Up, up, up the Ziggurat 2 of command!
I did not play the original Ziggurat game. The magic themed first-person roguelike game looked appealing to me, but I simply never got around to playing it. This sequel arriving was a good opportunity to set that right, and leap into the series, albeit a touch late. I’ll be climbing towers, blasting monsters, and dying repeatedly as I try to save the world from a mad mage.
That’s right, unlike the original game, Ziggurat 2 has a full campaign with a plot. The plot is very simple, with good mages and bad mages trying to save or destroy the world, with you heading up the good guys. You’ll complete quests around a map to recruit new mages to your cause before going on to take on the big bad in his newly built ziggurat. Your crew of two spell-slingers will expand to more than ten by the time you’re finished, with an arsenal of weapons that could make short work of the monsters that stand in your way.
The game is split up into nine chapters, each with a map filled with side quests. Once you’ve completed a couple of quests you’ll unlock that chapter’s boss mission before moving on and doing it all again. Each mission is a tower in its own right, split across two to five floors in which you move from room to room, fighting a wave of enemies until you find a key to the boss’ room, and the boss itself. Kill the boss, move onto the next floor, rinse and repeat. Victory will send you back to base with some new weapons and equipment to use in future missions, and Insight to spend on permanent buffs for future missions.
During a mission you’ll level up through collecting items dropped by your slain foes, allowing you to select from a few random perks, with all of this being reset at the end of the mission. With randomly laid out stages, death sending you back to the start of a mission, and procedural weapon drops, you’ve got all the hallmarks of a pretty standard roguelike.
This is the problem that Ziggurat 2 has. It’s a genuinely fun game for the most part, but it does very little to stand out from the crowd. There are a lot of first-person roguelikes out there these days, and with the likes of Mothergunship with its unique gun crafting, and Void Bastards striking art style and gameplay, a game needs to do something quite interesting to be noticed.
That isn’t to say that Ziggurat 2 is boring. The weapons you use start off fairly basic but become quite entertaining as you unlock more. Basic spells are fun enough to use, but getting a pirate’s cutlass that blasts out cursed balls of energy, or a machine gun that fires poisonous globules reminiscent of Unreal’s Bio-rifle is quite satisfying. There are sixty weapons to acquire, and whilst a lot are reskins with different elemental effects, there are plenty of interesting ones to have a play with.
You have access to a number of different characters too, who have their own strengths and weaknesses, alongside a unique character skill. They don’t play hugely differently, as it stands, but the skills are a nice addition, including one that can turn you invisible, and another that sends out a concentrated fiery beam. Often these are useful in a pinch and can save you when things are looking dire.
Still though, after the initial period of discovering the game’s mechanics, and getting to grips with the admittedly solid and enjoyable gameplay, I found myself getting a bit tired of playing through the campaign. Each mission isn’t really that different, even with the occasional variation such as a wave based horde mission, or rooms that add on additional challenges. It would boil down to go from room to room, shoot baddies, then do it all again. It took over ten hours to play through the campaign, and by about half way through I felt like I’d had enough. The gameplay loop just couldn’t keep things interesting for that length of time. I found myself picking missions based on how short they were rather than what I actually wanted to do.
There’s a reasonable variety to the enemies, and a few different environments, but the number of times I fought the same boss from mission to mission started to get silly. I think I saw one called Black Mask a good fifteen times throughout the campaign! There are a few different modifiers that are added to some rooms, but I saw one of those maybe once per mission, with the same ones occurring more than a couple of times. The visuals are good, but you’ll see the same environments a lot and the same enemies constantly. The music is excellent, but there are only a few tracks, and you’ll find yourself tiring of them before long.
I don’t want to come across as having not enjoyed the game at all. Ziggurat 2 is a solid entry to the genre, but there are certainly more fun options out there. This will find its fans, and those who liked the original will likely enjoy this too, if for no other reason than it includes a mode similar to its predecessor. There’s some enjoyment to be found here if you play it in short bursts but trying to reach the top of this tower may not be worth the journey.
Ziggurat 2 is out now on PC, Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch.
