So as typical for me, I was bored and didn't know which game to play. So I thought, let's check up on Arcen Games and see if they've made anything awesome lately. Lo and behold, I find Starward Rogue (SR). Bought it instantly, since I like almost all of Arcen's games. This was recently after playing a good amount of Enter the Gungeon (EtG), and I will be making some comparisons.
So, I've only played 11 games on normal mode so far, and I'm posting this after my first win on normal. First off, the game is absolutely great, probably my favorite title yet next to AI War. I adore anything that applies roguelike design in a good way. I appreciate the movement speed modifier keys, since there are many bullet patterns that require precise steps to avoid. Reminds me a lot of the Touhou games that I played a bit of. The concept of the shmup bomb being transformed into aimed missiles adds a nice skill touch to the game, unlike say, blanks from EtG which are pure get out of jail free cards, though more limited. Gameplay feels great due to having 3 weapons available at any time, each more restrictive to use, but settling on a balance of using the right weapon for the situation. This is made even better since you can pick and choose weapons during a run that you find, allowing you to find good complimentary weapons. For comparison, EtG got stale in the early levels simply because the infinite ammo weapons felt largely the same, and the game was so stingy with ammo that the early game lacked the variety that is core to a good roguelite game. Energy recharging every room really helps here, as does each mech starting with varied weapons.
Basically, I love it! More fun than EtG, and seems to have a little longer lasting appeal due to greater variety.
That being said I think there are a few things to be improved. Weapon variety is big here. I felt that I had seen most of the weapons just 10 runs in, since I stopped seeing anything new. I feel like there's still some energy weapons I haven't played with, but it feels like I've tried out all the primaries and already know which ones I like within so few runs. Same thing with the more common attachments. I found the health recovery attachment no less than 4 times within the same run. I feel like having some more weapons and attachments, along with an item pool concept similar to Binding of Isaac where certain types of items (Weapons mostly) can only be found once per run. Perhaps my largest criticism is the amount of time it takes to backtrack. The game encourages backtracking in various ways, the most common being missiles and health pickups. If you don't need them right away, then get almost demolished 5 rooms ahead, the smart play is to run back those rooms and pick up the health pickups you didn't need at the time before continuing ahead. This is the one thing from EtG that I think SR can learn from. EtG has a system where every other room or so has a teleport point that activates after clearing the room. You can teleport between rooms whenever you are not in combat, basically from any cleared room, by bringing up the map and clicking the room you want to go to. You can then reverse teleport to your previous location by activating the teleporter you arrived at, which is useful if you teleported from a room that doesn't have a teleporter. This mechanic serves to massively decrease the travel time you take going back for pickups, items, shops, and rooms you passed over the first time. The only thing SR would lose by implementing something like this are those very rare times where you're sprinting back through rooms and run face first into a trap not once, but twice due to shields. I think losing that bit of "difficulty" would be well worth the convenience of teleporting from a cleared room to another cleared room.
I'd like to recount my epic first win run though, since it was pretty broken. I had gotten three sacrifice shop upgrades, double credits, credits on kill, magnetic shots, I had the Frag Cannon, the Repulsing mines,, the railgun module, and I was playing Deep Blue. In addition to that stuff I had gotten two of the major fire rate powerups, the one that lowers your damage and gives firerate, as well as the one that makes enemies lightly faster and gives fire rate. I also had the items that made enemies slower and increased damage, as well as Destiny for both fire rate and damage up, and the Make Every Shot count for yet mroe damage and alittle less fire rate. The insanity really kicked off when on floor 3 I bought a full compliment of drone from the robot shop, a corrosive drone, autocannon drone, and bullet blocking drone. Was clearing rooms like they were nothing. If floor 3 was insane, floor 4 was madness. I ran into the time machine consumable while ont eh 4th floor. I hadn't used it yet but I figured it probably worked like the Forget Me Not in Binding of Isaac, so I cleared the floor and took the plunge. New Floor 4. All new Robot shop here too. due to double credits and extra credits on kill, I was able to buy out that Robot shop too, as well as pick up an upgrade or two fromt he weapons shop. Found ANOTHER Time Machine. DId it again. On the third floor 4, found another Time Machine, did it again. By this time I was rocking 8 Drones (2 Corrosive, 2 Autocannon, Bullet, Basic, Slow Shot, and inwards shot) insane fire rate and damage, the punishment powerup, 22 health, and TWO Rocket Man powerups. I'd just walk into rooms, hold LMB and space and everything would keel over. Inverse difficulty curve on this run for sure. Managed to lose my Rocket Man on floor 5 due to the most bullshit room I could imagine. Long hallway with a laser across every 3 tiles. Couldn't shoot far enough to kill the stuff in the middle, and they managed to hit me twice
. The hilarious part is, I found another TIme Machine on floor 5. I figured I was OP enough though and went to fight the floor 5 boss for the first time ever. Beat him while only taking a few hits. The sheer bullet spam I was putting out was a sight to behold, I'm sad I didn't think of screenshoting or capturing it ...
So I'd like to see more weapons, a mechanic that prevents weapons and attachments you've already seen in a run from appearing again, and some sort of room teleport for backtracking. I'll be playing more, trying to beat normal with every mech before I move on to trying hard
Sorry if the post was a bit rambling.
