Rogue is ruining my childhood

Lately I've been playing a lot of the original Metroidvanias and it reminded me how much I liked these games. I'd really fallen out of love with the genre in the past few years. As I played them and had fun, I wasn't sure what it was that actually put me off the genre. I had played some newer ones, Spelunky, Dead Cells, Rogue Legacy, all popular and acclaimed games but they never felt right. So what was it? Had I outgrown the genre?

Looking back on it, the problem I had is that they're all from the rogue family. So what is it about stapling Rogue to Metroid that makes it worse?

In Metroid, or a Castlevania, there is a mastery loop to understanding these places, learning the layout, and steadily getting ACTUALLY more powerful instead of restarting from scratch. The backtracking, while maybe it doesn't hit the novelty dopamine button, does make that growth feel cemented. This thing that gave me trouble? Now I plow through it.

With roguelites, you do get a slow sense of accrued power and progression with permanent unlocks that persist from run to run, but it's not the same as getting the Space Jump or Screw Attack and that's because the Screw Attack can't be the Screw Attack in a roguelite. That level of power at the start of every run is cracked, it would trivialize the start, or the game has to be balanced around that, moving the goal posts. The Screw Attack isn't a cool thing you have for the last hour or so and then the game ends. It's a cool thing you have for possibly a hundred more hours.

One of my biggest dislikes about roguelites is that you can be walled by a boss that requires more grinding to be able to beat it. Once I figured this out it bothered me in all of these games because I'm never sure if it's a grind gate or a git gud gate.

Metroid bosses require zero grinding: by design you have what you need to beat them, you don't necessarily have the skill. While most players will have to retry a boss a few times they still know that it's doable, there's never a question of is it me, or have I not farmed enough? This ambiguity is one way that roguelites obfuscate the player's own growth arc.

Another way is that failure means starting the entire run over and it could be an hour or more to reach and require a few sessions to get back to that spot. This means it's difficult to practice, and with the variable equipment you pick up, it's hard to tell if you're getting better or if you just got insane RNG drops.

With the classic designs, I'm also getting something more tightly authored that respects my time more. Yes, a lot of these have stories, but they're piecemealed out for me over a lot more time. It's like filling a balloon with air. Yes, the balloon is bigger but I don't have more balloon, it's just stretched over more space. Roguelites give you more game, more value for money, by valuing your time less.

While I now understand what it was about the rogue games I didn't enjoy as much, I'm now interested to look at the games that came out in the meantime that I didn't try. Animal Well and Hollow Knight are things I'm going to have to take a more serious look at now. So maybe Rogue didn't ruin my childhood, it just hid what made it magical.

#metroidvania