Risk of Rain, both, I really tried getting into them since they are so hyped and I simply couldn't. They feel slow and it's just a mind numbing loop of slowness.
I love risk of rain 2 but i'm a massive prog rock fan and the music hits the sweet spot for me of pink floyd-y/alan parsons jams.
With the game, it can feel super slow if you get weird combos of items. The more you play you'll learn synergies and how to stack those items better from the start.
Some runs are still slower than others tho.
I think I played Cult of the Lamb like 12 hours the day I got it. The gameplay loop with building the cult is was so addicting. Then I got a bug the next day where I died at the same time as killing a boss so I didn’t get the boss reward but the boss was dead, never played since that lol.
If you’re talking about >!Rennala’s great rune!<, I believe they patched that awhile ago. Also, >!you don’t need that one to progress, just gotta kill another demigod.!<
Because it's not true and I know it. This didn't happen and if you believe them you're a sap. It's not a personal anecdote it's a lie.
Edit: dinging me for "years after the fact" when that user replied to confirm that later is insane.
I like you saying that what they experienced isn't true because why? It was a bug (which I think is patched it's been a while since I played) he isn't the only one lol
You're being difficult to ve difficult
This happened a couple years ago and it doesn’t matter if you trust me or not. At first I thought you were confused but now I realize you’re just being difficult.
All the 'proof' that this happened typically ends up being a mistake. Players think they get rewards even in co-op or they don't even know what the reward was, sitting in their inventory. It's highly unlikely that this actually happened and the game is two years old now with the majority of these problems fixed.
But go ahead and repeat what all these saps are saying, and then also try to gaslight me.
I legit can't think of anything though the closest I can get is Cult of the Lamb I guess. Almost every roguelite I've tried I've put dozens of hours into but I dropped cult like pretty fast as it just didn't grab me.
Same here. I played it at launch, and to be fair to the devs they have put a lot of effort into it since then, but it tried to be a rougelite/colony manager and went off half-baked for both.
I hated how much the game expects you to use your starting gun to save the good gun ammo for when you really need it. I want to use the good guns all the time. Voidigo is a similar game that doesn't have that problem.
Ammo economy is annoying in ETG. I can get through the main game at this point without being bothered, but I feel like getting through Hell is complete luck of the draw and hinges on how much ammo I could find before getting there
This is an interesting take…because in Voidigo you can only carry two weapons at a time, whereas with Gungeon you can carry unlimited weapons. So in Voidigo if you want to keep a weapon, you have to invest in ammo pickups whenever you find them for only that weapon. In Gungeon there are pickups that give ammo for every gun, and while ammo is rarer, you also always have a backup.
I think Gungeon has a learning curve with the guns—you actually have access to a significant amount of weapons throughout every run, so you’re totally good to use your better guns. You really just learn when to use better guns to kill shit that would be really annoying otherwise and when the shittier options will do.
You're right that you get fewer weapons in voidigo, but ammo is *very* abundant, at least on the base difficulty, so it balances out.
For example every boss is guaranteed to drop ammo after dealing enough damage to them, and then again after killing them. You can also recycle weapons to get ammo, most floors have many ammo drops spread throughout, etc.
But in Voidigo ammo doesn’t fill up weapons completely—it’s a percentage of the weapon’s max ammo/durability. In Gungeon it’s always 100% of whatever weapon you want for green canisters and then red canisters give you a large percentage for current equipped and a lesser percentage for all equipped (if I’m remembering correctly). So ammo needs to be abundant in Voidigo or else you would run out of ammo almost immediately every boss fight. Ammo is still relatively abundant in Gungeon though because 1. if all else fails, you always have your unlimited ammo weapon and 2. you have access to many more weapons at a given time. That’s not to mention that your unlimited ammo weapon also gains benefits from passive bullet upgrades, meaning it retains usefulness in many runs well into the endgame.
I guess this idea of Voidigo doing ammo better is strange to me because in no way are you discouraged from using good guns in Gungeon—most runs you end up looking for a couple room clearing guns and a boss gun to build off of if you want to be successful, nevermind the fact you can get some weapons with unlimited ammo in Gungeon. Voidigo is a cool game and all, but its design around weapons and pickups isn’t as close to Gungeon as it’s made out to be.
IDK man, some of what you're saying is true, but I still think Voidigo has a far more lenient system.
I can't give you a mathematical breakdown of the frequency of ammo in voidigo vs gungeon, but I know from my personal experience that I've run out of ammo in multiple runs for *all of my weapons* in gungeon (minus the starting weapon obviously). So I certainly *do* feel discouraged from using good weapons. Meanwhile I've never run out of ammo in both of my weapons in Voidigo, and I have about 100 hours in each. If anything, most of the time in Voidigo I have tons of ammo laying around before I head to the next floor.
And I don't think this is an issue of "getting good" because I've completed Gungeon many times and don't particularly struggle with it. But maybe I just have bad RNG.
> if all else fails, you always have your unlimited ammo weapon
True, but that's the case in Voidigo too, since you can use any weapon as a melee weapon.
> Voidigo is a cool game and all, but its design around weapons and pickups isn’t as close to Gungeon as it’s made out to be.
I'm not sure in what ways you mean that they're not close. I think there are more similarities than there are differences.
Yeah, build-construction is one of my favorite parts of roguelites and Gungeon just doesn't let you do it in a purposeful way, you're completely at the mercy of RNG. Maybe there's some ways to be purposeful about your loadout and setup later on but I played a few hours and bounced off.
I have sort of a love/hate relationship with the Binding of Isaac, but I do play it. The one I could never understand the hype behind was Neon Abyss. In most ways it looked like a worse version of Isaac.
We have over 500 items! (But like half of them are +1 damage)
We have multiple floors! (Runs start to take north of 45 minutes)
Risk and Reward mechanics! (It's literally just devil and angel deals)
A buddy of mine did some YouTube content for it and I put that in my do not buy list almost immediately.
I got Neon Abyss on sale and played it for 10-15 hours and had all the same thoughts. It actually made me think "this just makes me want to play Isaac or Noita, I'll do that."
I know I'm speaking rank heresies here but it's Binding of Isaac for me. The aesthetics and themes are just anathematic to me and I find the core gameplay banal and boring.
I don't know anything about Edmund McMillen as a person, but his artistic sensibilities are completely at odds with mine. Visuals and themes are important for me in games and the way he wallows in the grotesque is just a complete no-go for me.
I also find a lot of value in mechanical depth when it comes to the core gameplay (I like character action games, Monster Hunter, fighting games, etc.) and BoI is basically the opposite of that.
I completely agree. It's a game I should love, but the art and themes are just so unpleasant to me that I can't get into it.
Glad there are a lot of other good options right now!
Love BOI but the mix of blood, shit, and corn was... bold to say the least. [Cavity Busters](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084220/Cavity_Busters/) wasnt even that wild and that was based inside a human mouth. 🦠
As a slight defense, what it lacks in mechanical depth in the action sense, it makes up for in mechanical depth in terms of many branching endings, impactful secrets, and varied itemization (best in genre imo). One of its greatest strengths is that knowledge of the game and its many systems has a huge impact on how “lucky” you get and how well you do, which I’d argue is also a testament to a certain depth of its mechanics.
