While, in general, I’m a lover of pretty well all things roguelike, I’ll admit that not all games that take on the challenge of making those elements work are a success. Of course, whether the final issue would be the core genre elements, the roguelike tweaks that are added, or a combination of all the above will always be a fair question. Genre titles that already have faults aren’t going to suddenly be resolved by tackling something even more complex, and run variability and choices that are underwhelming aren’t enough to make roguelikes everything they can be.

In the case of Moros Protocol, I’ll give it credit for at least growing on me a bit after an admittedly shaky start. This is one of those titles where you’ll pretty well immediately feel the grind of somewhat necessary meta progression in order to get a firm foothold. Healing is rather scarce, the HP shot mechanic is stingy as hell and not something you’re able to make use of in a pinch, and early on as you get a feel for the different enemies and some environmental hazards, you’ll have a tendency to struggle with health as you make your way through the different levels and rooms. Aside from the perks and weapons feeling more incremental than game-changing, under-selling the potential for wildly different runs, the interface for managing your perks is also decidedly clumsy, which doesn’t help.

Given that while I may be a FPS fan, there’s no missing the fact that they play far better with a mouse and keyboard rather than a controller… so it may not be surprising that the control mechanics can struggle. Weirdly enough, I actually felt like typical aiming tasks worked reasonably well, and I felt like I did a decent job of focusing body parts that take higher damage more often than not. That said, depending on the enemy type it felt like some of their hitboxes were a little stingy, so while you’d feel like you had a shot lined up, it would miss entirely. It only happened with a few enemy types, so it wasn’t a calamity, but I did notice that issue more than once. The killer though, which you can absolutely feel in boss fights, is your rate of turning, which really puts you at a heavy disadvantage as you try to keep track of foes. You can plan and try to compensate for it, but knowing with a mouse or trackball I could just whip around, the controller implementation in that specific area is a bummer. The game has some novel features, and you can see the potential, but I’d say it’s better suited to giving a whirl on PC if you have the means.