Rogue Legacy

A cursory internet inspection of Rogue Legacy would leave you with the impression that the game is exactly as it says on the tin: a procedurally-generated hack n slasher (the "Rogue" part of the name) that allows your progeny to pick up where you left off after each death (the "Legacy" part of the name). It's a game that's easy enough to pick up and play even if you're taking over from another person's save slot.

The deeper you get into the game, the more it begins to elude a proper definition. It has permadeath but not really, randomly generated maps but you can lock them down, and a good amount of choppity-chop action except you can augment attacks with special abilities, giving it just enough of the "roguelike" qualities to classify it as "rogue-lite" (yes I know that sounds terribly confusing, go here to understand it better).

On top of this, the game has a fairly robust skill tree, weapon/magic modifiers, and an economy system that you could be forgiven for saying it also had an RPG element to it. Combine this with the obvious tropes of a Metroidvania setting and travel system and at the end of it all, you're not entirely sure how to pin this one down categorically. 

The real miracle is all these systems working together seamlessly. You never feel too overwhelmed by it all. This is in part because you know you can just do one more run through the castle at any time and come out with new options to pick from. The repetition of the gameplay loop lends itself to the feeling of simplicity, while still giving you a lot of choices to chew on after each run.

You'll need to find blueprints and runes inside the castle to upgrade your weapons and magic, respectively, so it is still imperative that you use every attempt to try and get deeper into the ever-changing maze. After a while, you'll find a combination that suits your play style and then you're really ready to dive into the game's core. 

Depending on the layout of the castle, you will either encounter bosses almost right away, or spend a significant time looking for them, and these guys are no joke. There's definitely a sincere frustration to making it the farthest you've ever gone, only to die at the hands of one of these monstrosities.

Boss difficulty can rely heavily on which weapons and runes you have activated, so you're almost guaranteed to perish the first time you run into one, meaning another (sometimes quite long and tedious) run through the castle. Granted, the more your lineage powers up, the easier runs become, but as you get farther into the game, the early minutes of a run can feel like a grind.

This mid-game realization is one of Rogue Legacy's primary faults, that even though you are almost constantly getting stronger, the castle runs still maintain this ever-lengthening game of Hide & Seek. While it's fun in a way to know you can just plow through the earlier stages with nary a thought to strategy, this begins to lose its appeal after a while.

Similarly, the need to eventually take great consideration into optimizing your loadout before runs can take some of the magic out of the gameplay loop. At that point, you end up playing round after round because you've already invested a lot of time into the game, and not necessarily because the game is still fun.

Occasionally, the game will also give you 3 choices from your lineage where none of them are all that great. While the traits (which typically function as debuffs) are often funny and impactful, some of them border on game-breaking or even offensive. I was not personally upset at any of them but I can see how some people might take issue.

Overall, Rogue Legacy is a surprisingly well-executed take on a combination of genres, which is both aided and marred by its sense of repetitiveness. If you like your gaming in short spurts however, this might just be the title you're looking for.