Random Rogue legacy 2 review

[Dracos]

Bleh.  Did you know steam doesn't let you review games if you played 'em with a family account?  Now I know.  Silly thing.  Anyhow, back to ori 2, a much better game.


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It's...this is tough.  I did have a very good time with the game.  it has a lot of impressive play action around the dungeon crawl and platforming, interesting classes, cool world map.  Heck even in game cheat options if folks want.  Nice to do.  Albeit, it also serves as the difficulty modifier since there isn't one.

It also has a grind that's outrageous and just entirely feels math'd to take an outrageous amount of time.  The game has new game plus like forever...so why in the world does it seem like a basic buildout for the first run costs like 1.2-1.5 million gold when a good 'beat almost all the levels' will only get like 100k.  With a cost up mechanic and a lot of poor places to put money, it feels like an unnecessary padding around a very fun core experience.  It kind of feels like it speaks to a lack of confidence in the fun of the game that was made.  Seeing they recognize that the game is built for endlessness it makes the initial starting grind seem all the more wasteful.

It's lore delivery goes from a few spots through the map in the first area, to two spots, to one spot like 80% through the level, if you get there.  Know what?  If I am able to get 80% through the level, I'm probably done with it and able to go the whole way... so now is when you open up grinding through it repeatedly for the lore?  Ah, well I suppose that's what the bosses are for?

Because the bosses feel like a total miss.  Some later ones have easier patterns than the first boss, but beyond that, they're all generally stated so if you're standing a chance without casually perfecting them... you're also already cakewalking through the level AFTER them, completely too powerful to stop.  It's surreal how much they're spikes in expectation versus the levels around them.  I don't get why.  They could just...have the levels around them harder?  Or them less thick/stat blocks?  Something so that they don't feel like '2-2-2-2-4-25' in encounter experience.

Basically the game's a lot of fun, but I don't think I'd ever tell a friend to play it.  It's boss and economy design basically feel like they wreck havoc on the enjoyable core experience, and frankly make it a 'go play something that's more pleased to have hours of your time, even as an endless experience' game.  A right shame.

Did appreciate the odd callout of FMF fan, even if I had to look it up to understand it was referring to the fun full metal furies game they made prior.  That had a similar level up setup but felt way better laid out as an economy.  If you want to play one of their games?  Why not go play that.   At least that generally waited for new game plus to try and focus on an hour of play for a very minor boost.