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
