YMMV / Rogue Legacy

• Anti-Climax Boss: Potentially any of the bosses.
  • The Game-Breaker shout of the Barbarian class can make fights against Khidr, Ponce de Leon and Alexander easier, due to their reliance of Bullet Hell projectiles, which the skill can just cancel.
  • Alexander, the Forest Guardian. After the Castle Guardian subjected you to Bullet Hell the likes of which you hadn't seen, you're likely to be all hyped up for an epic confrontation... only to find that he attacks in a very simple and easily-dodged pattern. He does spawn mooks, but that makes him easier, not harder, since it means that you can use Vampire and Siphon gear to refill your HP and MP.
  • The Guardian of the Land of Darkness, Herodotus, could also qualify. The boss of The Maya, Ponce de Leon, takes a lot of coordination and luck to defeat, especially if you aren't playing as a magic-based class, as he lays fire traps down everywhere and constantly rams you for massive damage. Herodotus, on the other hand, is a giant Asteroids Monster, thus the HP/MP refilling strategy works especially well in his case. Gravisors appear whenever Herodotus gets split up, but those are relatively easy to dodge considering you're already running around dodging the split slimes. Considering he's the boss of the most challenging area of the game, it's quite a letdown.
    • A patch makes things slightly better, as the blobs now have a dash move in addition to leaping.
    • If you're playing as a Lich King or Queen with Crowstorm (a Game-Breaker in normal play, but generally not cost-effective against single-target bosses where each cast will only summon one crow) and take the time to stack up enough MP using your special ability before you challenge him, he's turned into a complete joke as you can just spam endless murders of crows to hunt down and wipe out all the blobs and Gravisors until they're all gone.
  • If you're good at kiting, even Ponce de Leon can be this as well as he can't do much besides constantly chase you. A single retribution rune can help destroy the wandering spike balls, and if you want an even easier time the Barbarian King/Queen can shout to destroy the trailing fire.
  • The Fountain, the very last boss, has a crapload of health and can kill your character in 2-3 hits, but unlike any other boss (who move in unpredictable patterns and/or send lots of mooks after you), his attacks are well-telegraphed and easy to dodge, so if you know what you're doing, killing him is only a matter of time.
  • Brohannes, the very last boss fight among the Remix variants can be easily defeated thanks to their somewhat similar mechanics with the Final Boss. The only difference is that there are two of them and that the Traitor's abilities are separated between the two. They are easily knocked back by your sword strikes, and you can kite or corner them without worries. You also play as the Traitor Class Johannes who has sufficient attack, defense, HP and MP even without spending too much on empowering him via donations.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Johannes is labeled as a traitor and has his portrait fall off the legacy wall when you finally meet him, but if you read all his journal entries you can't help but feel bad for him risking it all for nothing when it is revealed that the king stole the reward for himself and bankrupted the kingdom in the process. At worst Johannes is an Anti-Villain, but he could even be considered a Tragic Hero that killed the king only out of anger due to his wretched betrayal.
• Awesome Music: All the music is good, but special mention goes to "Narwhal", the music playing in the Maya, which itself is surpassed by "Lamprey", the music for the boss fight of the Maya.
• Demonic Spiders: Chaintus, the largest form of the spiked ball-swinging enemies. These foes swing two spiked balls at different speeds, with different ranges, in different directions, making it all but impossible to engage them. That's probably for the best, though, as killing one will launch the very fast outer spike ball careening across the room, which will cause a lot of pain for you unless you're in a small room where it can break quickly, or manage to kill the enemy while the ball is embedded in a wall. Fortunately, these enemies only start appearing outside of challenge rooms on New Game Plus 2 and higher.
• Difficulty Spike: The beginning of New Game +2 is where the game starts to get really hard. From this point onward you only encounter the toughest (third) version of each enemy type.
• Game-Breaker: As a roguelike, a few of these are to be expected.
  • Dragons with Dwarfism. Combine the usual tiny hitbox with a ranged attack that does not scale down with Dwarfism and infinite flight...
  • Before it was patched so they couldn't obtain it, Spellswords with the Time Stop spell. Stop time, then hit nearby enemies to recover the mana Time Stop is using. Watch as the game instantly becomes a joke, especially the boss fights.
  • Even without the above strategy, Spellswords in general are very useful. The amount of mana that you receive per hit is quite high, and the upgraded versions can cast more powerful versions of existing spells. A Spellsword with Flame Barrier or a Chakram can make short work of most enemies and all of the bosses.
