Developer: Abrakam Entertainment SA
Publisher: Nacon
Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Switch
Tested on: PS5
Roguebook – Review
Developed by the creators of Faeria with the assistance of Richard Garfield, the creator of the popular card game Magic: The Gathering, Roguebook is a new roguelike deck-builder. In this game, you need to battle your way through the stages with a team of two heroes by strategically playing your cards to defeat each and every enemy that crosses your path. This title features a lot of unique mechanics, both new ones, and several ones inspired by their earlier works. Each run will take you on a new adventure with a new strategy, different enemies, new loot, and more. Get ready to dive into the Roguebook and defeat the legends awaiting your arrival.
Story
The ancients speak of a book written long before anyone can remember that contains all the world’s legends. After the many fabulous adventures in Faeria – Chronicles of Gagana, this book was lost in a well of Faeria. By making contact with this magic source, this book has gained its own wicked free will and became the Roguebook. Several heroes have been captured inside the Roguebook and are stuck until they defeat it, and with a team of two heroes, you need to lead them to victory through its pages. After completing the first run, you’ll learn that you need to beat all stages in the Epilogue to really complete the game, which is sure to offer you lots of fun playtime.
Graphics
The world of Roguebook is formed by hexagonal tiles that form each stage, with a large part of it being a blank parchment that you color as you unveil these tiles with your brushes and inks. The characters and all the enemies you face look very good with colorful designs and fitting appearances that match their abilities. Each chapter is formed by a page that has its own theme with the enemies also fitting into this theme. Each card has a unique design and with the many animations implemented with the usage of cards, you can see that the developers put a lot of effort into creating these cards and their effects.
Sound
Roguebook has a small amount of voice acting at the start of the game but it’s not much as the game focuses more on its gameplay rather than its story. The only voice acting you will hear during the game are the things the characters say when attacking or taking damage. The sound effects in Roguebook are all spot on. The background music fits the theme of this fantasy world perfectly, and the music will constantly change when switching in and out of battle.
Gameplay
Roguebook is a roguelike deck-builder that throws you into the world of the Roguebook where you’ll lead a party of two heroes in their journey to defeat the Roguebook and escape from its clutches. In your first run, you’ll get a good tutorial on how things work in this game. Everything will be explained perfectly to prepare you for what’s coming.
The overworld formed by hexagonal tiles is a blank page where at the start you’ll only see a straight path drawn from your starting base to the boss area. The rest of the tiles are blank tiles that you need to unveil with paintbrushes and ink items. With a brush, you will unveil all tiles that are two spaces away from your position, while with the ink items, you will be able to color tiles in a row from your position or single tiles wherever you want. You’ll obtain five brushes at the start of each stage and you will also acquire a brush whenever you defeat an elite enemy. Ink is acquired from winning a normal battle. By using these inks and brushes you need to clear as much of the blank tiles as possible to find new treasures, cards, and more.
There are several structures you can discover in each stage that will open up more of the blank tiles, or let you acquire new cards, treasures and gems. A Tower of Sight will open up a whole area around it after interacting with it. When you uncover an alchemist, you can offer a card with some money to see three cards and three gems of which you can choose one card and one gem that get combined. Like these structures, there are many others that have their own special effects. Treasures are items that will grant the whole team, or one of your team members, special passive buffs, while the gems grant extra effects to cards when you equip them to an empty card socket.
The game has a great combat system where the cards that you draw function as the moves you can make in a turn. Each character has fifty different cards, and with a total of five playable characters to choose from, including Fugoro from the Fugoro Merchant of Wonders DLC, it’s enough to create an endless amount of combinations. Each run, you can choose two heroes for your team, and because you acquire your deck of cards randomly during each run, you’ll develop a new strategy for each new run. Among these cards, there are attack cards that deal damage, defense cards that raise your block value to negate incoming damage, and many other different cards that can grant buffs, summon allies to your side, and more. There are several different types of allies that each have their own way of aiding you in battle.
In each turn, you can see whether your enemy will attack, raise their defense, cast buffs and debuffs, or summon more enemies to their side of the field. You can see how much damage they will deal and how much defense they will gain, but you won’t see what effects their debuffs will have. You will, however, learn each enemy’s buff as you play the game more. Based on this information, you can strategically decide your actions, whether it is to raise your block, try to take out an enemy before they can perform their attack, or buff your own team. This whole system drags out the real strategist out of the player and it’s simply a lot of fun.
After each run, whether you win or lose, you’ll obtain pages that you’ve obtained by finding them or after beating bosses. These can be used to unlock upgrades for your next runs. These upgrades can increase your health points, improve the effects from treasures and gems, spawn more loot or structures in each stage, and a lot more. As you unlock these, the number of pages needed will increase, which requires you to keep on playing to gain more pages, which creates a vicious cycle of clearing runs to unlock upgrades and repeat.
Conclusion
Roguebook is a very good roguelike deck-builder that will offer you a new experience in each run. With a nice art style, great gameplay, and an overall fun gaming experience, Roguebook is sure to entertain you for a long time. The first time you complete the game, it may feel a bit quick, but you’ll soon notice that the fun is just starting as the game is more focused on the endgame in the Epilogue that lasts much longer than you would expect. With each run feeling like a new experience, and the upgrades you can unlock with the pages you’ve collected in runs, starting over really never gets boring. Roguebook is a great fusion of a roguelike with a card game that we’d recommend to everyone who likes card games, or roguelike games in general.
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