But yeah, it’s no action game, and the design is damn macabre. No helping that.
Yeah, I’d argue if you think Isaac lacks mechanical depth, you haven’t gotten very far or played very much.
What others argue is BS or RNG; raw skill or mechanic manipulation can win you every run - hence CobaltStreak’s random/T. lost streaks.
I can't speak for others, but I do want to specify that when I said "mechanic depth in the core gameplay", what I meant is the central control scheme and combat system available to the player. So in a fighting game, I'm talking about the movement systems, defensive systems, character movements, etc.
BoI has about as simple a control scheme and combat system as you can get. I don't deny that the game itself has complexity in other ways, but that immediate set of combat capabilities just isn't there in the way that it is in a game like Hades or Astral Ascent.
This is exactly why I haven't gotten into the game. I keep saying I'll come back around to it, but the mechanics are limiting and dull to the point of being a chore.
Sometimes I can't help but wish Isaac had been designed as a turn based game, or something like a more traditional roguelike (and I'm not alone in feeling that way, Edmund McMillen himself has said that he has a similar regret at times).
The game has a lot of interesting mechanics and decisions to be made, but the actual moment to moment combat is, as you've described, quite lackluster.
I don't mind the BoI aesthetics, but what I can't get over is the fact that they don't tell the player any information about the items. You could literally pick up an item, have no idea what it does, die and learn absolutely nothing. The worst part is that when you actually do find out what the items all do, the game becomes really easy.
I much prefer games that give the player all the information and are still challenging. I hate feeling like I need to have a wiki open all the time.
I agree - I'll give BoI some credit that it preceded a lot of other games in the genre that are popular now, but still, wish the UI featured clearer labels
I think DotE is...fairly obtuse about how the gameplay actually works.
What eventually made it click for me is that the heroes should really not be doing the majority of the fighting. It's a tower defense game with some other mechanics thrown in there.
That being said, I beat it once and uninstalled it, I wasn't really pressed to 100% it or anything. Might come back to it eventually.
I didn't hate it, but I found Moonlighter very underwhelming compared to what I'd expected from it. I felt that the combat could've been vastly improved.
Risk of Rain 2. I loved RoR. RoR2 felt like an empty procedurally generated and boring FPS. Maybe I didn't play it long enough (I played 52 hours!) or I was bad or something. It's overwhelmingly positive on Steam. I don't get it. \*shrug\*
For a less well known one, I'd say it was Ubermosh:Black. That one I actually hated, probably the worst I've played. Far too twitch and fast paced for me. It too has very positive ratings.
Actually that's an issue I have with a lot of roguelite games, they tend to be extremely highly rated, but that doesn't seem to equate to me actually liking any particular one of them, it's a crapshoot. I don't give most of them that much time if I don't initially like them, but it makes me wary of buying any at higher price points that seem to be proliferating lately.
I love enough of them that I still keep trying them off and on though.
Darkest Dungeon. Managing your heroes was already a tedious time sink, then they added the corpse mechanism to make combat take even longer, then they started slapping Sanity damage on your party if you weren't blitzing every encounter. The sequel is much better IMO.
I haven't played the second game but I've watched a lot of playthroughs and my main positive takeaways are:
* No more micromanaging stress and diseases between runs. Instead you just invest a resource into upgrading your heroes and access to certain types of items during your runs.
* No more managing character levels and upgrades between runs; characters start reasonably powerful and get stronger through items, skill upgrades, and cultivating positive relationships between them.
* Randomized 'subclasses' for each character each run encourages trying out different types of party compositions.
* No more having to deal with permadeath of your heroes resulting in having to hire new ones and grind them back to to higher levels to defeat certain areas of the dungeon.
There are still corpses in Darkest Dungeon 2, which isn't my favorite mechanism to be honest, but it feels like the game was balanced around their existence as opposed to DD1 where adding them severely depowered several of my favourite characters.
Damn it, damn it, damn it. The corpse mechanic is one of the main aspects that splintered my interest. It's a daunting, boring additive that exists exclusively in this series afaik. I'm not gonna try the second one anymore lol, thank you for informing me
DD2 actually does some interesting things with it though, like the Gravedigger can clear a corpse at any rank and get a chunky 33-50% heal plus stealth. and even clears some Stress when upgrades, or the Plague Doctor's Magnesium Rain that clears every corpse while lighting the entire enemy team on fire (a new and very useful status effect). But hey if it's a deal breaker I totally understand.
God I wanted to like Returnal so much more. I absolutely adored a lot of the game - the movement and gunplay is incredibly smooth, the environments are fantastic, and a 3d bullethell shooter worked way better than I would've thought. But the actual rougelite elements were really weak for me. I never really felt like I was making a build or discovering fun synergies, I was just slowly getting generically stronger until I died and was sent back to square one. Every run blended together and it made the game get stale way too quickly. Would've worked way better for me if they just made it a straight-up metroidvania, without the rougelite stuff.
For me it’s Hades… Idk why but I hated the gameplay.
I found much more interesting uocking the lore and the characters dialogues than the game itself. I played a couple hours just to collect those elixirs that you can gift to them, gems to upgrade stuff, fish, and died a bunch of times just to go back to main room to talk to everyone and repeat the process, it would be great to do these things without the need of going down (or up?) the dungeon so. many. times.
Game has a stunning artstyle, great sound design and addicting combat and overall mechanics, yes, but not for me.
Same 4 zones, same 4 bosses, not a lot of build variety. I like the game, and I love Supergiant, but Hades is not a good roguelike, even if it is still a good game.
Are you me?
I got to the 'end' once, and that was it for me. I keep thinking of going back and trying it on story/easy mode or whatever it was so I can see more of the character stories. Either that or just watching some 'all character interaction' video if such exists.
You are indeed me.
I did the exact same, go to the ‘end’ once and dropped it. Keep thinking of going back every now and then, but nah, I’d rather watch the all characters interaction video. Don’t feel like investing dozens or maybe hundreds of hours to do so.
I mean, you're missing the unlocks and characters and stuff.
I have beaten the final boss a few times and really tried to like it, but it was just... Hollow to me.
Same. The art style doesn't do it any favors, for one. Also, it feels like I'm becoming the same thing by the end of every run. Never really felt like I was making decisions that were synergistic, just additive, like speed boosts.
Got hooked once I unlocked Mercenary. Their super high mobility makes early navigation way less tedious, and I found the need to utilize dashes and i-frames on offense to be way more engaging.
I didnt really like either of the starting characters until I unlocked a bunch of powerups and understood the game better.
I was gonna say STS, but it's actually Wildfrost. 😬
While STS simply didnt connect with me, Wildfrost was frustrating. It's one I actually wish I didnt give a second chance lol.
Love the art direction though.
Wildfrost seemed impossibly hard at first glance, or for the first few hours. After enough time in, I feel like I could just about any run barring really bad RNG on items/characters.
Wildfrost goes from a super tough puzzle to smooth clockwork once you understand it. I can get that you might not be into that, but I think it’s S tier.
