Forgive the unsolicited recommendation, but if you're looking for a game that fits 'real roguelike' as I understand you mean it, have you tried 'TowerClimb' before? It's a lot like Spelunky except in reverse, including in how it basically has no meta-progression except your own understanding of the game. The most you can unlock other than side modes is a shortcut to the 20th floor of about 55.
Oh yeah, in BoI you only pick up items once a floor that power up your character and give you new abilities or alter your existing abilities, and when you start a new run you lose all of them and start from scratch allowing each run to feel significantly different depending on the combination of items you come across over a run. This is completely different from skills and is in no way a form of character progression because they are called items. I guess.
I think I saw SGF play poorly and without interest during one of his hour tryouts. I might check it out some time, since I'm always interested in roguelikes.
I came in way more skeptical than usual when trying GoW 4, but it very quickly won me over. I think the publicity they did for it back in the day was horrible, they made it sound like it played like the last of us or something due to the camera angle it had. I guess they intended it as a positive remark but it totally turned me off. And eventually I ended up liking em way more than the old games. They are less arcadey and have some more rpg elements but the combat is very deep either way. Though I played em on hard right away, cause these games always tended to be too easy.
Jumping isn’t cinematic enough! You should only be able to jump when it’s cinematically appropriate!!
When you go on the later sins it takes longer to reach the mountain, there's both more zones, and each zone gets progressively longer and full of more encounters that can be shrines or treasure and so on, and you unlock a bunch of really strong trinkets too that are all positive with the hope candles, only the lowest two rarities tend to have drawbacks, and most top tier ones don't, and each zone has a quest you can do to earn one of them or some mastery to upgrade skills with and some encounters like the stash that give you more top tier trinkets too. As for mastering skills, that's all about which sorts of encounters you steer into, some give more than others. Typically more combat = more mastery. Though early on you gotta kinda have a plan as you go in and spend the few points you have available intelligently.
Did half your party die to the encounter right before the mountain boss? Cause you can add people from the unchosen classes to your party at the inn if someone dies on the way there. You just gotta highlight the empty seats in the screen where you use inn items and add more peeps.
I've put a couple of hours into it and I also didn't get it. Loved the idea of hunting giant monster trough large world, but the tedium of it all just killed it for me. The worse was constantly acting like your were playing multiplayer even solo, like having a little countdown at the end of each level and such.
It's not my kind of game, but I've only really heard glowing praise about it. I think people are being cagey because giving away anything would end up being spoiler-y.
Yeah I definitely can understand the tedium. At some point the animation that plays when you want to see a quest makes you want to punch your screen if you selected the wrong thing.
I helped my girlfriend get past the first few levels. It was fun, and she enjoyed the rest of the game that she played on her own. I'd say it leans towards -like rather than rogue-, it felt very much more story focused than gameplay focused. Is there anything in particular you wanted to know about it?
I guess just how much of a roguelike it really is, and whether it works as a deckbuilder. It's fine if it's more about the story, and if it starts as one thing and ends up being another that's fine too, I like experimental and I like games with weird rules.
Both she and I aren't experienced with deck builders, but what we played was serviceable. Feels almost like a more fleshed out, faster Gwent.
It was my first run so I hadn't unlocked any additional characters. I think I lost one or two in the region before the mountain, swapped in my remaining hero and then lost another one or two in the encounter before the mountain.
See but that's the thing, you do kind of grid your way to victory. You unlock permanent power upgrades and better items with candles and you need to grind runs to unlock character skills. Some characters don't even seem worth using with their default skill sets.
It's a good game, I liked it a lot. It's not really a roguelike. It's all deckbuilder, though. There are 3 parts to the game and only the first is a roguelike. It's very much about the story, and I thought the ending was pretty decent.
I didn't like it but I highly recommend it.
