Quick Look: Wizard of Legend

@nigeth: How is it not communicating those things well? The tutorial section gives a very good walkthrough with the mechanics. Don't get me wrong, this isn't like an extremely intense game when it comes to mechanics to begin with. But the ones that are there something you learn very early on.

In terms of not knowing items, there are item descriptions in the menu. And when you buy the items as permanent unlocks in your chest before you start a run, you can take the time to learn what all of them do. So yeah, I'm not gonna fall for the "not communicated well" schtick when there are clear solutions to the problems presented in the QL and looks more like they didn't spend enough time with the game to really know what's under the hood.

@eclipsingsquid: Maybe in your neck of the woods The Binding of Issac surfaced "roguelike" to you as a term, but it's over thirty years old and has been used almost since people started knocking off Rogue. NetHack is still probably the most influential member of that genre; it's not the ur-game that Rogue is but pretty much everybody's cribbing from it one way or another, even the modern games that are driving the descriptor straight into meaninglessness.

No idea about "roguelite", though. That one always bugs me--it doesn't even read to my eyes like it's a word.

I love this music.

I'm tired of the Roguelike / lite discussion. How much alike Rogue does one have to be to stay in the Roguelike camp? It feels to me like every game where this question pops up nowadays is a Lite at best because they all abandoned the turn based nature of Rogue and will give you at least something for your next run.

Dungeon run. You're allowed to put 1 word before this.

The title of this thing & the loading times are awful. The game looks passable.

Out it check to excited am this about things good hearing.

"Honestly I don't know the difference, and frankly I don't care."

Working with video game coverage sounds like the perfect job. I wish that translated well to other types of jobs. It'd be great if I could go to work and just don't care about the differences that I'm presented with daily.

Was pretty excited for this game when I saw the combat. Just finished giving it a whirl for a couple of hours. Combat and movement are indeed fun. I have no problem with not revealing an item until you have it, but you should only have equip the item once. After that, a tooltip would not be game breaking at all. I don't see the enjoyment out of having to remember every item. Off loading information out to a game wiki is not fun.

And Abby is right about the lack of any real progression. I found a good set of starting spells and that was basically it. After that it is hope for good relics during a run. Dead Cells does the item unlocking better, and it forces you to play with different abilities which kept me hooked for 60 hours. I'm not sure if I will play this game again, even though I almost defeated the 3rd boss.

Wah.

Indy devs: Make another type of game, JFC.

rogue-lites have progression, like a Rogue Legacy or Dead Cells, rogue-likes do not. basically rogue-likes are shit and rogue-lites are good.

I'm glad that there are a lot of people with knowledge and the skill to share that in the comments. Otherwise I would not have been properly informed about a lot of games more and more often these past couple of years.

Yeah, you're right, no one at Giant Bomb does their job because they don't dive into the minutiae of every game. It's almost like, this website is based around their personalities and often that leads to a mere smattering of coverage of video games relegated to what they happen to be playing at the time. It's almost like that's been happening for...almost a decade now.

But sure, it's a totally valid response to act like they aren't doing their jobs properly or correctly because one small aspect of the front facing portion of their job isn't up to your personal standard.

I'm comparing how it seems to be nowadays with how I remember it being before. I remember at least getting a better general view out of quick looks before. Maybe it's because I'm better informed about games overall now compared to before, and that makes it so that I'm on the other side of the gap nowadays.

And also, instead of discouraging people to clarify what the differences in genres are, why not say "Hey I don't know much about this genre, but if someone out there can wants to sum it up in the comments in a nice way, go for it." I remember that being more of a thing, but now it seems more popular to just diss the community for wanting to clarify. And that's just something I honestly dislikes.

I think some of us use the terms incorrectly to troll people that get super upset about those terms being used incorrectly because they remind us of Simpsons Comic Book guy and seem worthy of ridicule.

And language is fun and grows organically. Like/lite might as well be interchangeable since actual Roguelikes of any consequence are so few and far between we might as well steal their name. Sure, maybe it's people being lazy or trolls, but the endgame is the same and we all know what you mean when you say Roguelike. Words are like kids, they will grow up to disappoint you but you should love them anyway.

Wow, this might actually be the worst comment section I've seen on here in a while.

