HomeReviewsRogue Lords
Rogue Lords review: a compelling roguelike where cheaters prosper - for a whileThere ain’t no decks for the wicked
There ain’t no decks for the wicked
Fighting against Satan must be miserable. You think you’ve got one of his minions cornered and then bam, down (up?) comes the hand of evil incarnate. Schwoop, Evil says, as he waves away most of your priest’s health bar. Pffft, he scoffs, as he flicks a shield from your bounty hunter to his succubus. Pop, he mouths, as he recharges Bloody Mary’s stabbing skill and sends her in for the kill. If this sounds unfair, that’s because it is - though fortunately, you’re not actually that side of the pentagram.Rogue Lordsis a roguelike where the rules and UI elements are old Nick’s playthings, and you’re the lucky devil in charge of all his toys.
Of course, that doesn’t wind up mattering nearly as much as you think it might.
Rogue Lords | Devil Gameplay TrailerWatch on YouTube
Rogue Lords | Devil Gameplay Trailer
You go into every run with your choice of three disciples, each of which have two separate health bars that are in fact merely buffers for your actual health pool. That’s the big stinking pile of demonic essence you can see in the top left corner of the screen, and it’s this pool that also powers your ability to cheat. Every time you invoke your true demonic prowess, you move a little closer to death. That’s undeniably clever, and certainly welcome, but it’s not game-defining. Your minions’ health bars swoosh back up to full after every fight, so it only makes sense to mess about with devil mode when you truly feel your troops can’t hack it. It’s there as a tantalising fallback option, rather than the core of combat.
Double health bars acting as shields for your true health bar isn’t Rogue Lords’ finest innovation, mind. More clever still is the way that dovetails with the vulnerability system, which is a ‘last chance’ state every combatant goes into when they take a hit that exceeds their remaining health. If your minions take any damage once they’re in that state, they’ll stay in the fight - but your essence will take a licking. That means you’ve always got to have a plan for how to finish off your enemies, but it also means you can soak up massive hits before taking any permanent damage. Of course, then you’re playing on a knife edge, and any of the enemy’s many multi-hitting attacks can scupper your party faster than you can say Beetlejuice.
My misgivings don’t end there, sadly. Fights don’t half go on a bit, especially early on in a run when you’re limited to starting abilities you’ll have seen many times before. Even once you get going the pool of abilities doesn’t run as deep as I’d like, and I did find myself repeatedly building around the same ones. That’s partly because you only unlock new characters once you successfully beat a campaign, which are themselves overlong and broadly feature the same enemy types. There are six campaigns in total, building up to a climactic battle against Van Helsing, though I never got to that point. It took me 20 hours to reach the third boss fight, which is broken - it even has the temerity to get stuck on a loading screen after I slogged through the battle itself, which makes me miss the spectator from last week’sThe Amazing American Circusreview, who at least had the good grace to break down early on.
Team building exerciseYour posse sometimes reacts to the choices a disciple makes in events, gaining either negative or positive traits. I’d be more on board with it if those reactions were consistent: at one point my Dracula looked down on my Succubus’s flirting, but on a separate occasion hinted that he might succumb to a bit o’ Bus himself. It’s frustratingly arbitrary.
But! (If you’ll permit a double but) “soon” is relative: it took a good many runs before the novelty of demonic UI-hacking wore thin, and longer still before all my attempts started revolving around overly familiar abilities and strategies. More than one upgrade made me say “What?!” aloud, as I marvelled over being offered something so powerful - though whether or not I landed one of those did seem to make or break my runs.
Still. Still! If you need a Spire-like fix, this is a good place to get it. With more variety, a spot of balancing, and a, um, functional second half, it could be a great one.
