Rogue Legacy

A metroidvania roguelike with permadeath and inheritance.

CONTROLS: Nothing too good or bad, although there is the occasional fussiness.

GAMEPLAY: It's a bog standard metroidvania, but every time you die the gold you collected goes to your Manor, and with it you can buy upgrades, new equipment (For which the blueprints must first be found), and ability runes (Which must also be found, then purchased anyway).
The trouble is that, with the exception of weapons, everything you buy makes the other upgrades of the same type more expensive. If you improve your manor to add to your HP, for example, then it becomes more expensive to buy the manor upgrade to increase your attack damage. By the same token, every rune you buy makes the next rune cost more money.
Compounding this is that every time you enter the randomly-generated dungeon you lose all your cash, meaning that you have to get everything you need for an upgrade in a single life.

You would think this would add tension and excitement, but really it just adds tedium. Pretty much the entire game is gathering money and hoping that your next choices for heirs aren't completely terrible. The fridge-horror of sending generations and generations of people off to die in the hopes of getting one that's useful doesn't even help to draw interest.

Beyond its gimmick as a genealogical game, it also has a gimmick in its trait system. The trait system basically means that almost every kid you can pick is going to have a modifier or two that may or may not change gameplay.
By and large, these are just annoying. A few are straight boosts, like Eidetic Memory or Peripheral Arterial Disorder, but mostly they're just cosmetic and/or annoying. I.B.S. turns a crippling disease into a fart joke, Color Blindness does exactly what it says, Nostalgia is Color Blindness in sepia-tone, Vertigo rotates the screen 180 degrees in the hopes of causing motion sickness, and etc...

It would hardly be a review if I failed to mention the difficulty: It's brutal. Oh, sure, starting off it's not so bad, but it's unforgiving from the start and only ramps up from there. It's intended to be hard, and doesn't disappoint on that count.

SOUND: The effects and music are solid, but not memorable.

GRAPHICS: Nothing too special here, but take note that sprite rotation and distortion are everywhere.

STORY: Some guy killed the king inside this dungeon that renders the entire family of whoever enters it penniless. Even though the king entering the dungeon would clearly have devastating effects that would justify regicide, you go kill him right back. This is why having a plot is sometimes worse than having no plot at all.

NOTES: The dungeon changes after every death. You can sacrifice 40% of what you'll earn to lock the dungeon so it can't change.

TL;DR: Entertaining for awhile, but quickly becomes boring.

Grade: B-
Site: http://store.steampowered.com/app/241600/
Current Price: $14.99