Rogue Lords Review - Gman Reviews

Introduction to Rogue Lords Review

Now to start with the Rogue Lords review, this is an interesting game in that it is very hard to place what category it is in, but it is rouge-like. The premise of the game is you play as the devil, and you use a team of various disciples as they are called which are your party members of which there are always 3 (you start the game with 4 to choose from and you get more) and are based on mythological creatures such as Dracula, Headless Horsemen etc and you have to go through missions to get artefacts to finally face Van Helsing.

If your looking for guides check out the link here: Rogue Lords Guides.

This game has so many elements in it that it is very easy to end up with analysis paralysis and it has a relatively high learning curve so it is advised to read a beginner’s guide on it as there is a lot you can do in this game but knowing the righting thing to do at the right time is part fun of this game and the game seems to incorporate push your luck mechanics into it which make it very interesting.

One of the innovative elements of the game is the demonic essence feature which is unique and something I have never seen in any other game before and really fits into the push-your-luck aesthetic.

It functions as both a health bar but also a way to cheat in the game and is quite complex in what it can do and fits into the gothic horror aesthetic quite nicely and I will go into what it does as we go through the gameplay section, and it will have its own section.

The basic premise of the game is to move up the map and become stronger as you go with the final goal of beating the final boss. You have to decide a route and along the way, you will have different types of encounters from combat to social events with stat checks and various other things.

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Gameplay

Strap in people as my Rogue Lords review of gameplay is going to be complicated but fun, this game deserves a great explanation as it has plenty of replay value which I will go into later.

So first off you have your cast of characters and each character has social stats that they start off with (which are used in events), starting hp and sp (hit points and spirit points) which basically function as two health bars and a starting hand of 3 skills (cards) which they always start with and extra skills they can acquire along the way as well as being able to acquire relics (items with special permanent effects)

So essentially when you start a mission there will be 6 chapters of the mission with the last chapter ending in a boss battle. Now your task is to get through the various chapters and make it to the final boss and then beat the final boss to progress to the next mission.

Now as you move from the beginning of the first chapter to the final boss fight you will see a map and, on the map, there will be different icons that correspond to different types of encounters.

Types of encounters: Rogue Lords Review

You have the following encounters:

Combat
Elite Combat
Event
Styx Fountain
Sacrificial Altar
Grim Reaper
Book Chapter (of which there is always one per chapter)
Random
Final Combat (which is the final boss battle that only occurs in the 6^th chapter)

Now each of these types of encounters uses different aspects of your characters and the map is always unique apart from the book chapter and final combat which are always the same.

Now what makes this game unique is that there are so many different aspects of the game that are random and it’s up to you to concoct a strategy that takes advantage of what you get. This also means that you might have to say go with the flow depending on what cards/stats/relics you get and might have to adjust your strategy accordingly, it can also break a run if you just have trouble getting the cards/relics you want.

Now the first type of encounter is combat. Now combat is how you can lose in this game as the only way you lose in this game is when you are beaten in combat. Now with combat encounters, they are a little bit less random than say the event in that there are always 3 choices for you to take when you move into a combat encounter.

The 3 choices are:

A frontal attack which will generate terror at a particular night (which has many effects)
Set up an ambush which always gives you at minimum the option to choose one skill (maybe more) from 3 randomly generated skills at your terror level
Attack discretely which will get you souls (which is the game’s currency and traded at the grim reaper)

Now irrespective of which of these options you choose you will fight against some enemies and if you win you will get a reward based on which option you chose. Now while the last two options are self-explanatory the first option of picking terror is more complex because it has two effects which I will go into in my criticism of the game later on in that the first thing that winning a combat encounter after picking the terror option will give you is that it will create a terror bonus a certain distance away from where you are such as in the screenshot I present above the option is a terror effect in 4 nights so what that would mean is all the type of events 4 nights away would get a bonus for if you visit them and these bonuses can go from being useless to incredibly powerful if you get the right one at the right place(terror will be discussed in depth later).

The second effect of terror is that it gets you a little closer to increasing your terror level after which you get some powerful benefits such as getting a relic and getting access to better variants of skills from then on.

(Below picture of terror level)

(Below is a picture of combat)

Now the combat in this game is turn-based in that you take your turn first and that you have 5 action points initially (this can be increased) but you can’t use every ability that your characters have as each ability costs a certain number of action points to use and so the 5 action points are the pool of action points for your entire team so normally you have to make some hard decisions based on what you want to do that turn.

Now the enemies are quite different in that they will each get a turn to do something after your turn is done and for the most part, you can see what they are going to do indicated by icons above the enemy head such as whether are they going to apply a beneficial status to themselves, a harmful status to your team, do damage to one or more members or heal etc.

