I could call this a review, but I’m not finished with it (as far as progress), I’m just done with it (as far as wanting to play any more of it). So instead I’ll call it an impressions post.

I kinda enjoyed the first Ziggurat, it’s a game I found as I was obsessed with trying to find a really good roguelite FPS, and it was an okay one. This seemed to improve some aspects of it, so… I figured I’d check it out.

Let’s see if it’s good! I may be keeping this one short.

Developer and Publisher: Milkstone Studios
Release date: October 28th 2021
Platforms: PC
Genre: Roguelite FPS

There’s not really much to talk about story-wise, you play as a group of wizards who wants to… beat the bad guys I guess? I paid really no attention, it kinda bored me so I skipped every cutscene. The graphics are definitely prettier than the first game. More colorful, way smoother models for the enemies, clearer details, it looks great. Even the carrot enemies look much better than before. Performance is fine, with my PC I was playing it at 1440p anywhere between 120-180fps. I feel it SHOULD perform better, as I can get games that are more technically impressive to run at more stable framerates. I could probably stabilize/improve FPS a bit by playing at 1080p, so let’s try that… so average FPS rockets to ~250fps if I switch to 1080p, though it occasionally still drops to ~190fps or goes as high as ~280fps, so this game just has very unstable framerate I guess.

So this is an FPS rogue-lite, much like the first game. And a basic review of this game would just be to say “much like the first game”. As a rogue-lite, it puts you in a bunch of levels to go through, and if you die you have to restart without any upgrades (ish). This has a big focus on getting a bunch of progression though. Rather than just going through the same basic game each time, instead you choose a level, that will have a level theme (like village or castle or Egyptian tomb kinda thing, and a couple others). Each level will show a length (basically how many floors there is in the dungeon) and a threat level (no idea what that means). Playing the level, whether you beat it or not, may give you rewards, basically unlocking new weapons or perks that may appear in future runs. You also gain Insight from runs, which you can use to power up all your characters in future runs, from several skill trees. The skill trees can be extra damage, health, mana capacity or usage, defense, exp gain and such things. Each skill can get powered up to 10 times for more efficiency, though each 2 levels cost more. If you beat a level, you get rewards for sure. And each 2 levels you beat, you unlock a story level, which unlocks a character.

At the start of every level, you choose one of your characters, then you get a selection of a starting wand (the main, shitty weapon type you’ll never use), starting weapon (there’s 3 types: spellbooks, staves and alchemy) and a starting amulet. Another thing I didn’t mention before is mastery, you get that from killing shit I guess. Each thing (character, weapons, amulets) have a mastery level, and when you get to a certain level you unlock some passive boost on that thing. Like the main character guy, he gets bonus EXP. All the characters have minor different aspects, like affinity to different weapon types and such.

So the core gameplay is pretty simple. It’s an FPS, where instead of weapons, you use magic… except Alchemy, those are basically just guns or grenades. There’s 4 weapon types, each with their own mana pool. Wands have constant mana regen… but also wands are shit so you’ll basically never use them unless you have to. Different staves, spellbooks or alchemic weapons will do different things. Each weapon has a main fire mode and secondary fire, which is either a completely different kind of shot than the normal, or a powered-up version of the main shot. These always cost more mana, of course. Enemies don’t have weak points, so you just shoot them enough to lower their health to 0, when you kill every enemy in a room you get to get out of the room and keep exploring the map. The map is a bunch of individual rooms connected by doors. There’s a door that requires a red key thing, that has the boss. So you find the key, fight the boss, go to the next floor.

There’s a few types of rooms. The basic one is just a bunch of enemies to kill. Kill an enemy drops EXP crystals, grab those to level up. There’s shops, which require money to buy different kinds of upgrades. There can be weapon shops, perk shops and item shops (rarely useful for more than healing). There’s fountain rooms, which have health or mana fountains (minor power-ups for mana and max HP). There’s key rooms. They have keys. There’s gauntlet rooms, which have a chest that you can open if you kill all the enemies, chests can have weapons or perks. And there’s obstacle rooms that have traps, and if you avoid the traps you can find a chest. And there’s oath rooms. Oaths are basically “get a buff, but also a nerf”, and you have 2 choices. If the 2 choices suck, too bad, you have to pick one if you decide to take the oath. I might be missing some room types, but they’re not important.

Leveling up is the main way you’ll upgrade, other than finding better weapons (weapons will have different + values, so even if you may prefer your starting weapon, it might not be useful to keep that going if you find a weapon that’s just stronger). When you level up, you heal a bit of HP and mana, and get a choice between 3 perks. Some perks you can get multiple times, which makes them better, fun. Those choices also have a bonus mini power-up, like extra barrier or mana or HP. Power-ups can be mana capacity, power for certain weapons (or all), power for certain elements, mana usage, movement speed, defense and such. Also, every second level has 3 key pieces. Getting all 3 opens up a blue locked door, which will have some kind of bonus, such as an anvil that levels up a weapon or a chest that has stuff in it. The 3-piece key door thing is a replacement to the hidden secret rooms in the first game, btw. There’s no secrets this time.

If I really have any issues about this game control-wise, it’s that you have a dash move, which is super useful, but you use it by pressing E, which is really awkward for a movement-based skill on a keyboard. I’d change it to Shift, which would be a more natural positioning, but Shift is the run button. Running is weird and awkward as the slightest quick movement stops running, or the randomest shit thing in the environment… The running is really awkward. So honestly I’d just remove the running since it sucks, and make the base movement speed a bit faster, to encourage more dashing and putting the dash on a key that makes sense. No need to have both running and a dash move, make the dash move the method for faster movement.

And overall, I find the game to be repetitive in a way that annoys me, as the combat is… fine, but the enemies tend to be pretty simplistic in what they do… and overall I find that every run kinda feels the same. One of the reasons for me is that I play the main wizard all the time because the EXP boost is so good, and with some of the other perks he gets, he can level up a lot compared to other characters, so it feels kinda weird to play as anyone else… and I tend to just gravitate towards the same weapons (eagle claw, fire book, blunderbuss) as a lot of the other weapons kinda don’t do it for me (with some exceptions of course), so I end up with basically the same setup every time. It’s more a problem with me and how I play games, than the game itself in this case.

Overall

Ziggurat 2 leaves me kinda of the same opinion as the first one. It’s decent but it gets very same-y very fast as you gravitate towards specific weapons you prefer, characters you prefer and combat doesn’t really vary overall…

It’s better than the first in basically every aspect, but it’s not a huge upgrade overall, it’s still basically the same game.

I don’t know about a recommendation overall because it’s fine, it’s pretty fun and you mileage will vary. After 21 hours of gameplay I don’t want to touch it again despite still having a bunch to do still, but maybe you’re gonna be more okay with the way it’s repetitive than I am. So as far as recommendation, I’ll go with this: it’s good, well designed, and fun, but didn’t keep my attention.

I will be trying another roguelite FPS that just came out, maybe I’ll prefer that one and review it soon, we’ll see how that goes.