I hate rougelikes. Randomizing the map every playthrough is an awful idea since it entirely removes map design. Enemies are spammed without a thought for their place in the level or even room (or worse, they're always in the same predictable place every time). Every room is completely independent of one another rather than being a cohesive world. This ends up affecting gameplay, progression and also the atmosphere and worldbuilding.
Permadeath is only a good idea in slow paced games where it has actual concequences, so even if it is frustrating it is meaningful. However rougelikes are necessarily fast paced so you don't get bored repeating the same 10 room types over and over again, even if this doesn't work and they are extremely dull anyway. With this fast pace you often die without thinking about why it happened or it being consequential whatsoever, its like dying in a MOBA where you have to wait 5 minutes every time you die. I have way more fun playing DayZ for example since in that game despite losing all your items on death et cetera, it is slow enough paced that you can get immersed in moving through the landscape, and when I die it always feels a lot better than dying in a rougelike.
This would be more acceptable if the gameplay was fun enough to keep me engaged through the re-runs. Dark Souls (especially DS2) manages to keep me engaged through boss runs 10x more than every rougelike out there does for dying at any point. The gameplay just sucks in every game and it always has MMO like legendary epic monster enemies to pad it out, this also destroys the atmosphere which rougelikes have a massive problem maintaining. Even the supposed best of the genre (Hades, Risk of Rain 2, The Binding of Isaac) had me feeling like I was working a desk job. I think the reason comes in two parts, firstly they can't make individual enemies and rooms too punishing since runs would end too quickly, so instead of making the game hard through difficult encounters in 9 times out of 10 they have to increase the difficulty through limited health recovery which sucks in the fast paced rougelike structure. The other reason gameplay sucks is because its all based around rng builds. It's always based around getting the best build and the best boons which is ALWAYS RNG. You can't just play the game, you've got to interact with annoying mechanics you don't want to because the RNG gave you the lung or something. The Binding of Isaac is literally all about makin
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