Roguebook review | PC Gamer - johnsonhoullich

Our Verdict

Roguebook stands out from the pack on a some qualities, but it's non a must-play.

Microcomputer Gamer Finding of fact

Roguebook stands out from the face pack on a couple of qualities, only it's not a must-play.

Need to know

What is it? Deckbuilding dungeoneering.
Wait to make up $25
Developer Abrakam Entertainment Storm Troops
Publisher Nacon
Reviewed on AMD FX-8350, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, 32GB RAM
Multiplayer? Zero
Link Prescribed locate

Those who've found their niche in the recent trend of deckbuilding and dungeon-crawling roguelikes testament find something to enjoy in Roguebook, a positive, competent let go from card game development veterans Abrakam Entertainment, the creators of Faeria. Set in the same globe, it's a vivid, whimsical, and charming phantasy. IT also very proudly fits the genre molding, a run-based game that lets you iteratively unlock new cards, treasures, and characters for increasingly powerful builds to take on self-paced challenges.

Roguebook lifts or s great design from else Recent roguelite games. It pulls in a Hades-esque snack bar of civilized challenges to mix and match later on you first "mystify" the biz. IT has Murder the Spire's flurry of weird artifacts to collect and use. Information technology even relies on an old deckbuilding staple, interrogatory you to mix-and-jibe two card pools from each one run, which was accustomed much great consequence in Monster Train. Your knock down itself even levels up, with your card reckoning giving you points to spend along irregular talents.

To its acknowledgment, and to its detriment, cipher in Roguebook is especially novel. Its familiar parts are arranged in a new way with a a couple of clever twists. Your embellish is a compounding of two out of the iv characters, all with their have unique notice set and talents. With your two picks you move into the book's blank pages, a hex grid, and explore by spending restricted brushstrokes and ink splats to reveal unmapped parts of the book. Out there you find gold to utilise at the shop, magic cubes to draft new card game from, risky venture events with weird consequences, and combats to flex your deck's muscles against.

(Image cite: Nacon)

Fights are straightforward onrush wag versus block placard brawls with a hardly a twists. Your two characters have positions, leading and following, and their own health, and cards a great deal ruffle them roughly. Moving characters is a big tactical decision: Enemies always attack the leading character, while certain cards can only be used from particular positions. You can also summon allies, who rather than having a physical mien are more like battlefield effects that wear down opponents or give you a incomprehensive-use ability.

The reward for winning a fight encounter always includes more ink, for a narrow reveal, Oregon a new thicket for a extended one. When you expire it's time to fight the level chief, and at the end of the third tied you fight a big boss to win the incline.

Profits or lose you get receive in the characters that unlocks new cards, likewise as general experience that unlocks new items. You as wel due pages as you go, a currency you can spend on a tree of upgrades, unlocks, and permanent bonuses for future runs. In those future runs you'll adopt challenges that make up you exercise things like take every new card you find, or that drastically increase the be of new items in the mid-run shop.

(Image credit: Nacon)

A new run is a chance to experiment with the characters you pick. Sharra's fast and aggressive, but relatively fragile when you can't manage her tricks to fend off damage. Thither's Sorocco, an ogre whose deck is all some shrugging off hits while you wind upbound a giant star punch. Seifer's a weird 1, a pain-fuelled masher whose all-out offensives are backed up past demon allies. In the end there's Aurora, an awesome deck design that's fragile on the face of IT but tin can turn clever cardplay into a stream of healing that becomes damage as she overheals.

Roguebook's most interesting twist is in gems, which you uplift middle-escape and place in sockets on your cards. Those gems offer an upgrade to that card, adding incentive effects surgery boosting existing ones. They range from everyday, similar +3 harm, or -1 monetary value, to pretty alien, similar one that always places the card in your starting mitt. I loved another, the boomerang gem, that made it and then instead of being discarded when range, the card would e'er be shuffled back into your deck. Regrettably, gems are feast or famine. Some runs you scarcely find whatsoever, others you end up socketing even your bad card game.

(Image credit: Nacon)

See, acquiring unweathered gormandise is based on exploration, which is based on revealing map hexes. There's some scheme to that, victimization your ink pots cleverly and brushes sparingly you can puzzle out how to optimally reach the things on the map. But you can never reveal the whole map, and you can really just… luck impermissible. Sometimes you don't get enough cards, or gems, or gold, or items. Sometimes you put on't bump fractional of the commodity stuff you know is out there.

It's emblematic of Roguebook as a undivided. The mechanics largely work, and when they're going swimmingly they'ray a joy, giving you the kind of run-based deckbuilding fix you need. But games like Roguebook have to swear on either existence immaculately and tightly designed to achieve perfection, operating theatre else provide such a sprawl of fun contented that you won't care otherwise. Roguebook doesn't have either. A hot game for both enthusiasts and idle fans of deckbuilding, but it doesn't reach for the stars.

Roguebook

Roguebook stands out from the pack along a few qualities, but it's non a must-roleplay.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an wide backdrop in scheme games. When he's non on his PC, atomic number 2 tail end be recovered playing all tabletop game under the sun.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/roguebook-review/

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