![]() We found ourselves grinding to unlock things, putting in hour after hour.Ĭarve out the filler, and Rogue Lords would have been a recommendation. And there’s an argument that – beyond the characters – the rewards aren’t proportional to the effort you put in. The rewards are heavily weighted to completion, with new characters only being dropped for completing books, so dropping out midway really isn’t an option. You can easily be playing a single run for a couple of hours, and that was too much for us. There are far too many beats on the journey, and we’d have settled for runs that are a quarter or a third of the length they are here. Worse, the chapters and books are interminably long. As is often the curse of the turn-based RPG, it’s all too easy to switch off and pull off the same moves every time, as the enemies absorb attacks and – often – don’t reply with meaningful threat. Enemies are sponges and there are often a fair number of them. But it’s hard to play Rogue Lords in short bursts, and it’s where the fantastic gothic house starts to wobble and teeter a bit.Ĭombat in Rogue Lords isn’t a quick affair. In short bursts, Rogue Lords is a joy to play, and we found ourselves nodding along in appreciation at the ways in which it subverts the traditional turn-based battler. Considering that it’s so fun to use, it’s a shame that Rogue Lords pushes you away. It becomes a nuclear option, a safety net that you only use when the enemies are overrunning you and your disciples. You are carving it out of your life pool, and this makes you more likely to lose. To cheat, you need to spend Essence, and spending it is extremely prohibitive. If there’s a criticism here, it’s that it never quite feels central to the game. The joy of tinkering with the rulesets rarely got old. It’s an intriguing addition to the game, and makes you wonder if other games will crib it. You can steal enemies, swap abilities or just boost characters’ life bars. You can expend a little demonic essence to basically fiddle with Rogue Lord’s programming. Your Demonic Essence doesn’t only represent your health: it represents your ability to cheat. It felt like we were riding on a blade-edge. We found ourselves tanking with more robust disciples so that we could take advantage of disciples who get more powerful when their bars were precariously low. Managing both of the bars is an art, then, as the end of a battle replenishes them all. Your abilities, too, might nibble them in exchange for increased potency. ![]() The double health bars represent physical and spiritual damage, and enemies might nibble away at either. On their own, these mechanics are rather special. ![]() You are wide open, and your ‘Demonic Essence’ begins to take a hit. You will have to keep an eye on each disciple, too, as they have two bars – HP and SP – and if either of them reaches zero, then they enter a ‘vulnerable’ state, which effectively means that any more hits on them leads to damage to you instead. Use an ability and it goes on cooldown, meaning that – while you can choose the same disciple multiple times in one turn – they can’t just hammer the same power. You can spaff them all on your single, most powerful character, for example, or you can spread the points around, attacking with everyone.įactors will make this decision difficult. Then it’s turn-taking time, as you are given a pot of action points to spend, and the freedom to spend them – pretty much – wherever you want. Heroes (sorry, anti-heroes) line up on the left, and your opponents line up on the right. Instead, what Rogue Lords offers is turn-based battles that have the rough outline of a JRPG. But, unlike Slay the Spire, the combat is a departure from card games and deckbuilding.
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