail, it’s not the game's fault—it’s a failure of your personal discipline. Go back in and try harder! [hr][/hr] [b]Final Verdict:[/b] A sharp, satisfying, and energetic shooter that doesn't hold your hand. It’s a great way to build up your reflexes and teach yourself how to handle stress under pressure. Highly recommended for anyone who isn't afraid of hard work. [b]Rating: 8.5/10 - A very satisfying workout.[/b]

Good game, took me about 25 hours to finish the story and unlock all the characters. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with it and I highly recommend. The gameplay is fluid and fun, the graphics are nice and the OST is excellent. On the minus side, the devs made a gallant effort to shake things up, but the game still gets a little repetitive over time, and it doesn't help that the fun characters are unlocked in the mid-late game. Also, I didn't like most of the boss mechanics. I know it will probably never happen, because the devs found their gold mine with that farming game, but my wishes for Ziggurat 3 are: - Have all characters unlocked earlier - Some kind of ultimate skill for each character in lieu of the amulet system that I didn't really like - A better story