The Weaponographist

The Weaponographist won’t be the most memorable game you will play but its strong elements do overshadow its shortcomings.

The Weaponographist is wonderfully insane and had the potential for greatness, but the pieces that it’s lacking mean it’s simply a fun, straightforward speed-running twin-stick action/RPG-lite.

This is one of those friendly games that just about anyone would enjoy picking up for short play sessions every now and again, especially those who like their dungeon crawlers tinged with a sense of humor and a retro flavor.

Even with an extra-hard difficulty mode and time-based leaderboards, it’s not a long game, and players will probably finish The Weaponographist before they get sick of it.

There are some intriguing elements at play, but there are more interesting and engaging rogue-likes out there already.

The Weaponographist is a decent mix of Roguelike and arena brawler, but the controls are a bit stiff and there just isn’t enough content or personality to put the game above its similarly-priced competitors.

The Weaponographist is a solid game to play if you're ever in the mood to dwindle a few minutes or hours off the boring day you're having. The pick-up-and-play quality, easy-to-understand nature and lightweight gameplay all come together to make The Weaponographist an easy recommend for everyone.

The Weaponographist delivers pretty well on the pitched idea: a frantic arena battler that keeps things in constant motion. While it’s far from perfect, the interesting mechanics and decent all-around design make it fun, if a bit repetitive.

In the end I found the game to be fun in small doses, but the repetitive levels and grindy gameplay turned me off.

The Weaponographist has the small advantage of being light, mindless and easy to pick up. It would be tempting to recommend the game for those impatient or uninterested in more intricate Roguelike mechanics, but it is exuberantly padded and becomes increasingly difficult in the later stages.

The most interesting thing about this title is its title.

As a hypothetical free PlayStation Plus title, The Weaponographist would have some room to flourish as a mindless hack and slash game with a poorly implemented, but nonetheless existent, reward loop. But as it exists right now in its sole PC incarnation, there are many more titles worthy of your time -- including that 1000th run of Isaac you've been putting off.

I enjoy the basic gameplay, and the Saturday-morning cartoon-style visuals and light humor add to the fun. However, the lack of variety and poor design decisions make it seem like I'm the one that's cursed whenever I play.

The concepts behind the The Weaponographist are interesting ones, and they incentivize combo-hunting better than most titles I've seen in a while. It's just too bad that the developers weren't able to get a better handle on character progression and combat design. With a lot of tweaking, this could have been a bite-sized little gem. As it stands? The Weaponographist is a drawn-out mess.