Game: Journey’s Legend
Genre: Roguelite, Adventure. Early Access
System: Steam (Windows)
Developer|Publisher: PawTop
Controller Support: Full
Price: UK £3.39 | US $3.99 | EU € 3,99
Release Date: December 1st, 2023
Review code provided with many thanks to PawTop.
Journey’s Legend is a Rogue-lite adventure in the same vein as Vampire Survivors. You need to take an adventurer through an endless crowd of monsters that get progressively more and more difficult to kill, levelling up to continue to get further.
Vampire Survivors vs. Journey’s Legend
The developer of Journey’s Legend is pretty up-front about the fact that they were deeply influenced to make this game by Vampire Survivors, a similar title that went viral back in 2022. Basically, the premise of both games goes a little something like this: you pick a hero, and then you spawn into an endless pool of monsters. You have to keep killing them with your spells or weapons as the timer ticks down toward a boss battle or other event. Once that event is over, you move on to the next level, earning more points as you kill more monsters.
When you die in either game, you get the opportunity to upgrade your shields, HP, armour, and other stats in order to make yourself more resilient to damage. Then, you jump back into the fray to earn more experience points to spend on more upgrades. There are also in-level upgrades that can be picked up while battling that can increase your damage output and other things.
In both Journey’s Legend and Vampire Survivor, your powers go off on their own, firing at regular intervals in a circle around you. All you get to do is move around inside the space to try to avoid projectiles and monsters and spikes on the ground. But in Journey’s Legend, you get the addition of a rechargeable super power that you can use, then you need to wait until it recharges to use it again. I didn’t play much Vampire Survivors, but I don’t remember that being part of it when I played.
Both games have pixel art graphics; while Vampire Survivors seems to take itself a little more seriously, Journey’s Legend is pretty silly at times, which makes it endearing to me.
The Updates of Journey’s Legend
Journey’s Legend is a challenging game to write about because it has changed so much since I picked up the code. It’s had a massive number of updates since its release, making the game more challenging, changing some powers slightly, and making the levels a lot more hectic. I think it also added some new artefacts and in-level upgrades that do different things as well.
It has changed so much since I began writing this article that it’s hard even to begin to talk about it. I liked the easier difficulty in the beginning that allowed me to build up a lot more XP to get more upgrades in the first iterations of Journey’s Legend, but I also loved the upgraded challenge.
I liked it better when the munchy red dudes didn’t spit fireballs because there was nothing to block or get rid of them, but also, the fireballs added an interesting level of difficulty. I’m so happy the developer added flying treasure chests, too; it’s a great way to get in-level upgrades.
A Full Disclaimer
I’m not going to lie to you guys; I am absolutely terrible at these types of games. I don’t have the attention to be able to keep track of all the gunk on the screen. That being said, I really like this kind of bullet hell adventure.
I feel like I’ll never get super far in Journey’s Legend, and I really only took to the one character, mostly forsaking the others for my beefy little ice wizard man. I also never figured out how to interact with whatever these upgrades are because I never earned a star.
That being said, I have some thoughts about the way Journey’s Legend could improve itself. I have noticed when playing that the character’s hitbox is a tiny bit too big. It looks like you should just miss a fireball or a spike, only to die two seconds later. I also noticed (and this may be fixed by now) that no matter how high I levelled my defences, many of the attacks one-shot me anyway. I’m not sure what the point of spending points in defence is if it doesn’t do anything to defend me.
Another thing is that the map doesn’t seem to have anything on it other than spikes, spikes, and more spikes. In Vampire Survivors, the developer actually incentivized you to move around the map as some things were hidden in the corners. Also, it would be awesome if you could adjust the zoom and speed to see what’s happening around you. A temporary slow-down button could be a cool feature to get a better grasp of what is going on around you.
Conclusion
For an Early Access game, Journey’s Legend feels pretty polished. The developer plans to keep it in Early Access for about a year and a half to make sure they can make changes while also presumably working a full-time job and whatever else they have going on. It feels like a good amount of time to get things right. It’s also a great price for this type of game, and I think Journey’s Legend is off to a wonderful start. So much has already changed and been implemented. Hats off to the developer, and I look forward to more!
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot.
