Degenheim

Degenheim is a well-made and very simple buffer for fans of Hades before heading into Hades 2. But, in all seriousness, it is a fun yet somewhat lacking roguelike that provides the bare basics of what the genre needs. From a pool of abilities, a basic core loop with bosses and waves of mobs, and even multiple different stories that you can take part in.

The game also suffers from a lot of shortcomings that prevent it from being the great feat it could be. With the absence of shops or rest stops, and a very small pool of abilities within the game, they greatly limit what the game has to offer. Even with the shortcomings, the game faces, mostly from being in beta, it offers a fun and addicting game loop that pulls you in every time you are "so close to beating it".

Gameplay

Just like many other roguelike games such as Dead Cells, Binding of Isaac, and Hades, Degenheim boasts beautiful and unique artwork that follows along with the character from level to level, within the different designs that you may see. These different levels are also paired with soundtracks that correspond to the level you are in, providing a thrilling experience when loading into the next area. Although the art is done rather nicely, many levels lack certain elements to finish them off, such as various areas of cover, a different formula for how the surrounding area or level changes with traps set up, or even chests for loot that can aid you in battle.

As a roguelike game, one of the important aspects is trying to keep your health as high as possible so that you may finish all the levels without dying and having to restart. Within Degenheim, there are plenty of issues with the coloring that will lead to many attacks not being visible and damaging the player, which can lead to frustrating losses. For the most part, these issues come into play among having abilities that create an effect on the screen, which then causes you to avoid them in your next runs, and I would much rather avoid an ability for it not being good than it is causing visual issues within the game.

To have the most efficient run within the game, you will have to make sure to use all the weapons in your arsenal and pair them up with special power-ups to make slight work of your enemies. Providing you with a slash attack with a ¾ hit combo, a gunshot that can pierce enemies, and a giant flaming tornado you can summon, the game allows the abilities that you can earn to all work in some way with these weapons.

With what seems to be four main abilities, using four subclasses that are fire, lightning, frost, and bleed, these the player can use to have synergies with other abilities, such as an AOE effect, a killing dash, a martyrdom ability for enemies you defeat, and a giant meteor that can come from the sky. Using these in harmony with different AP scaling abilities will make your special hits start to be able to demolish any enemy that comes underneath it, but also allows you to use different abilities to increase your base slashing damage. This leads to having a few different runs within either counting on time to spawn meteors and other AOE damaging toolkits, or using a more aggressive hack and slash approach that was my personal favorite.

While the game does lack in certain areas that make it fall short of being an exact roguelike, with the issues mainly coming from replayability once defeating the boss. I still found myself playing the game for an hour or two, trying my best to get to the final boss, and noticed that if you were not good enough (like me) to reach the final boss, the game had a very addicting and fun game loop, this could come more from the want to be able to beat all the waves rather than the immediate fun of the game.

Not only does it end there, but the game does allow for other character unlocks, which will provide a change of pace in terms of gameplay. Especially with the main character being a melee character mainly, and the second character you unlock being a ranged character with precise shotgun abilities in case of close-range trouble. While it does have multiple different characters, the abilities in and of themselves don’t change enough between them or in general to allow for a varying playthrough in how the games are done.

This, however, does a good job of making the player get used to what abilities would work best so they can have the most efficient run up until they die. Luckily in this game, death doesn’t mean the end-all-be-all, but instead allows the character to become stronger to be able to have an easier run the next time they jump in.

While death can be a useful trick to allow your character to get stronger, the way the game upgrades certain abilities and stats is unique to what I have only seen within Degenheim. Upon dying, you are brought back to the main hub where you can meet up with the buff gym coach who will be able to upgrade certain stats for you. The catch being, he chooses what the upgrade ends up being. What starts off as a cheap random way to increase stats soon becomes an expensive roll hoping for it to land on the stat point you want, for me, it was damage.

This, although frustrating when you get the same critical chance upgrade two times in a row, is a stellar new way to add RNG in a way that you may not have ever seen before. This also dismisses the ability to build your characters in the exact way you would like, although I believe that is not the way they want the game to be played. After a certain period, you will now also have a secondary person you can engage with in the main hub. This character will help you to have some nice artifacts in your inventory to take on your run to help make them a bit easier.

Although most of the early ones you will receive only boost HP a little bit, there are certainly some that can make runs go by a lot faster. On top of this, you are able to forge a higher rarity item for a special effect if you have three of the same items, this allows for runs to start to scale easier for the player. There are also a lot of glitches that arise when trying to upgrade certain tools in the inventory once you get to a certain point. The shop would take the gold but not increase the level from 2-3 or from 3 any higher for the items. This, after a certain point, would get annoying especially when it would cost 800 gold to upgrade items, and 1600 to upgrade stats and you had to be very sparing with the gold to begin with.

Review

While Degenheim is great fun for a couple of hours, it does fall short of the full replayability that it can offer, with limitations set by the beta for the most part but also coming from many of the abilities being similar but having different effects such as frost, bleed, burn, or shock. Although a fun experience that can get repetitive with certain level designs, the game is a fun and exciting core loop of what the full game will have to offer.

With a small palette of abilities, you as the player do get very comfortable being able to know when to choose certain buffs that will aid in your final victory against the grandpa and the following bosses to follow in the later chapters. Offering hours of playability that can range in difficulty depending on your use of abilities, with glitches that do often lead to frustration such as being stuck and not being able to move, or the ability to use the shop correctly at some points, the game will bring fun for a few hours within the game but falls short of being a wonderful roguelike experience that can stand on its own for time to come.