I think I'm pretty much done with Roguebook. I like a lot of the features, but I don't think it has staying value. In this game you have a team of 2 heroes who all have somewhat unique decks past their basic defend and attack cards. You can unlock a few more heroes and some cards for them as well as gems and a few items. The gems are there to augment cards as many have slots that add some extra abilities to them. This is very similar to Slay the Spire other than how you explore the overworld. The overworld consists of a map that you can traverse, boxes that you can spend money to get cards, as you don't gain any in battles, battles, epic battles, the boss and other things like a lighthouse to ink up some spots. The overworld isn't fully developed and you get a paintbrush which uncovers titles. You have a limited amount of these, and once you're done you can't uncover more of the world to explore. To augment these brushes you fight normal battles which generally give 1 shot items that ink spots to uncover them in different ways. You can hold up to 3, including healing items that heal your team. So the basic gist of this is explore, gain cards/abilities/treasures/etc..., fight battles to be able to explore more and eventually fight a boss. The battle system uses the Slay the Spire system of having 3 energy and each card has a number in the corner of how much energy it costs. They do a lot of things and do damage. One special thing is block is shared, but the block cards force whoever played the last block to be in front. Generally the front is the hero that will take damage. You can switch heroes that may trigger cards/abilities/etc... multiple times in a turn as long as you have the right cards or abilities. It's a solid system and makes things generally clean. Bosses are generally challenging but not impossible. At the end of a map you get a treasure (sometimes equipment to make heroes betters and sometimes things that give abilities), heals, money, and stuff to help you unlock permanent unlocks such as hero health and treasures appearing on the map. There is a lot of stuff here honestly and overall it's all clean. For some negatives I do feel the amount of card unlocks is a bit low and the number of heroes is OK, but could be a few more. The game feels somewhat samey even with different character sets. They play differently, but the number of unique enemies isn't crazy high. Also the last boss whatever version you get is cheap and some are way harder to beat. I've won 5 times overall each with different hero combinations. This includes a Hades system where you can increase the difficulty for better rewards, but you choose the weighted disadvantages up to a certain number. It's good, though I slightly prefer the set in stone difficulties like Slay the Spire. I need to mention Richard Garfield worked on this and it shows. Some magic mechanics like Storm make it into the game. Overall it feels like a good, not great game. Everything is clean, but also generic at the same time. Things feel too samey though the challenge is good especially with certain hero combinations. I'd say wait for maybe a 50% off sale or bundle, but it's decent enough. Also day 1 DLC with an extra boss and some treasures/gems hidden behind it is very scummy. I'm just already a bit bored of it. 7.5/10 after 15 hours.
