SwitchArcade Round-Up: Reviews Featuring ‘Rogue Legacy 2’, Plus ‘The Knight Witch’ and Today’s Other Releases and Sales

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for November 29th, 2022. In today’s article, we’ve got a full review of Rogue Legacy 2. I wanted to do more reviews, but life got in the way in a big way today. There’s a bit of news to cover about Nintendo Switch Sports, so we’ll take a minute to look at that. After that, there are a couple of cool new releases today, and we’ve got summaries of both of them. We wrap things up with the usual lists of new and outgoing sales. Let’s go!

News

The Golf Update is Now Available in ‘Nintendo Switch Sports’

Nintendo Switch Sports released back in April, and one of the more surprising things about the game is that it launched without one of the more popular sports from Wii Sports: golfing. Nintendo indicated that it would be added in a free update later, and that “later" is today. There are a few things in the update beyond the addition of golf as an event, but you can go ahead and watch the above video for the general outline. If you own the game, you can just go ahead and update to get all the new goodies. And I know some of you must own it, because this game has already sold almost five million copies despite what seemed to be a middling reception.

Reviews & Mini-Views

Rogue Legacy 2 ($14.99)

The original Rogue Legacy, released in 2013, did not create the term ‘roguelite’. Its embrace of the term, however, arguably brought that it to a wider audience than it had ever seen before. While it was a side-scrolling action game with a lots of elements from roguelike games, its system wherein players could earn upgrades that persisted even after dying opened a veritable fire hydrant of more approachable takes on what had been a rather demanding genre up to that point. It’s now rarer to see a live/die/repeat game without a persistent upgrade of some sort than the opposite. That is the Rogue Legacy legacy.

So here we are, almost ten years and roughly a million roguelite games later. The original Rogue Legacy still has its charms but is no longer as unique as it once was. Can a follow-up have the same impact the original did? Well, probably not. But it can certainly benefit from the many refinements this little category has seen over the years to create a better, fuller game. And so it does. Rogue Legacy 2 keeps what worked in the first, piles up some new features, and enhances the overall playability of the moment-to-moment action considerably. While it isn’t as fresh as the first, it’s certainly a more impressive game.

There are a lot of additions here, but I’m just going to touch on a few of the bigger ones. First, there are more classes with greater diversity of gameplay between them. When paired with certain traits, relics, and so on, some of them feel like they popped in from a completely different game. All of the classes are fun to play, though some take a lot more skill to fully take advantage of than others. To go with that, there are a lot more moves at your disposal. One of the things I thought could use some work in Rogue Legacy was the basic combat and movement, which seemed content to be good enough and not more than that. I wouldn’t say Rogue Legacy 2 is up to the finest in the genre in that regard, but the wider arsenal of actions and interactions certainly is an improvement.

Hm, this is all chaining together nicely. You see, part of that expansion of actions is that the game has adopted a Metroidvania-style structure. The areas are still procedurally generated, but there are certain kinds of obstacles you’ll need special abilities to overcome. You’ll find those in a particular order, and once you’ve got them they will stay permanently unlocked between generations of heroes. That gives a little more structure to things, results in better and more interesting layouts, allows the game to pepper in lore in a somewhat linear fashion, and gives you an expanding move set that helps spice things up as you play.

The last major addition I want to mention is the new House Rules. These let you customize the gameplay experience in a variety of ways, making it easier or harder as you like. I think this is a really good addition to the game, and is perhaps the change most in spirit with what the first game did. I firmly believe one of the reasons why Rogue Legacy caught on was because its persistent upgrades made it more appealing to a wider audience than previous games in the genre were. Rogue Legacy 2‘s House Rules cast that net even wider, allowing you to adjust the difficulty in either direction.

Rogue Legacy 2 sometimes feels a bit too familiar, but it’s a better, more well-rounded game than its predecessor in a wide variety of ways. There are so many top-notch games of this sort on the Nintendo Switch already that you may not immediately be drawn to this game due to it lacking any flashy new feature, but those who give it a chance will find a degree of substance that even the first game was lacking.

SwitchArcade Score: 4.5/5

New Releases

The Knight Witch ($19.99)

A twin-stick bullet-hell style shoot-em-up crossed with Metroidvania-style non-linear exploring and upgrading? The Knight Witch is, if nothing else, distinct. You use the left stick to zip around in the air as you like, and the right stick is used to aim your shots. You also have a selection of spell cards you can use to cast various types of magic, which reminds me a little of Cotton. It’s pretty fun. I’ll have a review of it soon if you need more details.