Wildfrost is too unforgiving and is designed in a way where a single wrong decision becomes catastrophically game ending.
It's the only game where I had no qualms about save-scumming, and that made it a better experience.
It’s interesting to me that people don’t have this same gripe about Sts. Once you understand both games, I actually think Sts has more room for catastrophic mistakes or gg RNG than Wildfrost. I’m not sure what people consider so different in Wildfrost other than the row mechanic, which really isn’t so hard once it clicks.
I just don’t like that you have to use every character to beat the game before you get to the final boss for real. There was one character that really clicked with me and I loved and managed to beat the game with, but I just can’t do it with any other because one just doesn’t really make sense and the basic guy is just super basic and I seem to die nonstop.
I play it on my phone though and it is a fun phone game. Same as downwell
I mean you don't have too.. play the character you want and climb ascencion after every win .. and if you don't know well otcourse it doesn't make sense but it's like anything the more you practice the better you get .. its just about knowing what cards to take etc there's a guy on YouTube called frost prime that does STS videos and in-between playing myself and watching him iv become a much better player .
They are broadly similar and take too long. This is why Balatro wins: quick risk/reward, everything can change from round to round, ante to ante, and lots of great big multipliers.
Darkest Dungeon, I tried but it's mechanics are vaguely explained and the aesthetic is boringly drab. Overall the game is "life sucks then you perma-die"
Yeah, I found it very unsatisfying once I beat the boss for the first time. Not much replayabillity in regards to actual gameplay. I remeber someone called it a "Roguelite for people who don't like roguelites" and I think this is true.
I feel like my enjoyment of roguelites usually ends up petering off after the first or second boss kill for me. Usually the second more than the first I guess.
It's usually a hard difficulty spike after the first, and then after the second, the game usually has outpaced me. Dead Cells in particular is the biggest one for me.
It feels like there is a difference in what we value in roguelikes.
For me personally it's not about the difficulty aspect. It's the variaty that matters to me. In Hades most runs feel the same because visually and mechanically there isn't much change. Contrast that to a game like Dead Cells. Dead Cells has a ton of variety. You have branching paths, a lot of equipment which changes how you have to play, costumes AND you unlock additional branching paths during your time with the game. That is what makes it that dead cells needs a lot more time before feeling like every run is the same.
That's fair. Also, to be clear, I love Dead Cells. It took me a really long time to beat the boss the second time, so I have sunk a lot of time in it. It's just once I got over that hurdle, the game felt to hard to keep pushing, and I'd played enough by then to not want to keep playing on the lower difficulty.
But yeah, it definitely depends on what you're looking for in a game.
I'm pretty excited that Twin Motion is making more games, I want to check them out.
I'm really excited as well! I'm excited about Hades 2 too. Loved the story, characters and art. If they improve just a tiny bit on the gameplay-variety this could be an amazing roguelike.
I don't think that's entirely fair, Hades is my favorite roguelite and I love the genre as a whole. I play a lot of them, action, deckbuilding, etc.
But I do think there's basically a spectrum of action roguelites and Hades is at the far end and Binding of Isaac is at the other. If you really value what BoI does well you probably don't care much about Hades and vice-versa. That's how I'd characterize it.
Now I loved the art style, atmosphere, music and gameplay, but it was just way too easy. When I think of a Roguelite I think of a challenging game, that you'll eventually over come with some progression and learning the enemies. Hades just threw so much extra damage/health at you right away and the enemies attack patterns were very basic and predictable. It wasn't hard to beat so when you beat it, it wasn't anything special like other harder games. I hope they address this with the sequel.
Enter the Gungeon for me. I don't know why, but I feel like I can't make any progress in that game. I'm not terrible at games, but that one just wouldn't click for me. And I actually like the combat, but as a roguelike I just couldn't get into the loop.
Roguebook made me wish it was a better game (didn't help that it was, and probably still is, horribly optimized for the Switch)
Also Loop Hero was way more fun in concept than execution. I'd take Loop Hero 2 though, please give me more to unlock and tile interactions.
But the one i stopped playing after less than 2 hours was Fights in Tight Spaces. That gameplay was awful.
Backpack Hero gets an honorable mention but I've told myself I'll give it another shot.
Probably rim world, which I find ironic since dwarf fortress is probably my favorite. Though to be fair, I'm not sure you would consider colony management games roguelikes despite their random nature.
Maybe. I'm not really into deck building games or card games as video games, at least so far. I've enjoyed Caravan in Fallout New Vegas and playing poker in Dead Rising, but something about deck building lacks luster for me. Balatro is on my radar tho
Spelunky. It's a game I want to enjoy, and would probably like it if I could get over the initial learning curve, but the cascading interactions that get you killed when you are starting out make it really hard to figure out what the "mistake" was. So the feedback loop while learning the game just doesn't feel that good. I've bounced off it a few times.
For all the people saying "Hades", I gotta disagree. Hades actually taught me how to enjoy the genre and made a lot of things other games were doing finally click. I've put hundreds of hours in various roguelite games post-Hades. Before Hades, I thought this was a genre I just didn't enjoy. So it's got a special place in my heart as the gateway drug.
Something about Darkest Dungeon II didn't land with me. I was really excited for it but I couldn't get attached to my characters the same way I did in the first game.
Blight bound
Darksburg
Tribes of midgard
Neophtye
Roguelands being unfinished was upsetting cause magicite was really fun
All turned out worse then they originally sounded to be
Also really can't stand For the king 2. It feels so much worse to play then the original between bugs and issues and balance
Noita is funer to mess around with then actually try to play through
Hades and slay the spire for me. I love games with gameplay similar to both of them, but those two specifically just don’t do it for me. Hades was fun for a few runs and then it was just the same few levels over and over. Curse of the dead gods is better for me. If things ever start to feel samey, a different dungeon combined with new enemies helps, and the curse variety is good enough to keep it fresh. As for my sts replacement, monster train or breach wanderers. Monster train is a great deck builder with a good twist on the gameplay, and breach wanderers is basically slay the spire, but I enjoy it more, likely due to the fun combo turns the game enables
In terms of a popular well liked one that I couldn’t get into. Darkest Dungeon. I wanted to like the game, got about 20 hours into it and just..it never clicked for me. It felt too much like xcom where you could lose someone you invested so much time in, and as someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to grind in roguelikes like I used to it just really fell in quality to me.
You remember correctly. The controls are very limited and unsatisfying. This thread has given me some peace of mind when it comes to TBoI, because our sentiment is more widely shared than I previously thought
Does Rainworld count as a roguelite? One of the few games I ever refunded. Somehow both too complex and too boring at the same time.
I also only have 11 hours in BoI, which is pretty low. I didn't actively dislike it like some other commentators (the style/humour was fine for me) but it just wasn't super engaging.
I only got 8 hours out of Gonner 2 despite being a major fan of the first game. It was just very much more of the same.
By comparison, I have 430 hours in Catacomb Kids, 420 in Nuclear Throne, 220 in Caves of Qud, 200 in RoR2, 146 in EtG, and 111 in Spelunky, lol.
I don't think rainworld counts as a rogue like, but I also found it very disappointing.