This is important as you need to pay attention to what the enemies are doing and react accordingly. Now one of the mechanics that are very different in this game from other similar games is that you have two health bars essentially of health points(hp) and spirit points(sp) and normally attack abilities will do damage to one or the other.

Now in this game, you don’t need to reduce both the hp and sp of enemies you just to remove all of one or the other for the most part. The same applies to your characters (known as disciples) if one of your characters loses all their sp or hp and gets hit with an attack that further reduces their sp or hp below 0 you can potentially lose the game.

There are various statuses both harmful and beneficial in this game and understanding the status effects is crucial to understanding the game unlike other games you can’t just pile on status effects as there are certain categories of effects and you can’t have the different statuses in the same category on your disciple or enemies as they will replace the status already there.

That’s the basics of combat but there are a lot of synergies between skills, stats, and relics (special items that give you buffs) that can really become very powerful and there are different builds you can try based on the characters you choose for your team.

Now elite combat encounters are the same as regular combat in that you have to fight some enemies but elite combat is more dangerous than regular combat as there will be much tougher enemies that get progressively tougher as you go through chapters but the advantage of them is you are guaranteed a relic at the end of the fight which can make them worth going after so it’s a risk versus rewards kind of thing which seems to be a common trope in this game.

Also, demonic essence has a great use during the battle that I will get to later as it will have its own section.

Now events (as they are known in the game) as completely different and unique in this game in that they involve a story-like encounter in which you can make choices to get various benefits.

Now when you go to events you can choose one of your characters to participate in the event and the event screen will tell you what the benefit for that character will be for participating which is normally either increasing physical and/or spiritual damage or hp or sp or a combination of therein.

Now you will get the benefit for that character indicated in the event screen, but you can also get more rewards for completing social checks whose difficulty will be based on the stat for that character on that social check.

(Below picture of event screen)

Now the benefits can range from further stat increases to choice of a skill (some better than would normally allow), to a relic, terror or to souls (the game’s currency). Now you can improve your odds of passing status checks using demonic essence which I will get to later.

Next are Styx fountains which basically replenish your essence and normally recover 20 essences, but they also can remove one negative trait from each character but it’s either situation in that you must decide to either recover essence or remove negative traits as you can’t do both with each Styx fountain you encounter.

Next, you have the grim reaper which is basically a shop that allows you to trade souls (in-game currency) to buy skills for your character and relics and enhance a skill. The first two are self-explanatory and you are always presented with three relics to choose from and three skills per character (total of 9 skills) to buy and you have the option to enhance one skill.

Now there are 3 different power levels of skills with white (level 1), purple (level 2), and gold skills (level 3) and the higher the level the more powerful the effect and the level 1 skill can level all the way up to level 3 and there are also some skills that don’t have a level 1 equivalent. (This will be discussed later in the terror section but essentially as you level up your terror you get access to higher-level skills).

Now the unique option for the grim reaper is skill enhancement and what that does is you pick a skill of one character to leave with the grim reaper and the next time you encounter the grim reaper, the grim reaper will give you the skill back but its level will be raised by one but while the grim reaper has that skill you can’t use it.

Also, if you have two copies of the same skill at the same level and you would be able to get a third and you take the third option all those three skills will be replaced by the same skill at a higher level and you will also get the option to pick one from three skills at the same higher level so if a skill was increased to level 2 you would get another level 2 skill

Next, you have sacrificial altars and what they allow you to do is to sacrifice a skill to not only replace it with another skill but increase the number of skills you can have by one. The downside is that the skill that you sacrifice will never be offered to you in an encounter again so you have to think really hard as to what skills you want to get rid of but sacrificing skills is vital as it’s the only way to increase the number of skills a character can have.

Now the last one I will discuss is the random event which can basically turn out to be any one of the types of events I have gone into frequently apart from book chapter and final boss and you won’t know what event it is until you move up to it.

Essence and Terror

Next in our Rogue Lords review, we are going to review essence is what makes the game interesting as it stands for your power as the devil to alter things. It has various effects in combat for instance it can be used to subtract or add hp and sp for both your party and enemies.

It can be used to move status in combat from an enemy or party member to another enemy or party member. It can be used to recharge a skill and in events, it can be used to increase the odds of you passing a status check all the way to one hundred per cent which could potentially mean the difference between getting and not getting a relic.

On the map, it can be used to allow you to access different parts of the maps that you would not normally be able to access from where you are so managing your essence is vital in this game and a big part of playing this game is deciding when you should use your essence as normally it’s very difficult to get essence back.

The essence mechanic is incredibly thematic and combined with the sound and graphics really make you feel like you’re the devil in a gothic horror movie trying to spread as much terror as you possibly can.