Soccer Story ($19.99)

Another sports game crossed with an adventure game, arriving ahead of that other sports game crossed with an adventure game. In this one, you are granted a magic soccer ball and tasked with taking soccer back from the evil Soccer Inc. and restoring the love of the game to the land. You’ll do some exploring, interacting with characters, and puzzle-solving, but it always comes back to playing a little footy. And hey, if you feel like it, you can play some of that aforementioned footy with up to four players via local multiplayer. I think Mikhail is doing a review of this one for us, so he’ll likely have more details for you when that is ready to go.

Sales

(North American eShop, US Prices)

Not much new today, but of particular note is that Sakuna: Of Rice & Ruin is at its lowest price ever. It’s a wonderful game and I will advocate for it at every opportunity. If you want to go all-in on LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, there’s a new low price for that too. You can get Andor characters! Neat. The main thing I’ll point at in the outbox is the latest sale from Inti-Creates coming to a close. You can’t go wrong with most of their games, and those prices are solid. Have a look through both lists.

Select New Games on Sale

LEGO Star Wars: TSS Galactic Edition ($39.99 from $79.99 until 12/6)
Space Raiders in Space ($1.99 from $12.99 until 12/6)
Monument ($1.99 from $7.00 until 12/6)
Gum+ ($1.99 from $7.99 until 12/6)
Syndrome ($1.99 from $24.99 until 12/6)
Colsword ($1.99 from $4.00 until 12/6)
reky ($1.99 from $9.99 until 12/6)
Broken Universe: Tower Defense ($1.99 from $9.99 until 12/6)
Sakuna: Of Rice & Ruin ($19.49 from $29.99 until 12/13)
Marchen Forest ($6.99 from $34.99 until 12/19)
Wing of Darkness ($5.99 from $29.99 until 12/19)
Fury Unleashed ($5.99 from $19.99 until 12/20)
Marooners ($1.99 from $14.99 until 12/20)
Crash Drive 3 ($1.99 from $19.99 until 12/20)

Sales Ending Tomorrow, Wednesday, November 30th

A Robot Named Fight ($1.99 from $12.99 until 11/30)
Amazing Breaker ($2.39 from $7.99 until 11/30)
ARK: Survival Evolved ($9.99 from $19.99 until 11/30)
Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 ($25.49 from $29.99 until 11/30)
Azure Striker Gunvolt Striker Pack ($19.99 from $39.99 until 11/30)
Big Drunk Satanic Massacre ($5.99 from $19.99 until 11/30)
Billion Road ($6.99 from $19.99 until 11/30)
Blaster Master Zero ($4.99 from $9.99 until 11/30)
Blaster Master Zero 2 ($4.99 from $9.99 until 11/30)
Blaster Master Zero 3 ($8.24 from $14.99 until 11/30)
Bloodstained Curse of the Moon ($4.99 from $9.99 until 11/30)
Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2 ($7.49 from $14.99 until 11/30)
Boris the Rocket ($5.99 from $14.99 until 11/30)
Bus Driving Simulator 22 ($19.59 from $27.99 until 11/30)
C.A.R.L. ($9.89 from $14.99 until 11/30)

Catlateral Damage: Remeowstered ($7.49 from $14.99 until 11/30)
Dragon Marked for Death AA ($7.49 from $14.99 until 11/30)
Dragon Marked for Death FF ($7.49 from $14.99 until 11/30)
Galaxy Squad ($4.99 from $9.99 until 11/30)
GC: Luminous Avenger iX ($7.49 from $14.99 until 11/30)
GC: Luminous Avenger iX 2 ($18.74 from $24.99 until 11/30)
Here Comes Niko! ($17.49 from $24.99 until 11/30)
Mainframe Defenders ($4.79 from $11.99 until 11/30)
Mary Skelter 2 ($9.99 from $39.99 until 11/30)
Mighty Gunvolt Burst ($3.99 from $9.99 until 11/30)
Mozart Requiem ($9.99 from $29.99 until 11/30)
My Hidden Things ($2.09 from $6.99 until 11/30)
One Dog Story ($3.74 from $14.99 until 11/30)
Overlord Escape from Nazarick ($20.99 from $29.99 until 11/30)
Princess.Loot.Pixel.Again ($1.99 from $4.99 until 11/30)
Princess.Loot.Pixel.Again x2 ($1.99 from $3.99 until 11/30)
Street Cleaner: The Video Game ($9.00 from $15.00 until 11/30)

That’s all for today, friends. We’ll be back tomorrow with a few more new releases, perhaps a review, more sales, and perhaps a bit of news. I hope you all have a terrific Tuesday, and as always, thanks for reading!