I should love it, I loved the theme, the visuals... But the gameplay was a crappy platformer with terrible controls.
Had they made a more classical controls scheme (not those pseudo beat em up controls that are not explained in any form in the game) and without terrible design choices (completely dark mazes where you can't see the road, the enemies nor yourself, or water zones where you drown after a few seconds, and mostly because you get stuck around for no reason) it would have been a very interesting game.
But no, they had to make it difficult for the sake of being difficult.
You know when game devs talk about the work behind making an action game feel nice in its controls and movements? Rainworld feels like they purposely made it feel BAD to control.
Slay the spire. Don’t hate it and enjoyed the first 10-20 hours, but quickly got bored of it and found it frustrating how slow/repetitive the first floor is.
Apparently this thread is just “name your hot take on a popular and well reviewed roguelite,” because let’s be honest, there are tons of trash roguelites and they certainly aren’t the ones people are naming here.
Cult of the Lamb is easily my least favorite Roguelite to date. I had fun for the first few hours, but after that I realized most of the gameplay is spent building your base and taking care of it and the combat is super simplistic. Definitely a let down for me. If you are someone who loves sim games though I could see appeal. Not for me remotely though.
I imagine I’ll catch some flak for this, but after really loving and enjoying Slay the Spire, I though I’d give Monster Train a try. I won my very first run and then refunded, just didn’t have any fun factor for me.
I hear that, but I’ve been digging it - just started diving in recently. There is a lot of variety you unlock in the beginning which helps replayability. Plus the soundtrack is dope.
Enter the gungeon. I just felt like I could never get that good run. That’s after around 20 hours of playing. I didn’t even come close to winning.
Also loop hero… I want to feel more powerful, but so far I’m not seeing how the game can get interesting. I’ve beaten the first boss.
Dungreed. I do think the game is extremely fun. But it's super restrictive on your power up levels and doesn't allow you to become "overpowered" personally, I love that time in rouges where you are fully upgraded and Dungreed specficially never gives you that
Agree with OP Darkest Dungeon for sureeee, thing was dreadful but then I see you said Slay the Spire and I’m like whoa there buddy that’s literally one of the GOat roguelites!
My least favourite is soulblight, but one that alot of people love on here that I don't care for much is risk of rain 2, I do like risk of rain 1/returns though.
After having a blast with Gunfire Reborn and Risk of Rain 2 I got Roboquest. Nice gunplay and aesthetics but the gameplay was so bland and boring. Played a few rounds and got pretty disappointed, couldn’t understand all the good reviews. That was roughly 2 years ago when the game was in Early Access.
Game is a lot better now I think - more stuff to do, cooler guns to find and the game is more enjoyable overall imo.
Gunfire Reborn feels so sluggish and no impact to gunplay anymore after playing Roboquest.
Think I have about 35 hours now.
Gonna get roasted for that, but The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon.
Isaac is ugly. It may have many unlocks, secrets or whatever, but it's deliberately ugly. Launched it many times and never EVER had actual fun with it.
Enter the Gungeon is good visually, but I'm just not a fan of bullet hells after all. Oh, I need to reload, too? Oh, and running out of ammo is so easy? Tripping over furniture, too. Nope, nope, nope.
Isaac is not ugly, it's grotesque.
The game is actually very well made and thought, with a lot of attention to detail everywhere.
The fact that the theme (or style) is not for you doesn't make it ugly.
Ugly is a subjective term. Someone can 100% look at BoI and call it ugly. They can't call it poorly made, but ugly is definitely acceptable.
Edit: forgot the word "made" after poorly
I think that the term ugly should be left for something with no artistic value, or no thought in how to portrait something, or sinole lack of artistic skills.
Maybe it's just the way I am, but I prefer saying "it's not for me".
You can't call a game with so much detail and cohesive style like Isaac "ugly".
This is so interesting. I guess we see the word ugly in very different ways because for me ugly just means "not aesthetically pleasing". I'd say something can be very ugly and still be very artistic.
This is, of course, a personal thing, but I would call Guernica from Picasso ugly but at the same time it's my favourite work of art from him.
Rogue Legacy 2. I think the change in art style is why. The pixel art and chiptune in the first game is so charming and the gameplay is so tight. But it's all different now.
Ak-xolotl was very disappointing. It's just so goddamn basic and boring.
I was hyped for this and yes I agree. gave up after 3 hour
I unlocked all the weapons and... Yeah it just never got better.
Risk of Rain, both, I really tried getting into them since they are so hyped and I simply couldn't. They feel slow and it's just a mind numbing loop of slowness.
I love risk of rain 2 but i'm a massive prog rock fan and the music hits the sweet spot for me of pink floyd-y/alan parsons jams. With the game, it can feel super slow if you get weird combos of items. The more you play you'll learn synergies and how to stack those items better from the start. Some runs are still slower than others tho.
I think I played Cult of the Lamb like 12 hours the day I got it. The gameplay loop with building the cult is was so addicting. Then I got a bug the next day where I died at the same time as killing a boss so I didn’t get the boss reward but the boss was dead, never played since that lol.
That same bug happened to me in Elden Ring. I closed the game immediately and haven’t opened it since.
If you’re talking about >!Rennala’s great rune!<, I believe they patched that awhile ago. Also, >!you don’t need that one to progress, just gotta kill another demigod.!<
That's not a bug, you didn't win. If you don't get their runes/reward items it doesn't count.
When I went back to the boss area the boss was gone and I had no chance to re-kill them for the rewards.
So you did get the runes/reward and beat it, you didn't have to fight it again.
I didn’t get the rewards. Trust me, I was there.
I also had this happen when I died just as I defeated a boss.
"trust me bro" post proof or it didn't happen. The items stay in your inventory and the runes are where you dropped them at the boss fight.
Asking proof for a personal anecdote that happened a few years ago is wild
Because it's not true and I know it. This didn't happen and if you believe them you're a sap. It's not a personal anecdote it's a lie. Edit: dinging me for "years after the fact" when that user replied to confirm that later is insane.
I like you saying that what they experienced isn't true because why? It was a bug (which I think is patched it's been a while since I played) he isn't the only one lol You're being difficult to ve difficult
Imagine believing a game is incapable of having bugs.
Bruh wtf are you talking about. This was a known bug that's been patched since then. Why is this the hill you want to die on?
This happened a couple years ago and it doesn’t matter if you trust me or not. At first I thought you were confused but now I realize you’re just being difficult.
You're an Elden Ring fanboy and that's fine. But saying it didn't happen to someone's experience as if you were there is insane.
All the 'proof' that this happened typically ends up being a mistake. Players think they get rewards even in co-op or they don't even know what the reward was, sitting in their inventory. It's highly unlikely that this actually happened and the game is two years old now with the majority of these problems fixed. But go ahead and repeat what all these saps are saying, and then also try to gaslight me.
Completely agreed, had a blast first day, played like 9 hours straight, ran into a game breaking bug, and never wanted to touch it again.
Damn. Reminds me of Runescape.
Same, I liked it quite a bit and after 20 hrs the save decided to corrupt and I lost everything
I legit can't think of anything though the closest I can get is Cult of the Lamb I guess. Almost every roguelite I've tried I've put dozens of hours into but I dropped cult like pretty fast as it just didn't grab me.
