Rogue Legacy 2 test: my lineage for a good game!

Nine years after the excellent roguelike Rogue legacy, Cellar Door Games comes knocking on our door to offer us a sequel on paper in all respects better. A worthy heir capable of taking up the heavy torch? Follow our line to find out!

As fans of the first installment, we bought Rogue Legacy 2 when it released in early access two years ago. The first draft had been half-hearted: the skeleton of the game seemed promising, but was not lacking in pitfalls. Points that Cellar Door Games have greatly improved in two years, with an official release that has everything of a very good game, but still not free from flaws. We explain it all to you!

Rogue Legacy 2 test: my lineage for a good game! Read the conclusionRogue Legacy 2

Rogue Legacy mixed with metroidvania
Addictive gameplay loop
Unique and shimmering artistic touch
Demanding in its difficulty, but fair

Perfectible control precision
Action sometimes unreadable
Very introverted scenario
Lots of grind in perspective

Test conducted on PC (via Steam) with a personal copy acquired at the launch of early access. Rogue Legacy 2 is currently also available on PC via the Epic Games Store, as well as Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

Don't draw a line under Legacy

Before tackling the many new features offered by this sequel, it is worth going back to the beautiful legacy left by Rogue Legacy, the first of its name. Those who loved this game should be in relatively familiar procedural territory. The main goal is always to launch a run by choosing one of the random heirs that we are offered and try to go as far as possible in a vast dungeon generated overall procedurally.

Each proposed heir has a class with its own weapon and skill, a spell drawn randomly from an extensive list, as well as iconic random traits from Rogue Legacy. Your future heir may thus be a dwarf or a giant, suffer from severe flatulence, see black and white or streaks of color as soon as something moves.

Depending on the inconvenience generated by these traits (and you will really curse some of them), your heir will have a gold bonus allowing you to make the most of the inconvenience caused… provided you don't die too quickly. Rogue Legacy 2 is indeed even more devious than its elder, you have been warned!

Mistakes are paid for with large chunks of your life bar, but the game rewards patience and the proper use of all of your heir's abilities...provided the controls aren't failing you. It has indeed often happened to us that a jump or an attack is not registered correctly, followed by a punishment without appeal and sometimes the premature end of a promising heir...

A certain requirement that opposes a unique artistic touch that is very cute and very shimmering to the eye. Taking on the hand-drawn graphics of the first opus, Rogue Legacy 2 is enhanced by visual effects and other elements rendered in 3D that flatter the retina. Sometimes maybe a little too much, as the visual effects can overflow on the screen and affect the readability of the action.

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Although shimmering to the eye, the visual effects sometimes greatly affect the readability of the action.

Roguevania Legacy

Now let's move on to the many new features offered by Rogue Legacy 2. In an effort to marry roguelike and metroidvania, you will find Legacies in the six areas that make up the game that will improve the range of your movements. Dash in the air, double jump and others will be essential to advance in the dungeon. To get them, you will have to go through some kind of tutorial teaching you how to master your new ability.

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In each zone, you will find a Legacy reminiscent of a mechanism of the metroidvania genre.

Rogue Legacy 2 also takes the opportunity to strengthen its roguelike component, with powerful Relics to collect during your exploration. These will only apply to your current heir and will drastically strengthen your build. They will, however, cost a certain amount of Determination, represented by a percentage. If your Determination falls below 100%, you will lose a percentage of your health equal to the cost of the recovered Relic. It will therefore be necessary to measure the potential risk / reward in this situation, at the risk of meeting a brutal end.

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Relics can bring huge benefits to your heir...but all good things come at a price.

To compensate for this loss of life points, other rooms will offer you the choice between a Blessing that heals you and a Blessing allowing you to increase your maximum life points... in exchange for a portion of the latter. Fortunately, the means of healing are legion, provided you have a bit of luck.

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Between healing yourself and increasing your maximum hit points by taking damage, you have to choose!

