So I’m not going to beat around the bush here. This game rips.
To describe it, it’s a strategic roguelike 2D action RPG on a plane. We pick a character, we go on a branching path. That part is fairly easy to understand because it’s not uncommon to the genre. What’s intriguing here is the battle system.
In the game we move our character and cue an attack or special move. And each one of those things takes a turn. So, if we cue something while someone is ready to attack us, then we’re going to get hit by something. We have to plan ahead, sometimes several moves, and get to know what the enemies’ various motions and motives are. So it feels like the tiniest action has serious consequences in this game. And the further we go down the path, the more complex our enemies get, the more health they have, the more varied the attacks are.
The game focuses on us having four or five attacks per run. So we have to sort of build our character in such a way that we can dispatch enemies more quickly. The use of tiles is important here, because we can utilize them in varied ways to plan out, almost like if/then statements. For example, we can throw a bear trap down onto a tile to plan for three damage points. We can use another move to launch a hook shot and pull the enemy towards us, and into the bear trap. The idea of turn-based action combos is really satisfying and feels weighted.
Goblinz has created a very good, very well-polished experience that has that “one more run” hook to it, not to necessarily go further but to potentially unlock more characters to new loot. It’s the perfect thing for someone like me who’s obsessed with roguelikes.
I love this game. It’s great. Shogun Showdown ticks all the boxes.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It first appeared on The SideQuest Live for September 11, 2024. Images and video courtesy the publisher.
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