Rogue Legacy: Sir Jimmy II, the obsessive-compulsive hokage

I am Sir Jimmy, the second of my name. Though many of my family members have perished to the demon Ponce De Leon in the tower above the castle, I have set my sights on challenging the monster. Speaking to the strange “architect” outside the castle, I lock the castle down, knowing that this means I will not have to wait to know my fate. I grudgingly pay Charon his toll and enter the castle. Stepping onto the strange mystical pad inside, I will myself to the room outside Ponce De Leon’s Lair. Steeling myself, I step inside.

After the jump, which one of us will die?

In the previous entry I called out the spelunker class as an example of something the game got wrong. In contrast, I believe the shinobi is an example of what the game gets right. This class comes out of the box with a huge bonus to strength, making it a very powerful melee class. Additionally, it has a bonus to haste, making it very fast. Of course to compensate for this, the class has lower starting hit points and mana pools. It cannot critical hit. Rogue Legacy lets you balance out these disadvantages by selecting different gear from the blacksmith, or applying runes from the enchantress. With the right equipment and home castle upgrades, the shinobi is capable of outputting serious damage.

When the shinobi is upgraded into the hokage, he can teleport straight ahead. This is extremely useful for getting into and out of melee encounters or away from ranged attacks. Since this class has a lower hit points, the ability to keep moving and kill most enemies in a single slash can make all the difference for survivability. When you couple these skills with a vampire sword or vampire armor so you’re pulling health from each enemy you kill, the hokage starts to feel invincible. He’s a lot of fun to play.

Sir Jimmy was born with two traits. The first trait is obsessive-compulsive disorder, which allows you to recover mana by smashing background items in the castle. Chairs, tables, vases, chandeliers. You name it, he smashes it. It’s a fun mechanic that allows you to refill your mana. Additionally, Sir Jimmy had hypergonadism, meaning each hit to an enemy drastically knocks it back. This is a huge bonus in the later areas where a lot of enemies charge you. The ability to knock them back can save you a hit if the enemy doesn’t die immediately.

The funny thing about Sir Jimmy is that he was never meant to be. When I originally rolled my three heirs for this generation, he was not among the options. Instead I was presented with a couple of spelunkers and an archmage. Since none of these classes seemed particularly useful for trying to defeat Ponce De Leon, I used the randomize children perk to create a new batch of heirs. And thus Sir Jimmy was born in the world. Randomizing children is a bit of a risk as it does not allow you to go back to the original three heirs in case you end up with a less desirable batch. But sometimes it can really pay off when you have a specific task in mind for the next generation.

After locking down the castle and proceeding inside, I teleported straight to the boss room. I had failed at this boss enough times to know the patterns, and I had a general strategy, but none of my other characters had been able to put out enough damage to kill Ponce De Leon before he wore me down. It’s important to keep moving in this fight as he can do a dash attack and he leaves fireballs in his trail. Essentially you make circles around the arena and hit him as he pauses, all while dodging fireballs and large bouncing spike balls. The raw power of the hokage, however, is able to take large chunks of his health out with each swipe of the sword, and the speed of the class makes it much easier to dodge all the projectiles.

There were a tense few moments, but in the end, Sir Jimmy proved to be too much for old Ponce De Leon, and victory was achieved. After claiming a large amount of treasure and a chest which contained hit point and armor boosts, I set about trying to find the entrance to the area below the castle, The Land of Darkness. While finding the entrance turned out to be an easy walk through the main castle section, seeing inside the new area was not. The Land of Darkness truly lives up to its name. It’s difficult to see. I resisted the urge to turn up the brightness. Though the hokage has a high damage output, the new faster and stronger enemies in the darkness proved too much. Sir Jimmy fell, but left his family quite a fortune to begin outfitting themselves for this dangerous new world.

In the next entry: Dungeons and — oh wait, there are no Dragons, are there???
Click here for the previous Rogue Legacy entry.

Andrew Kneller is a chemistry graduate student and avid gamer. When he isn’t busy kicking laser tables and trying to teach undergrads, he and his wife play videogames and watch movies together. You can find him on the Quarter to Three forums as TREOS.