Rezrog Review

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Your journey begins as many do, in a tavern. Where, you can name your party of beginning adventurers- a cast of RPG archetypes with varied looks and playstyles. You can’t edit their appearances, unfortunately, but you can equip them with the spoils of your adventurers and equipment is reflected on the character model – something that I personally appreciate.

The tavern acts as your base of operations where you can change your equipment, buy and sell supplies, and improve your team’s stats and skills with gems. Once you feel you’re prepared – or as prepared as you’ll ever be – you can select the map at that center of the room and choose from 1 to 120 dungeons – each with increasing difficulty.

.Points for Style.

Rezrog is very stylish. Modeled after classic tabletop RPGs. It presents your characters as detailed paper cut outs and the dungeons that they advance through as card board game boards, complete with a table and game night clutter like canned soda and dice around it. These little details create an atmosphere that draws you into the game and they don’t stop at the aesthetics. The dungeons build themselves as you explore them, room by room, and light filters through open doorways and spills onto the table amidst the fluid assembly of the room you’re entering. Cauldrons bubbles, poisonous fumes rise from grates, and enemies chatter, growl, hiss, and otherwise sound threatening as they patrol their posts.

When you first enter a dungeon, you’re greeted by a dice roll. May the RNG be with you because this initial roll can do something as silly as change the graphics to ASCII for the entirety of your run to granting enemies extra damage. They can positively or negatively impact your run, but take heart! A little bit of strategy planning goes a long way.

.A Word of Advice for New Adventurers.

Left-click to command your chosen explorer. You can move freely and your path is shown by an arrow. Sometimes, the path finding for your character and enemies alike isn’t the most intelligent, so keep an eye out for obvious traps you’ll sometimes get pathed over. If you walk into an enemy’s line of sight, indicated by the arrow at the base of their playing piece.

As long as they don’t see you and are in range, you can get the drop on them and strike the first blow. Once you’ve been spotted, your range of movement is limited and turn-based combat is initiated.

Use the terrain to your advantage. Traps will damage enemies, so leading them to one will help finish them off faster.  Ranged heroes have a marked difference over melee ones because of this. If you get overwhelmed, don’t be afraid to turn tail and run. If you remain out of line sight for a few turns, enemies will forget about you.

Items are your friends. Don’t hesitate to use them in a pinch. Keep in mind that using one will end your turn. You can also end your turn by clicking on the hour glass in the bottom right corner (hotkeyed to spacebar). Sometimes the best strategy is to find a defensible position and wait for the enemy to come to you.

Repair your items frequently. A broken weapon means that no skills are available to you and greatly reduces your damage output while broken armor could spell out certain defeat.

Melee skills do not require mana, but suffer from a cooldown for a few turns after using them. Magic spells require mana, but can be casted as many times as your pool will allow. In either case, you gain experience for repeated use of skills, after which you can upgrade them in the tavern.

Finally, don’t be afraid to make a tactical retreat and divvy up your dungeon findings while also taking other party members for a spin. If your strongest warrior is captured and the rest aren’t up to snuff, you may be hosed.

.Game Over? Not Yet!.

If your HP hits zero, rather than dying, your unit is captured. You can free them from with another adventure, but until then, they are completely unavailable to you.

If your unit is captured, none of his or her progress is saved. This means none of the skills or equipment you discovered during your run will be available until you do it over. You’ll also lose any experience gained.

In order to leave a dungeon, you have to release all person’s imprisoned in the holding cells, including party members you may have misplaced – and make your way to the exit. Some dungeons require you to craft an item – these are dungeon-sensitive and you can’t craft otherwise – by gathering the required components by defeating enemies. After you emerge from the depths, victorious, you are scored and given to option between equipment, armor, and gems. You’ll receive a case containing a randomly chosen quality item you chose.

.Pros.

  • Tons of replayability. There are 7 characters and 120 dungeons to conquer with each. You do the math
  •  A challenging, but not punishing rogue lite experience
  •  Lovingly hand-crafted to look like a board game
  •  Tactical depth to combat due to character classes and the ability to play as seven individual characters, each with their own stats. It’s in your best interest to make sure everyone is on or near the same level!
  • Classes have their own advantages/disadvantages and playstyle
  • Pathing AI is stupid. Take advantage and lead enemies into traps

.Cons.

  • Stupid pathing AI will often place you in harm’s way
  • Randomized dungeon construction can seriously screw you over. I’ve beat a dungeon before only to die and get captured by walking over a poison vent that spawned right in front of the exit. I had no potion or food and no other option except to quit or get captured.
  • Bugs. These happen more than they should in a polished, finished product. The few [url=http://steamcommunity.com/app/548370/discussions/0/1290691308587008988/ ] I’ve found[/url] have been rectified, but keep your eyes peeled for more.
  • Swiftly becomes a grind. You have to do the same dungeon, again and again, to come by equipment and gold so that you can progress because the enemies will swiftly stop giving you adequate amounts of exp to level up.
  • Some dungeon objectives are way more possible to complete than others. Releasing prisoners and crafting objects is easy. Defeating all enemies on the floor or destroying all gem crystals (which spawn enemies indefinitely until you destroy them and then you have to destroy all of the enemies it spawned) can be damn near impossible.

.Bottom Line.

For only 9.99, this dungeon crawler is well worth the money. There’s tons of replay value for those who are just a little bit patient. It’s satisfying to outfit your character and upgrade their skills and finally have them hack and blast their way through dungeons that had previously given them trouble. The aesthetic is charming and very detailed—which is good considering you’ll be looking at them for a long time—and the music and sound effects create an atmosphere that sucks you in.

I recommend this game for those who don’t mind a bit of a grind and those who aren’t afraid of a little RNG. If you’re careful, you won’t even need to face the heartbreaking “game over” screen because you’ll be able to bring your party back from the brink of destruction with your own two hands, so plan your dives accordingly.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.

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