Co-op Days: Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos

This little roguelite game is a bundle of fun

Co-op Days is a series where I write about the multiplayer/co-op games I’ve played with my friends and let you know my unfiltered thoughts. While I usually play games with my brother and our childhood friends every Sunday, I may also talk about games that I’ve played with my partner or with my other friends.

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Play time: 23 hours
Played on: PC
Chosen difficulty: Brutal

My friends and I (the ones that I played Solasta with) finished this game this week and I have to say, despite the bugs we have encountered, this one was a great time for all of us. It helped that a friend had already finished the game before, but didn’t remember much from it. So he had some familiarity and guided us in certain ways, but he also got to enjoy it as he discovered new mechanics.

Rogue Heroes is a topdown, roguelite adventure game inspired by the Zelda franchise. Play solo or team up with your friends to combat procedurally generated dungeons and take down the evil Titans that threaten to overwhelm the land of Tasos!

I’ve never played any Zelda games before so I don’t know how similar it is in that aspect. But the progression, the dungeons and the fights were really well done for a game of this caliber.

We played this game with 4 people. You can change your character’s class any time you want - provided that you have already unlocked the class. In our group, we had a tank, a rogue, a jack-of-all-trades (since he is good at any video game, he changed classes often to try them out while the rest of us were more comfortable with one class), and me as the mage.

The story is not the game’s strongest point and it doesn’t try to be. It’s there to keep you going, to give you something to do. That’s not a bad thing - in fact, it is what’s best for a chaotic fun roguelite like this. If your goal is to have fun adventures with your friends, Rogue Heroes definitely delivers.

Some nitpicks

I will say however that the game’s strongest point, the gameplay, is also riddled with issues.

Before trying out the mage class, I tried the archer class. Unfortunately, since I was playing with a controller, I had a bad time controlling where to shoot my arrows. It was clearly optimized for keyboard and mouse. Then my friend told me that the mage aims automatically.

Great, right? Except, not really.

The auto-aim is kind of bad. Your mana is limited so you don’t have many opportunities to use your magic in the first place, but it’s even worse when you cast a fireball and it goes in the complete opposite direction than you intended. I wasted half of my mana like this, then got killed by whatever was in front of me because the character wouldn’t aim at the closest target - which should be a given in any game with auto aim.

It didn’t help that even with a maxed out wand, my damage output was way less than a decently upgraded sword.

The mechanic of switching between items was also rather clunky and with how often the game required you to swap, you’d expect a smoother experience. There are timed puzzles and you’d lose time trying to get to your hammer.

There are also little bugs that we encountered here and there, and my brother somehow lost his save file more than once, but we found workarounds for all of these. It helped that all of us are really tech-savvy, but an average player might have a more difficult time.

Overall thoughts

Despite the issues above, this game is definitely worth playing. It’s fast paced, has a variety of enemies and dungeons, fun overworld and plenty to do. It also regularly gets discounts up to 90%, so you can add it to your wishlist and grab it when it goes on sale. Absolutely worth a try!