"Ending #68
Rogue Legacy
Developer: Cellar Door Games
Publisher: Cellar Door Games
Steam
2013

I haven't been this pleased with a game in months. Rogue Legacy is an instant hit. My love-hate relationship with Roguelikes being as it is (I love them, they hate me) is tempered a bit with this being a Roguelike-"lite". It's more like a Metroidvania that thinks it's a Roguelike.

I still die a whole lot either way. I even die during the final battle as my video confesses to. I suffered 186 deaths over 40 hours which averages to 4.65 deaths an hour. After so many heirs had died, overall it was persistence, dedication, and a whole lot of self loathing that helped me beat Johannes with Sir Taco V, a stereo blind hokage, son of Sir Cellar, a spelunker with ADHD who in turn was the son of Lady Antoinette the VIII, a useless paladin with flatulence and the propensity to swear a lot, and so forth and so on unto creation with the original heir, who as we learn from the game, is Johannes the legendary, a man with quite the lineage and a very interesting gene pool.

Honestly, by the time I reached the boss, my family line had so many issues from colorblindness, to dwarfism, cataracts and endomorphism that I was lucky to beat ol' pappy the 1st.

The game's genetic traits are a fun and enjoyable twist. Eventually you will whittle it down to a few classes and traits that you are most comfortable with and getting anything other than your set few will probably disappoint you, like getting stuck with three Dragons, re-rolling and getting stuck with three more. (It actually happened to me.)

Graphics, sound, and gameplay are all top notch. The developer, Cellar Door Games, knew what they were doing here as the graphics are colorful in all their HD pixel glory. What more could you ask for from a platformer? Control and handling are very good but not perfect. I found myself, especially during the Neo boss fights, hollering at the screen to turn around while I was attacking and would end up walking backwards into disaster. Unless your character had the rare trait of being flexible, this extra quarter second of attack speed precision was missing. As any hardcore platform gamer can tell you, controls are everything. Music was pretty standard, every song was good, but only two really stood out to me, the Ponce fight and the ending theme. You will not be turning the sound down to run your own music over it with this one.

This is a must-play title for anyone who is a fan of Metroidvania platforming or Roguelikes. Buy it to kill a weekend and giggle as your descendants are left with the genetic blessing of flatulence."