Rogue Legacy 2 harnesses chaos to become an endlessly replayable roguelite

polygon.com:

About 10 hours into my roguelite adventure in Rogue Legacy 2, the game’s random heir generator served me a Ranger character with a massive spoon instead of the usual bow and arrow. Not one to turn down an interesting twist, I grabbed the spoon lad and embarked on another run through Rogue Legacy2’s twisting, ever-resetting castle.

Despite his powerful utensil — which bounced around the room, dealing critical damage on ricochets — my hero eventually fell, either to a skeleton, a burst of fire, or some spikes, just as all his ancestors had before him. But his death only fueled my hunger for discovery — with spoons, spinning hammers, mysterious scythes, and pizza occasionally gracing my runs, I knew I’d never tire of Rogue Legacy 2’s endless nonsense.

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Roguelites have grown plentiful in the nine years between the first Rogue Legacy and its recently released sequel. Some — Hades, Slay the Spire,Monster Train, Vampire Survivors— have ascended to the pantheon of exceptional run-based games, overlooking an endless sea of dime-a-dozen imitators that couldn’t hold my attention past a few runs. Thankfully, Rogue Legacy 2 has lived up to the high standard set by the original, and cut through the roguelite noise by offering pure chaos.

In Rogue Legacy 2, as in all roguelites, the meta goal is to repeat runs over and over, gaining incremental progress and permanent upgrades after