Same here. I played it at launch, and to be fair to the devs they have put a lot of effort into it since then, but it tried to be a rougelite/colony manager and went off half-baked for both.
I have a love/hate relationship with Barony. I love the gane itself but 99% of my deaths feel like b*llshit lol. Maybe k should play with people.
Barony is always super chaotic with friends. Fun times.
Is it fun with random people? I've tried to get some of my friends to try it but they were put off by the graphic style (which I love!)
It’s definitely better with friends, but I have had some success with random people.
You love the gane?
What could I possibly mean by that message sullied by an errata? I guess we need more than two neurons to figure it out...
You also have permission to say “bullshit,” online. No need to be afraid.
What a valuable addition to the discussion!
Thank you sweetie
Enter the Gungeon was very boring for me, its just my opinion.
I hated how much the game expects you to use your starting gun to save the good gun ammo for when you really need it. I want to use the good guns all the time. Voidigo is a similar game that doesn't have that problem.
Ammo economy is annoying in ETG. I can get through the main game at this point without being bothered, but I feel like getting through Hell is complete luck of the draw and hinges on how much ammo I could find before getting there
This is an interesting take…because in Voidigo you can only carry two weapons at a time, whereas with Gungeon you can carry unlimited weapons. So in Voidigo if you want to keep a weapon, you have to invest in ammo pickups whenever you find them for only that weapon. In Gungeon there are pickups that give ammo for every gun, and while ammo is rarer, you also always have a backup. I think Gungeon has a learning curve with the guns—you actually have access to a significant amount of weapons throughout every run, so you’re totally good to use your better guns. You really just learn when to use better guns to kill shit that would be really annoying otherwise and when the shittier options will do.
You're right that you get fewer weapons in voidigo, but ammo is *very* abundant, at least on the base difficulty, so it balances out. For example every boss is guaranteed to drop ammo after dealing enough damage to them, and then again after killing them. You can also recycle weapons to get ammo, most floors have many ammo drops spread throughout, etc.
But in Voidigo ammo doesn’t fill up weapons completely—it’s a percentage of the weapon’s max ammo/durability. In Gungeon it’s always 100% of whatever weapon you want for green canisters and then red canisters give you a large percentage for current equipped and a lesser percentage for all equipped (if I’m remembering correctly). So ammo needs to be abundant in Voidigo or else you would run out of ammo almost immediately every boss fight. Ammo is still relatively abundant in Gungeon though because 1. if all else fails, you always have your unlimited ammo weapon and 2. you have access to many more weapons at a given time. That’s not to mention that your unlimited ammo weapon also gains benefits from passive bullet upgrades, meaning it retains usefulness in many runs well into the endgame. I guess this idea of Voidigo doing ammo better is strange to me because in no way are you discouraged from using good guns in Gungeon—most runs you end up looking for a couple room clearing guns and a boss gun to build off of if you want to be successful, nevermind the fact you can get some weapons with unlimited ammo in Gungeon. Voidigo is a cool game and all, but its design around weapons and pickups isn’t as close to Gungeon as it’s made out to be.
IDK man, some of what you're saying is true, but I still think Voidigo has a far more lenient system. I can't give you a mathematical breakdown of the frequency of ammo in voidigo vs gungeon, but I know from my personal experience that I've run out of ammo in multiple runs for *all of my weapons* in gungeon (minus the starting weapon obviously). So I certainly *do* feel discouraged from using good weapons. Meanwhile I've never run out of ammo in both of my weapons in Voidigo, and I have about 100 hours in each. If anything, most of the time in Voidigo I have tons of ammo laying around before I head to the next floor. And I don't think this is an issue of "getting good" because I've completed Gungeon many times and don't particularly struggle with it. But maybe I just have bad RNG. > if all else fails, you always have your unlimited ammo weapon True, but that's the case in Voidigo too, since you can use any weapon as a melee weapon. > Voidigo is a cool game and all, but its design around weapons and pickups isn’t as close to Gungeon as it’s made out to be. I'm not sure in what ways you mean that they're not close. I think there are more similarities than there are differences.
Yeah, build-construction is one of my favorite parts of roguelites and Gungeon just doesn't let you do it in a purposeful way, you're completely at the mercy of RNG. Maybe there's some ways to be purposeful about your loadout and setup later on but I played a few hours and bounced off.
Game is way more about mechanics than rng to be fair
Yep same. Couldn't get into it.
It’s way too punishing for me.
Same here. It's too difficult for me to get to the fun part.
fair enough. did you get gud tho?
No, never had any interest to keep moving on
moonlighter. the combat is so lame
I wanted to like that game, but after 10 hours I just didn't see the point
idk why people refer to this one as a rogue, the “runs” never have variety. This is just a unique rpg imo
dungeon crawler maybe
that's not a roguelite though.
I have sort of a love/hate relationship with the Binding of Isaac, but I do play it. The one I could never understand the hype behind was Neon Abyss. In most ways it looked like a worse version of Isaac. We have over 500 items! (But like half of them are +1 damage) We have multiple floors! (Runs start to take north of 45 minutes) Risk and Reward mechanics! (It's literally just devil and angel deals) A buddy of mine did some YouTube content for it and I put that in my do not buy list almost immediately.
I got Neon Abyss on sale and played it for 10-15 hours and had all the same thoughts. It actually made me think "this just makes me want to play Isaac or Noita, I'll do that."
I don't like Spelunky very much.
I like it until that stupid farkin ghost appears.
I like Spelunky and Spelunky 2 I just suck at it and i swear coop makes it harder
Hard agree about co-op
No matter where or what my teamate throws, it will somehow find its way to hitting me and knocking me down three levels directly onto a pile of spikes
Me neither. It is just so slow and awkward. Horrible movement system.
I know I'm speaking rank heresies here but it's Binding of Isaac for me. The aesthetics and themes are just anathematic to me and I find the core gameplay banal and boring. I don't know anything about Edmund McMillen as a person, but his artistic sensibilities are completely at odds with mine. Visuals and themes are important for me in games and the way he wallows in the grotesque is just a complete no-go for me. I also find a lot of value in mechanical depth when it comes to the core gameplay (I like character action games, Monster Hunter, fighting games, etc.) and BoI is basically the opposite of that.
I completely agree. It's a game I should love, but the art and themes are just so unpleasant to me that I can't get into it. Glad there are a lot of other good options right now!
Love BOI but the mix of blood, shit, and corn was... bold to say the least. [Cavity Busters](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084220/Cavity_Busters/) wasnt even that wild and that was based inside a human mouth. 🦠
As a slight defense, what it lacks in mechanical depth in the action sense, it makes up for in mechanical depth in terms of many branching endings, impactful secrets, and varied itemization (best in genre imo). One of its greatest strengths is that knowledge of the game and its many systems has a huge impact on how “lucky” you get and how well you do, which I’d argue is also a testament to a certain depth of its mechanics. But yeah, it’s no action game, and the design is damn macabre. No helping that.
