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Roguelikes can be really tricky to evaluate as their often inherent challenge is an addiction for some but can obviously put others off. I’m not averse to being challenged in the least, but there’s something to be said for finding a balance in things with some risk / reward and great character capabilities that can help you cut through that with diligence and skill. Vagante is a tough one, and not always in the best way. The combination of scale of your character and the action and the somewhat dark dungeon settings in particular make handheld play quite impractical, but even on a larger screen the low-res details can be hard to make out and that can be problematic. That issue then sort of cascades into a bigger complaint I have and that’s the abundance of insta-kill traps that are peppered about, and will stop your run cold no matter how well you may be doing. Mix this issue with the lack of visual clarity in places and makes for quite a crippling combination. I also had smaller, but still irksome, complaints like it not being very simple to do something like switch your class intuitively between runs, but those are obviously less critical even if aggravating. On the whole challenge fiends may still dig gritting their teeth through some tense runs but for everyone else it’s probably a bit too cruel for consideration.
Justin Nation, Score:Fair [6.8]