Rogue Legacy 2 Review: Black Knight With a Thousand Young (PS5)

Time has an interesting way of changing people’s perceptions, and how people perceive things. And I’d say that time has definitely changed perceptions for the original Rogue Legacy. When it came out in 2013, it was revolutionary, one of the early iconic roguelikes alongside titles like The Binding of Issac and Nuclear Throne. But now, as its sequel comes to PlayStation 4 and 5, almost exactly a decade later, the world it’s heading into has changed. Indie roguelikes are a dime a dozen, and even big AAA releases like Returnal and Prey’s Mooncrash DLC are starting to implement roguelike elements. You can’t walk five feet through Steam without tripping over a Hades, or an Enter The Gungeon, or even more esoteric genre mashups like FPS roguelike Gunfire Reborn or Peglin, AKA, roguelike Peggle. 

Is Rogue Legacy 2 capable of standing out in a world where roguelikes are far more common? The answer is yes. Is Rogue Legacy 2 good on PlayStation 5? Also yes. Will there be much suffering and failure? You bet your keister there will be.

Rogue Legacy 2 is available now for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.

Story: Dork Souls

The original Rogue Legacy wasn’t really a game with an intricate story. It reminded me a lot of the Flash era for some reason. Fairly jokey, never took itself seriously, and with an out of nowhere twist. Rogue Legacy 2 takes a much more active effort to tell a story, albeit one that wears its influence on its sleeve. We’ve gone from a quirky flash throwback to baby’s first Dark Souls. I’m fairly mixed on Rogue Legacy 2‘s story. While it is far more developed, I think it might just be a little too dark, especially for the game’s cutesy art style. 

Rogue Legacy 2 is also not afraid to dive deep into silliness. Especially when it comes to pizza, an unlikely thing to find in Rogue Legacy 2’s ambiguously medieval setting. Pizza is the game’s best healing item, and also a weapon somehow. So you have a game where all the bosses are once famous and renowned heroes and other important figures that have been corrupted into monsters, and you can defeat them by throwing pizzas at them. Simply wonderful.

You can take the washer and dryer where the lovely skeleton knight is standing, or you can trade it all in for what’s behind these doors.

Gameplay: A Genetic Opera

Rogue Legacy 2 does little to deviate from the mold of its predecessor. It’s the same general gameplay loop, but much bigger and with a lot more variety. It’s a 2D sidescrolling platformer where you travel through a magical shifting castle, fight monsters, and get sweet loot. You pick your character, venture forth into the castle, fight until you die, use your accumulated resources to buy upgrades, and hope your character’s next of kin can do a better job than they did.

The major evolution here comes from the addition of more Metroidvania elements. At least during your first playthrough, substantial portions of the castle are closed off from you, and you’re forced to explore the biomes in the intended order under normal circumstances, because each biome has a permanent Heirloom that persists between runs, and each biome’s Heirloom will be needed to navigate future areas. There are ways around this though. The fourth biome can be entered early with the Astromancer or Pirate, who naturally have the ability to fly.

Battle twisted monstrosities and horrors, whether seriously or otherwise.

The roguelike elements are also enhanced with the addition of relics, items that give temporary perks, giving you the incentive to explore in the middle of runs rather than gunning straight for the bosses. I agree with all of these changes, they massively improve the game’s depth.

To get the most out of Rogue Legacy, you’re going to need to play it multiple times. Much of the game’s content is gated behind New Game+, and you can’t get the true ending until your eighth playthrough. If you’re not a grind-until-you-die gamer, you won’t get the most out of this game, though a single playthrough is still immensely satisfying.

Your neverending battle rages on in the snowy Kerguelen Plateau.

A Wave of Babies

Rogue Legacy 2‘s boasts a whopping 16 character classes, each with two unique weapons, and a skill tree with over a hundred items, not to mention dozens of unique equipment options. Build variety is incredible, perhaps a little too incredible. A lot of the weapons are gimmicks, particularly the rare fabled weapons, and especially the Bard. Most of the time, you’re far better off with a class like the Valkyrie, whose ability to attack straight up with their lance is immeasurably useful.

Rogue Legacy‘s central mechanic, where your character’s death will have them be replaced by their offspring, is back. The scope of customization is massively enhanced here. There are dozens of unique traits that your characters can have, ranging from stat modifiers to accepting various penalties in exchange for increased gold gain. It was a solid formula, and it still works great here. You can have a character that has blue skin, or has healing items hurt them, or that has higher jumps, or that can only deal damage with critical hits, and so on. There are plenty of silly traits, so not only can you fight bosses like Lamech, a tortured skeleton knight, by throwing pizzas at him, but you can also do so as a clown with lethal farts.

These traits naturally add to the game’s replayability, and help ensure that each run is unique.

Classes like the Ranger can be difficult to use, but are very effective in the hands of a skilled player.

Graphics and Sound: A Tale of Death and Pizza

Rogue Legacy 2 is an amazing glow-up in terms of visuals. We’ve gone from chunky pixel art to beautiful hand-drawn 2D artwork. All of the different biomes are gloriously rendered and the character sprites animate beautifully. Everything is crisp and distinct looking, and there’s a lot of imagination on display in the world design. There are also a lot of strong atmospheric effects, with fog and snow enhancing the mood of certain areas. And many negative traits give you more gold with the penalty of messing with the visuals. You could be forced to play in sepiatone, or only able to see in a small area around your character. Regardless, this is some of the best art I’ve ever seen in a roguelike.

The music is also quite varied as well, with a myriad of different styles and instrumentation. There are a lot of good string instruments in particular, with the town and Sun Tower themes being my absolute favorites. These songs are absolute bangers that get stuck in your head.

The music really adds to the game’s atmosphere.

How’s the Port?

The game is nearly flawless, that much was already known from its previous releases. This port was Cellar Door Games’ to ruin, and they hit it out of the park. The PlayStation 5 port is, to the best of my knowledge, completely flawless. In my time with the game, I haven’t experienced a single crash or a single bug of any kind. This port also comes with all of the game’s DLC pre-included. The DLC is nothing particularly groundbreaking, a new weapon here, a “Beat the game in 15 lives” challenge run there, but it’s still worth having. Fans have been waiting for Rogue Legacy 2 to come to PlayStation for a very long time. Their patience has been well rewarded.

Rogue Legacy 2 was reviewed for PlayStation 5, using a key provided by ICO.