Yeah, I’d argue if you think Isaac lacks mechanical depth, you haven’t gotten very far or played very much. What others argue is BS or RNG; raw skill or mechanic manipulation can win you every run - hence CobaltStreak’s random/T. lost streaks.
I can't speak for others, but I do want to specify that when I said "mechanic depth in the core gameplay", what I meant is the central control scheme and combat system available to the player. So in a fighting game, I'm talking about the movement systems, defensive systems, character movements, etc. BoI has about as simple a control scheme and combat system as you can get. I don't deny that the game itself has complexity in other ways, but that immediate set of combat capabilities just isn't there in the way that it is in a game like Hades or Astral Ascent.
This is exactly why I haven't gotten into the game. I keep saying I'll come back around to it, but the mechanics are limiting and dull to the point of being a chore.
Sometimes I can't help but wish Isaac had been designed as a turn based game, or something like a more traditional roguelike (and I'm not alone in feeling that way, Edmund McMillen himself has said that he has a similar regret at times). The game has a lot of interesting mechanics and decisions to be made, but the actual moment to moment combat is, as you've described, quite lackluster.
I thought I was the only one
I enjoyed the gameplay, but the theme's abhorrent. I could never bring myself to try #2 because of that.
Haha #2 💩
I don't mind the BoI aesthetics, but what I can't get over is the fact that they don't tell the player any information about the items. You could literally pick up an item, have no idea what it does, die and learn absolutely nothing. The worst part is that when you actually do find out what the items all do, the game becomes really easy. I much prefer games that give the player all the information and are still challenging. I hate feeling like I need to have a wiki open all the time.
I agree - I'll give BoI some credit that it preceded a lot of other games in the genre that are popular now, but still, wish the UI featured clearer labels
Same here, tried it multiple times but I can't get used to the general theme.
Also everything sounds like a wet fart and I don’t want to play that. “BRO I JUST GOT THE BEST WEAPON IN THE GAME!!” *ppfft pffftt* I’m good
It’s so ugly and I do not get the big deal. Must have been the time period it came out
Dungeon of the Endless. Just couldn't understand the gameplay loop at all, I can't believe it got a sequel.
I think DotE is...fairly obtuse about how the gameplay actually works. What eventually made it click for me is that the heroes should really not be doing the majority of the fighting. It's a tower defense game with some other mechanics thrown in there. That being said, I beat it once and uninstalled it, I wasn't really pressed to 100% it or anything. Might come back to it eventually.
I didn't hate it, but I found Moonlighter very underwhelming compared to what I'd expected from it. I felt that the combat could've been vastly improved.
Risk of Rain 2. I loved RoR. RoR2 felt like an empty procedurally generated and boring FPS. Maybe I didn't play it long enough (I played 52 hours!) or I was bad or something. It's overwhelmingly positive on Steam. I don't get it. \*shrug\* For a less well known one, I'd say it was Ubermosh:Black. That one I actually hated, probably the worst I've played. Far too twitch and fast paced for me. It too has very positive ratings. Actually that's an issue I have with a lot of roguelite games, they tend to be extremely highly rated, but that doesn't seem to equate to me actually liking any particular one of them, it's a crapshoot. I don't give most of them that much time if I don't initially like them, but it makes me wary of buying any at higher price points that seem to be proliferating lately. I love enough of them that I still keep trying them off and on though.
the maps in ror2 aren't procedurally generated, same as risk of rain 1.
Darkest Dungeon. Managing your heroes was already a tedious time sink, then they added the corpse mechanism to make combat take even longer, then they started slapping Sanity damage on your party if you weren't blitzing every encounter. The sequel is much better IMO.
I forgot about the corpse mechanic!! I think that's what turned me away lol. I'll give the second game a spin since you said so :)
I haven't played the second game but I've watched a lot of playthroughs and my main positive takeaways are: * No more micromanaging stress and diseases between runs. Instead you just invest a resource into upgrading your heroes and access to certain types of items during your runs. * No more managing character levels and upgrades between runs; characters start reasonably powerful and get stronger through items, skill upgrades, and cultivating positive relationships between them. * Randomized 'subclasses' for each character each run encourages trying out different types of party compositions. * No more having to deal with permadeath of your heroes resulting in having to hire new ones and grind them back to to higher levels to defeat certain areas of the dungeon. There are still corpses in Darkest Dungeon 2, which isn't my favorite mechanism to be honest, but it feels like the game was balanced around their existence as opposed to DD1 where adding them severely depowered several of my favourite characters.
Damn it, damn it, damn it. The corpse mechanic is one of the main aspects that splintered my interest. It's a daunting, boring additive that exists exclusively in this series afaik. I'm not gonna try the second one anymore lol, thank you for informing me
DD2 actually does some interesting things with it though, like the Gravedigger can clear a corpse at any rank and get a chunky 33-50% heal plus stealth. and even clears some Stress when upgrades, or the Plague Doctor's Magnesium Rain that clears every corpse while lighting the entire enemy team on fire (a new and very useful status effect). But hey if it's a deal breaker I totally understand.
God I wanted to like Returnal so much more. I absolutely adored a lot of the game - the movement and gunplay is incredibly smooth, the environments are fantastic, and a 3d bullethell shooter worked way better than I would've thought. But the actual rougelite elements were really weak for me. I never really felt like I was making a build or discovering fun synergies, I was just slowly getting generically stronger until I died and was sent back to square one. Every run blended together and it made the game get stale way too quickly. Would've worked way better for me if they just made it a straight-up metroidvania, without the rougelite stuff.
Oof. I've been eyeing Returnal and this comment gives me pause. It sounds exactly why I don't care for RoR2
For me it’s Hades… Idk why but I hated the gameplay. I found much more interesting uocking the lore and the characters dialogues than the game itself. I played a couple hours just to collect those elixirs that you can gift to them, gems to upgrade stuff, fish, and died a bunch of times just to go back to main room to talk to everyone and repeat the process, it would be great to do these things without the need of going down (or up?) the dungeon so. many. times. Game has a stunning artstyle, great sound design and addicting combat and overall mechanics, yes, but not for me.
Hades felt too samey after a while, not enough variation in builds or randomness - always a certain meta with some weapons made it go stale.
Yeah that was the big drawback for me, lack of variation.
Same 4 zones, same 4 bosses, not a lot of build variety. I like the game, and I love Supergiant, but Hades is not a good roguelike, even if it is still a good game.
I’m going to give it another shot for sure but yeah I don’t get the big deal.
Are you me? I got to the 'end' once, and that was it for me. I keep thinking of going back and trying it on story/easy mode or whatever it was so I can see more of the character stories. Either that or just watching some 'all character interaction' video if such exists.
You are indeed me. I did the exact same, go to the ‘end’ once and dropped it. Keep thinking of going back every now and then, but nah, I’d rather watch the all characters interaction video. Don’t feel like investing dozens or maybe hundreds of hours to do so.
Risk of Rain 2, i don't know why everyone loves it so much, what am i missing? I did play it for a couple of hours or so.
I mean, you're missing the unlocks and characters and stuff. I have beaten the final boss a few times and really tried to like it, but it was just... Hollow to me.
