As we move toward a world where our console games get ported even to our smartphones, the art of capturing the essence of a home-console game on a handheld is becoming a lost art. Sonic the Hedgehog has some history with this topic, but it all begins with a game that takes the wheels of familiarity off, setting the stage for how future handheld Sonic games approach connections with their older siblings.

PokéRogue has so much potential, I haven’t been this hooked on a roguelite in quite a while now. The mechanics are so simple yet require a lot of strategy, as the game is centred mainly around XP gain above all else. Team building is not as important, as the game is willing to give you decent encounters after the first few areas.

It took me until hatching a legendary from an egg to beat this game but I’ve seen people with a lot of different strategies, and that’s what makes this game so great and even more promising as time goes on. The only gripes I have thus far is how often the game freezes and slows down on you, this is obviously due to server load. I’m not quite sure how they will fix this since I imagine as soon as they ask for any donations the whole thing will instantly get shut down.

I also think the start of the game is too luck dependent on whether you get XP items, and what your rival has at the start, the team follows a formula but the starter seems random between the fire, grass and water, independent of what you picked, and this can ruin runs for no reason.

I’m excited for the future of this, and hopefully it convinces Game Freak to make a similar game as I am no longer interested in the mainline games.