(Below list of devil powers and costs)

Now terror is also very interesting in that it is vitally important but when you first play this game it isn’t obvious that you should be focused on improving your terror. As stated before your terror bar must be improved 4 times to level up to a higher terror level and you automatically start with ¼ of your terror level filled up when you start the game or encounter another book chapter your terror bar automatically gets ¼ filled.

Now terror has 3 effects. The first is that it will give a terror bonus to a particular night so for instance if the terror bonus would apply to 4 nights away then those map icons that are exactly 4 steps away from the location will be where the terror bonus is spawned.

Now there are some bonuses that are specific to certain encounters and some that aren’t and the ones that are specific to certain encounters can be really powerful for instance there is one for the Styx fountain that will cause it to actually restore all your essence and increase your max essence by 10 which can be really powerful if you are running low on essence as a lot of times increasing your essence by 20 is not enough.

There is also a generic terror effect such as the one that gives you free use of a devil power at that location which can make elite combat a breeze as it guarantees you can kill a single elite in the first turn, but the only problem is that you don’t know what terror bonus will be generated only where it will be generated.

Also, every time you increase your terror level you get a relic and levelling up your terror gets you access to higher level skills that you wouldn’t most likely get if your terror level was lower so levelling up your terror is vital, maybe a little too vital but vital, nonetheless.

Story

Next in this Rogue Lords review we review the story and boy is the story great. The tutorial really sets it up and the gameplay mechanics really enforce the story.

The basic premise of the story is that you play as the devil and many years ago you and your monsters/disciples were defeated by the mortals who revolted against you who were led by the demon hunters, and you went back to hell to recuperate and now you come back to the mortal world to claim your dominion once again over the world.

I think the story is really engaging and unique, especially when combined with all the gameplay elements and the sound/graphics. Every chapter in a book (what missions are called) has unique voice narration so that the first time you’re playing the mission you definitely feel like you’re playing the devil in the story on a quest to corrupt the mortal world.

Initially, I was turned off by the prospect of playing the devil as normally I play heroes in RPGs but the narration really sets up the story as well as the devilish commentary which never gets tiring, not even after over 40 hours of gameplay time.

Graphics and Sound

Next in this Rogue Lords review we review the graphics which are simply gorgeous from the character design to the 3d backgrounds during events and combat. They combined with the sound and the gameplay really do carve out their own gothic horror aesthetic.

The narrator’s voice(The Devil) especially is awesome and reminds me a lot of Vincent Price (not exactly but he has the same ambience in his voice) in that he is booming and sounds absolutely evil.

This is the kind of voice you would expect someone to have if they had a cat in their lap and they got to turn around in their chair to do a reveal while shouting “Next Time Gadget, Next Time”

Replay Value

Next in this Rogue Lords review we look at replayability. The replayability of this game is off the charts because of the rouge-like nature of the map, bonuses, and the different characters. Part of the fun is trying new builds out to see if they will work or not or replaying a mission that you lost to see if you can maybe do it in a different way to allow you to beat the boss or at least get that little bit closer.

The difficulty does scale well during the game for the most part, but I wish they had an option to adjust the difficulty level apart from playing apprentice or normal mode because as you level up by completing achievements and dying or completing a mission you get access to different skills but I think that the game assumes that as you get access to higher level skills by levelling up (separate from the in-mission terror) and achievements that the game gets easier and it may not as you can’t guarantee that you’re going to get access to those higher level skills in the game anyway.

The thing that makes this game so replayable is the plethora of options you have during a run in that you get to choose your route but even with the same party, your game will be different as you will encounter different skills, relics etc and you must not focus on one type of encounter over another.

For instance in order to increase your hp and sp you either have to get relics which is an unreliable way of increasing your hp or you need to do events as they are the only way to increase your hp and sp so the game sort of forces you to make hard decisions as if you spend the game focusing on combat and you don’t do enough events your hp and sp is going to be so low that you may get one shot by later enemies or the final boss.

The plethora of options from route to take to terror bonus to skills and relics you get means that no two runs will ever be the same and even if they had the same map and party, they will be different in what relics/skills/bonuses you get.

Summary of Rogue Lords Review

Lastly, in the summary of this Rogue Lords review, I think this is an awesome game that I bought pretty much as soon as it came out but only recently started to play it and I wish I had played it earlier as it is very addictive and an example of an indie game with triple a polish.

This game presents a unique experience that you will find nowhere else. The only detriment to it is that you are kind of forced to go after terror to get your terror lever to at least 3 because if you don’t you won’t get access to the higher-level skills that you need to survive in the later chapters.

It’s thematic to spread terror but that would be my one and only gripe as apart from that the game is awesome I normally don’t rate games but if I did it would be a 9 out of 10.

Brilliant game and I really hope to see DLC for it.