REVIEW – Roguelike. One of my favorites in the genre would be Rogue Legacy, which – despite being a two-dimensional game – tops City of Brass. It seems to have fallen into the same mistake as the last game I discussed, Extinction, although it’s not a third-person troll hunting game but a first-person adventure.

Roguelike is a genre where we (now) get a rarely seen environment (Middle-Eastern, Arabian city), and we’re going to see a few things often over and over. The randomly generated twelve levels, however, get tired somewhat quickly, making City of Brass a chore and tired. It tries to make us stay active and interested in its four boss fights, but it’s not likely to be enough for everyone.

Curses

The story is… well, it’s a little dumb, and it exists in the beginning, and then, you effectively forget about it. The basics of it are that you have to get to the center of a lost city to get rid of a curse cast on you by an evil djinn. That’s all. And if your character dies, the next character will be just referred to as the heir – City of Brass defines that death does indeed matter.

Throughout the random levels, you will find treasures that you can turn to money, and I never kept it around, because I knew I’m going to die anyway, and death equals losing the cash as well. Prepare to die, as there will be a ton of traps that your bootleg Indiana Jones character will fall into. You might ask why I call the character that – the answer is quite simple: a whip in the left hand and a sword in the right one. *insert Indiana Jones theme here*

Stun, slash, stash

The whip is excellent to stun your enemies (which will be mostly skeletons) for a while or to knock the sword out of their hands. It’s also possible to pull in nearby items with it, or, if you feel brave, the enemies can also be brought in with it. I don’t have to explain the sword, but I do have to go into the combat system, which feels like it lacking polish. I don’t know, but there seems to be a bit of difference between the PlayStation 4 and the PC versions.

The console provided unprecise controls, and the sword’s speed also feels a little slow to me. Technically, it made me think ahead by two seconds to time my sword slashes right. I thought I don’t have a sniper rifle in my hands and my target isn’t three miles away – in that case, I’d understand such planning, but not with a swordfight!

Easing it up

Luckily – and I think it can be mentioned as a positive – you can get rid of the time, or even crank up the number of the enemies, but I have a question: why would you do the latter? I don’t see a Platinum trophy in the trophy list – in fact; I only see three Silvers! One is for completing the game, another one is for not using the wish portals (these technically save points, one after each boss – if you use one, you don’t have to restart the whole game if you die, although the game is short – it took me 7 hours total with deaths…), and the third one drops with all the burdens (curses) kept active on you.

So…?

Still, the game felt a little fun to play, and it was close to being an addictive title, and with that, I can’t skip mentioning the audio issues. Uppercut Games screwed it up here – you can’t rely on the sounds to locate nearby enemies, and it’s a sin in this genre! Despite the somewhat decent graphics and the leveling up, the game is short, its combat system is troublesome, and it gets boring altogether quickly (plus you might have some annoying death traps, too), which is why it only gets a 6/10. If the combat was more in-depth, it could have received a 7, and without the audio issues, it’d have reached 7.5 out of 10. If you liked Rogue Legacy and you can get City of Brass discounted, then go for it…

-V-

Publisher: Uppercut Games

Developer: Uppercut Games

Genre: first-person roguelike, dungeon crawler

Release date: May 4, 2018