All this will not be too much to overcome the bosses (called Estuaries) governing the six main areas of the dungeon. These will indeed not give you a gift and may even sometimes surprise you during the fight. Be aware, however, that unlike Rogue Legacy first of the name, a defeated boss will be for good. They therefore want to be the final chapter of each zone, before moving on (and suffering before appropriating it) to the next one.

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Each boss hides a secret trick that will make you seriously sweat!

Quite quickly in the game, you will also unlock the possibility of unlocking the teleporters at the entrance to each new area. This will save you from repeating each area in a loop (and losing precious life points in the exercise) if you want to move forward.

Inevitably, you risk letting many heirs pass before you get to the end of the game, in a story full of humor that can be enjoyed but which is clearly not its strong point. Once past the weapon on the left with a tidy sum of gold coins, we return to an element that fans of the first opus know well: unlocking improvements in the family home.

Management of the family castle

You've suffered to amass a nice jackpot to bring back to the family castle, and now it's time to spend it! On this menu, you will have to eat and drink as the upgrades to buy are numerous. Increase in the statistics of your lineage, new classes (sometimes very crazy like the cook or the pirate) or even new shops, the family home is a real money pit!

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The family castle will quickly become a real money pit.

Shops will also be crucial in improving your chances of success in future runs. First you have the blacksmith, who will ask you to find blueprints in the dungeon before buying them to improve your stats. Then you have the enchantress, who will also ask you to find runes in the dungeon and then buy them to bring you important bonuses such as life drain.

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The blacksmith will allow you to improve different elements of your armor.

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And the enchantress will allow you to equip different runes with very beneficial effects.

To unlock said runes, you will need to find fairy chests that can only be opened after passing a test in the room concerned. Defeat all the enemies, solve a puzzle in a given time, finish the room without jumping or losing life points... obtaining these famous runes is not easy!

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To open the chests to obtain runes, you will have to arm yourself in cold blood!

You also have the architect, the old gentleman who will offer to block the dungeon you have visited so that your next run is not procedural. If its usefulness is questionable, at least it is possible against hard cash to remove this part of randomness.

At the gates of your family home, you will also find a mysterious tent that offers a new game in the game: Scars. These are kinds of tests (often very difficult) which will allow you, depending on your performance, to recover a new resource called souls. To make your life easier, some dungeon rooms will ask you to enter a kind of arena in which you will have to defeat many enemies. Completing the arena will grant you an affinity bonus for a given Scar, giving you a better chance of defeating it on your next attempt.

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Scars are usually particularly tricky challenges.

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But these rooms allow you to improve your chances if you complete them.

To unlock the Scars, however, you will have to solve puzzles that are sometimes unbittable. It is therefore without shame that we had to consult certain guides in order to know what to do.
The souls obtained by completing a Scar will allow you to buy various improvements for your family home or your heirs. These include new weapons for each class, or the ability to ensure that an heir to choose at the start of each run will come from a given class.

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Defeating Scars will allow you to spend souls to unlock many items.

As you can see, you're going to have a lot to do in Rogue Legacy 2 if you want to complete the game 100%. Castle upgrades and Blacksmith and Enchantress equipment end up being very expensive over time. However, even if you have defeated the boss of a previous area, you will often be forced to go through the entire dungeon in order to collect enough money to strengthen your character and progress.

This somehow brings an artificial lifespan to the game that could have been avoided. Fortunately, the gameplay loop is particularly addictive. And we always take a certain perverse pleasure in seeing how far our heir with unsavory features can go.

Rogue Legacy 2: the opinion of JVFR

Rogue Legacy 2

Cellar Door Games returns after nine years of absence to offer us a worthy heir to the first and excellent Rogue Legacy, while adding its share of novelties. More ambitious, varied and even difficult than its elder, this second opus ticks all the boxes of a very good sequel and just misses being a new reference of Roguevania. For example, we can criticize the sometimes capricious controls, an action sometimes saturated with visual effects or the need to perform many "farm runs" in order to be able to progress without being martyred in the new areas of the game. this kind of game should still be lost for hours with constantly renewed pleasure, as this title is generous in what it offers.