Welcome to my latest review, this time around I had the pleasure of playing Roguebook. Developed by Abrakam Entertainment S.A. (Faeria, Paradox) and is published by Nacon (WRC 10, Warhammer: Chaosbane).
Roguebook is available now on Nintendo Switch, PS4 / PS5, Xbox One / Series X|S, PC, Linux, and macOS. For the purpose of this review, I was given a code for the PlayStation 5 version.
Magic: The Gathering™ Meets Roguelike
I’m quite partial to a good roguelike or deck-building game, even more so when they collide into one game. So how did Roguebook fare for me? Continue reading to find out. You can also check out my previous game review where I played Lawn Mowing Simulator also on the PS5.
The Game
First of all I need to get this one out into the open. This game was developed in partnership with Richard Garfield. Richard is the creator of the one and only Magic: The Gathering™. I’d say that’s a pretty impressive name to have on your team, wouldn’t you?
Roguebook is a game where our heroes are trapped in the Book of Lore of Faeria. This book was spoken of a long time ago by the ancients but was lost in a well of Faeria, due to this, the book developed a wicked free will of its own, becoming the Roguebook.
The game gives us a choice of 6 hero pairs, we choose 2 heroes to start our game. Each hero has a card collection that contains over 50 cards per hero. Each hero also has their own personal relic and a unique skill tree. When pairing heroes together, you must maximise their synergies. Standard procedure here, the hero at the front protects the hero at the back. You can switch the positions of the heroes to combine their strengths. In turn, this allows you to unleash powerful combos.
It must be said that the developers have said about dynamic deckbuilding. In their words “Over 200 cards to cleverly assemble as the game progresses. You will never play with the same deck twice.”. Interesting.
One thing I love about Roguebook is the way you make your way through the world. The game does not have set paths as such, when you’re painting your way through the book to unlock new areas and find items, you chose the path to unlock. Not only that, each time you start a new run, the book will completely change again. God bless “roguelikes”.
Battles in the game are fun, as long as you’ve discovered good enough cards to keep your defense and offense at a good balance when required. If not, you may find yourself a bit overwhelmed if you don’t have enough defense cards when you come to take on the boss at the end of each page in the Roguebook.
Look & Sound
The graphics do look pretty damn good in Roguebook, especially with the PS5 version. I like the way how when you’re traveling the map, you’re in an isometric view, then when in battle it’s kind of 2.5D. One particular area I’d like to compliment the developers on is the animations of your characters in-game during battles. There was just something about them that made this feel different from similar games, for example, Slay the Spire.
The music and sound effects are also very good, the music gets intense during battles as do the sound effects. Yet when you’re bimbling around the map, it’s all so peaceful. I also should add that I did not experience any graphical or audio-based bugs/glitches during my time playing Roguebook.
Length & Replayability
Being a roguelike, this can literally last you forever if you want it to. Realistically, you can spend a good 20-22 hours playing this just to complete one run. It will take literally hundreds of hours to unlock everything as stated by the developers.
So ~20 hours per run is a good time before you even start to feel bored of it. That’s some great going for the RRP of £24.99 on the PlayStation Store.
Roguebook has 54 trophies for you to unlock in the base game, including the platinum. There is also a further 5 trophies that you can unlock in the Fugoro DLC pack.
Conclusions
Roguebook is actually a pretty fun game. I can’t say I’ve played any game like this where it combines the hexagonal board with roguelike and deck-building elements. But it sure does work. Should you be a fan of games like Slay the Spire or Darkest Dungeon then I recommend you give this a go.
Abrakam Entertainment has done a cracking job with Roguebook, and for that reason, I score it an 8/10.
A code was kindly provided for us to review this.