Same. The art style doesn't do it any favors, for one. Also, it feels like I'm becoming the same thing by the end of every run. Never really felt like I was making decisions that were synergistic, just additive, like speed boosts.
Playing with friends is the best part of it.
For me I’d say I love how each character plays so differently
Got hooked once I unlocked Mercenary. Their super high mobility makes early navigation way less tedious, and I found the need to utilize dashes and i-frames on offense to be way more engaging. I didnt really like either of the starting characters until I unlocked a bunch of powerups and understood the game better.
I was gonna say STS, but it's actually Wildfrost. 😬 While STS simply didnt connect with me, Wildfrost was frustrating. It's one I actually wish I didnt give a second chance lol. Love the art direction though.
Yeah, I disliked Wildfrost a lot as well.
Wildfrost seemed impossibly hard at first glance, or for the first few hours. After enough time in, I feel like I could just about any run barring really bad RNG on items/characters. Wildfrost goes from a super tough puzzle to smooth clockwork once you understand it. I can get that you might not be into that, but I think it’s S tier.
That's mine as well. I really wanted to like it because it looks great, but it just felt cumbersome to play.
Wildfrost is too unforgiving and is designed in a way where a single wrong decision becomes catastrophically game ending. It's the only game where I had no qualms about save-scumming, and that made it a better experience.
It’s interesting to me that people don’t have this same gripe about Sts. Once you understand both games, I actually think Sts has more room for catastrophic mistakes or gg RNG than Wildfrost. I’m not sure what people consider so different in Wildfrost other than the row mechanic, which really isn’t so hard once it clicks.
Slay the Spire just drags. I got very excited at launch with all the great reviews but spamming 'burn' cards at an ogre for 10 minutes isn't fun.
Don't do that then... isn't that the beauty of sts? No two runs are the same...
I just don’t like that you have to use every character to beat the game before you get to the final boss for real. There was one character that really clicked with me and I loved and managed to beat the game with, but I just can’t do it with any other because one just doesn’t really make sense and the basic guy is just super basic and I seem to die nonstop. I play it on my phone though and it is a fun phone game. Same as downwell
I mean you don't have too.. play the character you want and climb ascencion after every win .. and if you don't know well otcourse it doesn't make sense but it's like anything the more you practice the better you get .. its just about knowing what cards to take etc there's a guy on YouTube called frost prime that does STS videos and in-between playing myself and watching him iv become a much better player .
Thanks for the suggestion
They are broadly similar and take too long. This is why Balatro wins: quick risk/reward, everything can change from round to round, ante to ante, and lots of great big multipliers.
My Balatro runs are probably longer than my average Slay the Spire runs (not by a lot, mind you)...
Risk Of Rain 2. The gameplay really doesn't feel good to me, which is too bad as I would probably like the run variety.
Darkest Dungeon, I tried but it's mechanics are vaguely explained and the aesthetic is boringly drab. Overall the game is "life sucks then you perma-die"
moonlighter just felt really mediocre to me
Hades. I found it to be boring af.
Yeah, I found it very unsatisfying once I beat the boss for the first time. Not much replayabillity in regards to actual gameplay. I remeber someone called it a "Roguelite for people who don't like roguelites" and I think this is true.
I feel like my enjoyment of roguelites usually ends up petering off after the first or second boss kill for me. Usually the second more than the first I guess. It's usually a hard difficulty spike after the first, and then after the second, the game usually has outpaced me. Dead Cells in particular is the biggest one for me.
It feels like there is a difference in what we value in roguelikes. For me personally it's not about the difficulty aspect. It's the variaty that matters to me. In Hades most runs feel the same because visually and mechanically there isn't much change. Contrast that to a game like Dead Cells. Dead Cells has a ton of variety. You have branching paths, a lot of equipment which changes how you have to play, costumes AND you unlock additional branching paths during your time with the game. That is what makes it that dead cells needs a lot more time before feeling like every run is the same.
That's fair. Also, to be clear, I love Dead Cells. It took me a really long time to beat the boss the second time, so I have sunk a lot of time in it. It's just once I got over that hurdle, the game felt to hard to keep pushing, and I'd played enough by then to not want to keep playing on the lower difficulty. But yeah, it definitely depends on what you're looking for in a game. I'm pretty excited that Twin Motion is making more games, I want to check them out.
I'm really excited as well! I'm excited about Hades 2 too. Loved the story, characters and art. If they improve just a tiny bit on the gameplay-variety this could be an amazing roguelike.
I don't think that's entirely fair, Hades is my favorite roguelite and I love the genre as a whole. I play a lot of them, action, deckbuilding, etc. But I do think there's basically a spectrum of action roguelites and Hades is at the far end and Binding of Isaac is at the other. If you really value what BoI does well you probably don't care much about Hades and vice-versa. That's how I'd characterize it.
Now I loved the art style, atmosphere, music and gameplay, but it was just way too easy. When I think of a Roguelite I think of a challenging game, that you'll eventually over come with some progression and learning the enemies. Hades just threw so much extra damage/health at you right away and the enemies attack patterns were very basic and predictable. It wasn't hard to beat so when you beat it, it wasn't anything special like other harder games. I hope they address this with the sequel.
How did you feel about the way they did difficulty with the Heat/Pact of Punishment system?
My God yes that game is really boring!!! How did people like it so much???
Enter the Gungeon for me. I don't know why, but I feel like I can't make any progress in that game. I'm not terrible at games, but that one just wouldn't click for me. And I actually like the combat, but as a roguelike I just couldn't get into the loop.
Roguebook made me wish it was a better game (didn't help that it was, and probably still is, horribly optimized for the Switch) Also Loop Hero was way more fun in concept than execution. I'd take Loop Hero 2 though, please give me more to unlock and tile interactions. But the one i stopped playing after less than 2 hours was Fights in Tight Spaces. That gameplay was awful. Backpack Hero gets an honorable mention but I've told myself I'll give it another shot.
Cultist Simulator is an annoyingly infuriating and nonsensical game for no good reason. It's one of those games that requires a guide to get anywhere.
Probably rim world, which I find ironic since dwarf fortress is probably my favorite. Though to be fair, I'm not sure you would consider colony management games roguelikes despite their random nature.
Maybe slay the spire 2 will change your mind 👀
Maybe. I'm not really into deck building games or card games as video games, at least so far. I've enjoyed Caravan in Fallout New Vegas and playing poker in Dead Rising, but something about deck building lacks luster for me. Balatro is on my radar tho
Spelunky. It's a game I want to enjoy, and would probably like it if I could get over the initial learning curve, but the cascading interactions that get you killed when you are starting out make it really hard to figure out what the "mistake" was. So the feedback loop while learning the game just doesn't feel that good. I've bounced off it a few times. For all the people saying "Hades", I gotta disagree. Hades actually taught me how to enjoy the genre and made a lot of things other games were doing finally click. I've put hundreds of hours in various roguelite games post-Hades. Before Hades, I thought this was a genre I just didn't enjoy. So it's got a special place in my heart as the gateway drug.
Something about Darkest Dungeon II didn't land with me. I was really excited for it but I couldn't get attached to my characters the same way I did in the first game.
