Lost Castle 2 is a 2D roguelike beat ’em up where you join the treasure hunters guild in search of riches and powerful enemies to fight.
Lost Castle 2 feels like a combination of Castle Crashers and Monster Hunter thanks to the way it mixes beat ’em up stages with the more in-depth weapon movesets and skills, creating a very unique gameplay experience.
So, how does it compare to its inspirations? Can it stand as its own title? Is it too early to get into it? Find out the answer to these questions and more in our full preview for Lost Castle 2.
Lost Castle 2 sticks really close to the roguelike formula set by games like Dead Cells and Hades, featuring multiple randomized stages with tiered bosses, unlockable equipment, meta progression in the form of camp upgrades, and different weapon types for players to try out.
The game features simplified versions of the most popular Monster Hunter weapons, like the dual blades and greatsword, and manages to have a surprising amount of depth for a 2D beat ’em up. Each weapon has a universal moveset depending on what they are classified as, accompanied by a unique skill that synergizes with its attacks.
The different weapons you can find are possibly the highlight of the entire experience, as they add a lot of variety to Lost Castle 2‘s gameplay. The unique skill system also completely changes how you’ll approach encounters and boss fights, incentivizing the player to try everything out at least once.
The game’s combat feels very smooth but currently suffers from a few growing pains, like the dodge move behaving as if the game were in true 2D when its stages have depth. Being forced to travel either forward or backwards when you are actually trying to go up or down can make it really difficult to dodge some trickier attacks.
The game does have a perfect dodge system, giving the player i-frames when rolling right before being hit, but sometimes the intention is to get out of the way instead of performing a risky dodge, especially during the learning part of a boss fight.
Thankfully, these growing pains are slowly being phased out of the game, through things like the jump item being turned into a universal move that you can perform by default, so Lost Castle 2 will most likely implement a solution to this at some point.
The terminology on what buffs you get by picking certain items can also be confusing at first, as the game doesn’t necessarily tutorialize the player on much. The more obvious RPG stats like critical chance or defense are easy to understand, but things like the rune system are difficult to grasp at first.
The game does feature a small moveset tutorial for each weapon type that can be accessed whenever you start a new run, so it does make an effort to give you the basics, helping players unfamiliar with the Monster Hunter-esque movesets understand how each weapon works.
Lost Castle 2 is constantly expanding, so it makes sense that it wouldn’t tutorialize the player a lot, as designing sections that might be useless in a few patches would probably be a waste of time. Instead, players can access a reasonably in-depth glossary that explains most systems and weapon mechanics, which the game unfortunately never nudges you towards.
Lost Castle 2 actually reminds me of a game that I was very excited for but ended up getting cancelled mid-development, which was Atelier 801’s Transformice Adventures. A Kickstarter campaign was launched for the game and it was worked on long enough to get a demo, but it was quietly dropped at some point.
Transformice Adventures‘ demo featured design philosophy and gameplay similar to Lost Castle 2, although with a much lower level of polish, as Atelier 801 struggled to get bigger projects done. As someone who grew up with Transformice, it’s very fulfilling to see a studio tackle a similar premise and actually succeed, especially in a high-quality title like this.
Lost Castle 2 nails what it sets out to do, and the developers are hard at work, releasing new content very often. In fact, a weapon type and new mechanics were introduced to the game while I was in the middle of reviewing it, which is always a great sign. The game does have a slight lack of quality-of-life features, but these are minor blemishes on an otherwise great roguelike.
Lost Castle 2 is available on Microsoft Windows (through Steam’s Early Access).