  • Once you've invested in Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage, amassed a large Mana pool, and upgraded the Knave class into Assassins, they become bar none the strongest class you can use. By default they boast an additional 15% chance to hit a critical and a bonus of 125% damage on a crit, so by the time you've maxed out the manor, Assassins will be hitting crits more than half of the time with their 65% crit chance, and said crits will be doing 400% of their non-crit damage, which essentially negates their lower base strength. Additionally, Assassins' special move is Mist Form, which instantly makes them intangible and immune to everything except non-retractable spikes, invalidating Assassins' lower base health. On New Game Plus 2 and above, enemies are either huge, shoot lots of projectiles, or both, so this enables you to just ignore them and their attacks; you can use this to either simplify combat by dodging any enemy or attack that you can't move out of the way of in time (especially if you have enough Mana and Siphon to switch into Mist Form regularly), or to just avoid combat altogether by dashing through the enemies who can no longer hit you at all. This move also trivializes several Fairy Chest rooms, as many of them involve player-sensing spikes, turrets, spike balls (and enemies that swing them), or just a lot of enemies, all protective measures which have no options against you turning to mist at a moment's notice.
  • The Barbarian's Fa Roh Dus shout clears any projectiles, which makes the Bullet Hell boss fights against Khidr, Ponce de Leon and Alexander trivial and easier than they should be, provided that you still have the MP to cast the spell.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Fireball type enemies (Charite, Pyrite, Infernite) fall with just a swing or two, but they are a pain in the butt because they constantly move around the area, making them hard to strike. Pyrite and Infernite can also charge right at you, and Infernite makes projectiles on top of that.
  • The Eyeball type enemies (Scout, Pupil, Visionary) are also weak, but their projectiles track your position and they pass through all obstacles. Pupil and Visionary fire a stream of projectiles, and Visionary shoots three streams instead of one.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Sometimes, getting lag from playing on older computers while your playing character has nearsightedness or farsightedness will prove very, VERY useful against Khidr and the projectile-spamming enemies. This could be why the fight with Neo Khidr forces you to wear glasses.
  • If you Alt-Tab out of the game and return, there is a chance that the Map screen will be completely blank, although the mini-map indicator is still unaffected. This would make your character to have a disadvantage similar to the Dementia trait.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The chime played when the Death Defy effect activates, ensuring your second chance of exploring the Castle. Downplayed if you have the Hyperion's Ring artifact as you would expect it coming when you die.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Charon standing at the front of the castle and taking all your gold before entering is a nuisance and means you can't save up gold from multiple playthroughs. On the bright side, you can opt to downplay this by upgrading your manor such that you pay only a portion of your gold.
• That One Achievement: Thanatophobia, which requires you to beat the game with fifteen or fewer non-Johannes heirs sent into the castle, without using the architect. Your deaths are capped at a very low number in a game where death is not only a guarantee, but a necessity to ensure you can improve your manor and equipment, putting heavy pressure on improving your builds, maximizing your money counts, and getting the most value from every cent. The removal of locking down the castle also means you'll have to contend with the usual random room generation, and you won't be able to fast-travel to warp points you've already discovered in prior runs. This all, of course, on top of Rogue Legacy's inherent Nintendo Hard difficulty without going for this achievement.
• That One Boss:
  • Khidr, the first boss of the game, is a pretty good introduction to what you're in for. His attacks could put Touhou Project to shame in terms of Bullet Hell, and dodging is next to impossible since he takes up more than half the screen. Furthermore, you practically have to strike from the side; only those with Gigantism (huge hitbox in exchange for longer melee range - considering the Bullet Hell the boss uses, it isn't worth it) can attack him from the floor and any other characters will just jump straight into the boss.
  • Ponce de Leon, the boss of The Maya, is difficult as well. It constantly chases you and leaves a fire trail, and the spiked balls that linger around the arena do not help.
• That One Disadvantage:
  • While several traits mess with your vision, Vertigo (flips the whole screen upside down and all words are spelled backwards) is so headache-inducing to make the game almost unplayable.
  • C.I.P., Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, turns the health bar blank, leaving it unknown how much health your character has. When keeping track of your health is extremely important to survival in the game, this trait is a nightmare to handle, especially on Thanatophobia runs.
  • On older computers, both nearsightedness and farsightedness will ruin the game with lag, as blur causes a huge strain on the computer.
  • Alzheimer's for Spelunkers. Alzheimer's prevents you from using the map, though it doesn't disable the minimap. For a class whose main ability involves using the map to seek out treasure chests, this is more than a little bad.
  • Gigantism is usually an ability that has great upsides and great downsides - while your hitbox is slightly increased (Mostly affecting projectiles like the Guardbox's missiles and Spiked Balls), it compensates with a large sword swing, which is useful for killing enemies from further away than other rogues can. This, however, is horribly detrimental on Dragons, who don't even use a sword. Since their fireballs do not grow or go further with Gigantism, this means that there are no benefits to having this trait.
• That One Sidequest: The Dagger throwing minigame from Booyan is a pure test of your dexterity, as the targets are far away, so you need to lead them to hit with your slow-moving daggers. You also need to jump before you can fire the dagger, which can result in tougher timing windows since you have to account for your own movement and the target's movement combined with the daggers' speed (though Flight can help to mitigate this).

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