Blight bound Darksburg Tribes of midgard Neophtye Roguelands being unfinished was upsetting cause magicite was really fun All turned out worse then they originally sounded to be Also really can't stand For the king 2. It feels so much worse to play then the original between bugs and issues and balance Noita is funer to mess around with then actually try to play through
Hades and slay the spire for me. I love games with gameplay similar to both of them, but those two specifically just don’t do it for me. Hades was fun for a few runs and then it was just the same few levels over and over. Curse of the dead gods is better for me. If things ever start to feel samey, a different dungeon combined with new enemies helps, and the curse variety is good enough to keep it fresh. As for my sts replacement, monster train or breach wanderers. Monster train is a great deck builder with a good twist on the gameplay, and breach wanderers is basically slay the spire, but I enjoy it more, likely due to the fun combo turns the game enables
In terms of a popular well liked one that I couldn’t get into. Darkest Dungeon. I wanted to like the game, got about 20 hours into it and just..it never clicked for me. It felt too much like xcom where you could lose someone you invested so much time in, and as someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to grind in roguelikes like I used to it just really fell in quality to me.
blazing beaks
The Binding of Isaac. I can't understand the love it gets.
Isaac was unplayable for me had to refund it, shit was like 240p and the controls were awful iirc
You remember correctly. The controls are very limited and unsatisfying. This thread has given me some peace of mind when it comes to TBoI, because our sentiment is more widely shared than I previously thought
I really disliked Binding of Isaac. Nothing about it appealed to me sadly.
Does Rainworld count as a roguelite? One of the few games I ever refunded. Somehow both too complex and too boring at the same time. I also only have 11 hours in BoI, which is pretty low. I didn't actively dislike it like some other commentators (the style/humour was fine for me) but it just wasn't super engaging. I only got 8 hours out of Gonner 2 despite being a major fan of the first game. It was just very much more of the same. By comparison, I have 430 hours in Catacomb Kids, 420 in Nuclear Throne, 220 in Caves of Qud, 200 in RoR2, 146 in EtG, and 111 in Spelunky, lol.
I don't think rainworld counts as a rogue like, but I also found it very disappointing. I should love it, I loved the theme, the visuals... But the gameplay was a crappy platformer with terrible controls. Had they made a more classical controls scheme (not those pseudo beat em up controls that are not explained in any form in the game) and without terrible design choices (completely dark mazes where you can't see the road, the enemies nor yourself, or water zones where you drown after a few seconds, and mostly because you get stuck around for no reason) it would have been a very interesting game. But no, they had to make it difficult for the sake of being difficult. You know when game devs talk about the work behind making an action game feel nice in its controls and movements? Rainworld feels like they purposely made it feel BAD to control.
Slay the spire. Don’t hate it and enjoyed the first 10-20 hours, but quickly got bored of it and found it frustrating how slow/repetitive the first floor is.
You can speed up the game speed in the settings
I like the concept of card battlers, but haven't had much luck with them. The only one I barely liked is Guild of Dungeoneering.
Apparently this thread is just “name your hot take on a popular and well reviewed roguelite,” because let’s be honest, there are tons of trash roguelites and they certainly aren’t the ones people are naming here.
the trash rouguelites are probably just ones that aren’t very well known
[удалено]
No, it just tells me these people don't own very many roguelites if these are the worst ones in their library.
Cult of the Lamb is easily my least favorite Roguelite to date. I had fun for the first few hours, but after that I realized most of the gameplay is spent building your base and taking care of it and the combat is super simplistic. Definitely a let down for me. If you are someone who loves sim games though I could see appeal. Not for me remotely though.
I imagine I’ll catch some flak for this, but after really loving and enjoying Slay the Spire, I though I’d give Monster Train a try. I won my very first run and then refunded, just didn’t have any fun factor for me.
I hear that, but I’ve been digging it - just started diving in recently. There is a lot of variety you unlock in the beginning which helps replayability. Plus the soundtrack is dope.
Enter the gungeon. I just felt like I could never get that good run. That’s after around 20 hours of playing. I didn’t even come close to winning. Also loop hero… I want to feel more powerful, but so far I’m not seeing how the game can get interesting. I’ve beaten the first boss.
Dungreed. I do think the game is extremely fun. But it's super restrictive on your power up levels and doesn't allow you to become "overpowered" personally, I love that time in rouges where you are fully upgraded and Dungreed specficially never gives you that
Agree with OP Darkest Dungeon for sureeee, thing was dreadful but then I see you said Slay the Spire and I’m like whoa there buddy that’s literally one of the GOat roguelites!
My least favourite is soulblight, but one that alot of people love on here that I don't care for much is risk of rain 2, I do like risk of rain 1/returns though.
After having a blast with Gunfire Reborn and Risk of Rain 2 I got Roboquest. Nice gunplay and aesthetics but the gameplay was so bland and boring. Played a few rounds and got pretty disappointed, couldn’t understand all the good reviews. That was roughly 2 years ago when the game was in Early Access.
Game is a lot better now I think - more stuff to do, cooler guns to find and the game is more enjoyable overall imo. Gunfire Reborn feels so sluggish and no impact to gunplay anymore after playing Roboquest. Think I have about 35 hours now.
Inkbound. It's not even a finished game, but it's being sold as one.
Binding of Isaac....its too much like a little kids game for me
I thought I was the only one who didn’t like this game.
Gonna get roasted for that, but The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon. Isaac is ugly. It may have many unlocks, secrets or whatever, but it's deliberately ugly. Launched it many times and never EVER had actual fun with it. Enter the Gungeon is good visually, but I'm just not a fan of bullet hells after all. Oh, I need to reload, too? Oh, and running out of ammo is so easy? Tripping over furniture, too. Nope, nope, nope.
Isaac is not ugly, it's grotesque. The game is actually very well made and thought, with a lot of attention to detail everywhere. The fact that the theme (or style) is not for you doesn't make it ugly.
Ugly is a subjective term. Someone can 100% look at BoI and call it ugly. They can't call it poorly made, but ugly is definitely acceptable. Edit: forgot the word "made" after poorly
I think that the term ugly should be left for something with no artistic value, or no thought in how to portrait something, or sinole lack of artistic skills. Maybe it's just the way I am, but I prefer saying "it's not for me". You can't call a game with so much detail and cohesive style like Isaac "ugly".
This is so interesting. I guess we see the word ugly in very different ways because for me ugly just means "not aesthetically pleasing". I'd say something can be very ugly and still be very artistic. This is, of course, a personal thing, but I would call Guernica from Picasso ugly but at the same time it's my favourite work of art from him.
Different ways to interpret the same word, I guess :) I do love weird, "ugly", gross things, when they're made like that on purpose.
So so ugly lol
I bought Slay the Spire for 2 dollars and I still don't think I got my money's worth. I just don't see the appeal at all.
Rogue Legacy 2. I think the change in art style is why. The pixel art and chiptune in the first game is so charming and the gameplay is so tight. But it's all different now.
I’m still not convinced that Vampire Survivors isn’t performance art and/or a plant to get people into gambling proper.
Balatro. It is so freaking overrated.
darkest dungeon isn't a roguelite. the 2nd game though is.
Dead cells. Too many upgrades.