Developer Ludomotion follows up on it's original 2017 roguelite Unexplored with their sequel Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy - A roguelike game that draws from tabletop roleplaying games. Let's see how this holds up against other games in the genre.
The Story:
Unexplored 2 creates a vast, rich fantasy world for you to discover. It has a cool twist on permadeath: your character may die, but the world might persist. The game is an ambitious, procedural action-RPG without grind, xp, or gold. Instead the story is all about your choices and their consequences as history unfolds. As the titular Wayfarer you take on the quest to destroy the Staff of Yendor, for which you’ll have to traverse your world. Along the way you’ll meet tribes, encounter magical creatures and explore ancient ruins to discover mythical weapons and historic items.
The Features:
Radical content generation: Ludomotion's radical approach to content generation creates many layers of unique content, every time a new world is generated.
Generative storytelling: Though every Wayfarer's ultimate goal may be similar, every hero will have their own world, story, and encounters.
Systemic depth: The game features many systems and you will discover something new every time you play, even after hundreds of hours of gameplay.
Legacy system: Actions of your past heroes impact the fortunes of those that follow in their footsteps. Use your legacy wisely to give your successive adventurers greater hopes of completing their quest.
Permadeath in a persistent world: When your hero dies, they stay dead. But you can choose to return to the same world with a new Wayfarer. Or, if you prefer, begin a new adventure in a completely unexplored world.
Unique presentation: The worlds in Unexplored 2 are presented in a unique and beautiful art style, beyond what is conventionally expected from a generative game. A stylish lighting system sets the mood and adapts to the time of day and local weather conditions.
Orchestral adaptive soundtrack: Your adventure is accompanied by an orchestral, original soundtrack which reacts to the action and decisions you make as a player.
Our Thoughts: The sequel to Unexplored improves upon the original in a whole host of ways, the biggest change is the graphical quality with the switch to full 3D from the originals basic 2D images. The procedurally generated worlds make every playthrough unique with the different region biomes (Mountains, forests etc) and their varying difficulty levels meaning you will attempt them differently depending on your playstyle.
The gameplay at its core, especially the important roguelike loop is great, but the game could use some polish. The combat is pretty clunky and unless you really focus on it you probably won't get far with it compared to the the use of range/magic as the melee combat comes off slow and unresponsive, which isn't ideal in a game that makes you restart when you die. This is the type of game that doesn't hold your hand and leaves it it upto the player to uncover things.
I liked the fact that when you do die you're able to nuke the world and start over or you can you can choose to continue your adventures with a new character in the same world, a few years later. Your new character will witness the result of the choices your previous adventurer made. You can leave items in a safe spot, ready for your next - it's a nice twist on the roguelike gameplay loop. The game also features a ton of of difficulty options, so you can make the game harder if your that way inclined.
The game is full of charm, but its slow plodding pace may be off-putting for some. The improvements over the original game are night and day. It's an interesting attempt on the roguelite/roguelike genre, with lots of content to keep you busy but there were a few bugs I noticed during my playtime which detracted from the overall experience.
TOTAL SCORE: 7/10
Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy was released onto the store on the 3rd June 2022. Playable on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S Consoles and priced at £19.99. You can buy the game HERE. A copy of the game was provided for this review. A big thank you for that.
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