i actually would say i really enjoy this game and i'd even say it's better than most roguelikes. unlike other roguelikes which cram you into this weird, eternal melting nightmare where the days repeat over and over and you're forced to confront yourself as you plow through sisyphean tasks and see the hours slowly drain from your life, rogue legacy 2 provides a slight remedy in the form of a stat-tree meaning that at the end of every run, you can put your money towards a specific trait and thus increase your chances of winning a run. other roguelikes will force you to play the same shit over and over until you git gud , but with rogue legacy 2 you're given a little speck of hope in the form of what might be an otherwise meaningless progression system that does in fact get you pretty addicted to the game. if it had not been for this progression system, i would've thrown the game out and never look at it again. i'm a simple guy, i see numbers go up and stats skyrocket and the little chemicals in my brain start dancing. it's the task of building up a huge collection of gold and then spending almost all of it on one stat and repeating it over and over. it's the closest thing to gambling!!! not only that but the competent combat system and enthralling art design made the experience a more palatable one compared to the likes of slay the spire which will flash its skirt with the same thirty amalgamations of burnt overly airbrushed Scary Monster Type 3B until you feel your grip on reality slip away. the screen will shake every time you drive your blade through some poor skeleton and it felt so fucking good. the vibrating controller did wonders.
the game tries to have a story and lore but anyone who plays a roguelike to be touched by a tightly woven epic full of romance and drama is insane. i admit that i skipped through all of it and i don't really think the creators were that pressed to tell it anyways because it'd be told through the form of diary entries dumped in random places and i laugh at the thought of someone, in the middle of their long run, sitting down to read the frenzied ramblings of some vague Figure Not To Be Named, Only To Be Theorized About who will drop little pieces of lore here and there and then vaguely refer to themselves to spice things up. the game is fun but for its worth, aka a gambling machine, i don't think it has much more value than that. it didn't move me. it wasn't a deeply arresting existentialist piece on the horrors of aging, although IMAGINE a roguelike like that!!!!! it was a good little timesink and it was way better than the first game goodbye!