@toxicantidote: I care about my job and I have an understanding of the difference between the two genres. I was more making a joke about how pedantic some folks tend to be about these two genres, specifically. I was aware that even if I tried to relay my understanding of the differences between the two, some folks would still quibble with any definition given (as seen in the comments here). There's nothing wrong with that kind of specificity, especially when it's a genre of game that interests you. But I was aware that this quick look would speak for itself better about what genre it falls into than I would by stating it up top. After all, most quick looks we do not say what genre each game falls into.

What I'm not willing to quibble with is whether or not I care and put effort into my job, or whether or not things were "better in the old days." My goal was to show off the main gameplay and relay it's strengths and weaknesses as I saw them, not categorize the game by which genre it best falls into. Take care.

I thought you guys should know that the correct term is Rogue-esque-ish-lite-likes. As in, I think, maybe it is, but I don't know you know?

Hearing good things about this am excited to check it out

I know that you care about your job, and I do think you're a great addition to the team. That last point about comparing it to other types of jobs, was a bad addition by me, that perhaps overshadowed the main issue I wanted to point out. It was more that bit with you and Dan seemingly mocking those who do care about the difference between roguelike and rogue-lite, that triggered me in a bad way (and I was already having a bad day, which I shouldn't have let carry over at all). And now in this comment you're pointing out that you do have an understanding of the difference between the two, which is the total opposite to what was said at the beginning of the quick look. I'd argue that it's better to actually try to relay your understanding of things, not acting like you're actively ignoring it, and be open to clarifications if necessary.

And the thing about "things were better before" is my memory telling me that there used to be more open conversations with what they knew and didn't knew, and encouraged the community to share their knowledge to enlighten those who are interested in knowing more.

Thanks for responding. I'm always glad to see staff members participating in the comments.

It's fine that Abby doesn't want to know genre differences, but as this is a video game presentation website it puts me off of the content whenever she says something like that.

I don't really understand why the roguelike/lite thing is an issue to some people. Genres that are that specific are basically meaningless distinction if someone goes on to explain the game and its mechanics to you. It only really matters if you're doing something like browsing through a store without much other information to go off of.

It also doesn't help that "roguelike" was a terrible name to get co-opted as the title of a genre. If Diablo-like had been the only name for ARPGs, you'd run into the same kind of issue where people feel the need to make subgenres because then people would assume the genre refers to every facet of the design and not just the core loop (i.e. murder things, level up, acquire loot).

This is a dumb thing to get worked up over.

Seems like every member of the site makes jokes when roguelikes/lites come up. i feel like there have been several podcasts in the last few months alone where they make fun of the distinction between the two. Singling out Abby just seems silly.

This looks like another game that would have been cool if they didn't just make it a boring rogue lite/like/. I would recommend dead cells as even if it is a bit slow you do feel like you are progressing, and they show what the items are. I think dead cells would be better as a hand designed game but it does the rogue thing well enough to not make the game boring.

I would just like to say, as a dude who has been here since before the launch of the site, that the quick looks are usually more than adequate for me to determine if a particular game is worth my time.

And fighting over genre definitions is a crazy thing to do considering that most games covered by the site are usually in the uber genre of action/adventure/RPG/FPS/open world. Or some other combination of at least 2 of those.

Thanks for great work guys!

@thomascro: this. Even with her clarification that it was a joke (here in the comments after the video was released) it still came off poorly (for me). Maybe I’m just bad at knowing when she is joking. I’m starting to just assume everything is a bit with her and that is helping. Either way thanks for thyou quick look folks! Appreciate your work always.

RogueLike = No progress carries over after death.

RogueLite = Some progress carries over after death.

Is this right for the most part?

Is this made by the people that made Crawl? Because it super looks and moves like Crawl.

@pappafost: Yeah, I can live with those definitions. But I'll expand incase anyone is reading these later:

Rogue-like sprang up as a shorthand for run-based, procedural levels, randomized item effects, perma-death and very likely some other key tenants I'm forgetting.

Rogue-lite started gaining traction as people wanted to talk about the wave of game we saw post-2010 which were adding a layer of player permanence to the older style. "Lite" because it was seen as watering things down.

Most importantly, people also preferred it to the unwieldy "Rogue-like-like".

We're talking FTL, Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy, Spelunky, Risk of Rain etc

Wow leave @toxicantidote alone he was like the third person to say that.

@rcath: hello people from the past this is 2021 and people are even more not happy about everything.