City of Brass

City of Brass is a beautiful, highly-polished and mostly successful attempt at turning the genre on its head by making it more accessible to everyone, from rogue-lite veterans to first time players. With a unique and intuitive new combat style and some innovative takes on genre conventions, you’ll find plenty to like about City of Brass no matter what your skill level.

A visual treat, City of Brass never feels unfair, and learning to overcome its many challenges can be vastly satisfying.

A roguelite first-person platformer that demands to be replayed, City of Brass offers a level of freedom few games can match. It never gets old, even on your hundredth run-through. [June 2018, p.90]

At times, City of Brass felt too unforgiving and repetitive. I made a mistake by staying on the default difficulty setting for far too long but after I turned on the health blessing, the challenge started to feel a lot fairer because I was able to make more mistakes before starting again from the beginning. In the end, making it through the City of Brass is much more enjoyable and gratifying than it is frustrating.

In the scheme of history though, City of Brass will probably be best remembered as a game that dared to go to brave new places, and inspired many games to come.

A challenging battle through rooms and tombs. A bit repetitive and frustrating, but frequently thrilling. [July 2018, p.78]

Until fatigue with the game design sets in - which will vary from player to player - City of Brass is a lot of fun, a flavorful medley of ingredients that harmonize well.

City of Brass has a ton of cool concepts and most, if not all of them, pay off.

The execution has it flaws, but it’s an original concept, something we really appreciate. If you like roguelike adventures, make sure you try this one.

City of Brass is a good dungeon crawler, with some of its best moments and mechanics derived from its rendition of an Arabian Nights theme. While its repetitive scenery and uneven presentation are noticeable tarnishes on its sheen, the satisfying combat and well-balanced difficulty curve will keep you going back for more.

City of Brass brings some interesting features to the dungeon-crawling genre, but its overly generic style and atmosphere don't break any new ground. It's a game that can be picked up and put down easily, which would make it a good candidate for a Nintendo Switch port. City of Brass' qualities are unfortunately marred by its lack of personality and other technical blunders.

City of Brass is a really fun first-person roguelike, but the die-rinse-repeat formula wears thin far more quickly than it should.

I love the look of City of Brass and its combat system, but after only about three hours I felt like I'd seen all it had to offer. It's a great way to kill an afternoon, I just wish it would give me a reason to keep coming back.

City of Brass is a fun and beautiful first-person roguelite inspired by One Thousand and One Nights. However, it becomes repetitive too early and does not offer any hook to keep playing after a few hours. Although it is entertaining, it does not give reasons to come back to its cursed city.

There's promise to City of Brass that sadly doesn't quite come to fruition. For a roguelike, it commits the ultimate sin in having no compelling hook to keep going for multiple playthroughs. It throws up some fresh and interesting ideas though, and that makes it worth at least a cursory look.

After equipping a few blessings, the playing field becomes a bit more level, but having the option to turn City of Brass into a slightly less frustrating experience isn’t enough to redeem it. A lot of roguelikes could stand to learn something about difficulty from the concept of the blessings and burdens system, but as for me, all I managed to dig out of the game’s mountains of gold and sand was that artificial fairness and difficulty can’t hold a candle to genuine polish and balance.

A novel setting and concept can’t hide the game’s technical limitations, but this is still an entertaining first person roguelike that does try to do things differently.

City of Brass is a fantastic starting point for newcomers to the roguelike genre, but those that know a thing or two may leave feeling a little short-changed. The core gameplay loop at its heart is very satisfying, thanks to its experimental nature, and with the genies’ perk selection, there’s a decent amount of variety when you’re in the thick of it, but there just isn’t enough here to keep you coming back past your first couple of completed runs. There’s definitely fun to be had here for a few hours, but it’s nothing you’ll remember with a great deal of affection in six month's time.

The action here gets pretty repetitive fairly quickly, leaving you feeling like a lot more could have been done. Hopefully City of Brass’ developers take what they learned from this and pour their energies into a well-made sequel, because as it is, this game just feels kind of lacking.

There’s no doubt that City of Brass is meant to be punishing. But between its ungainly controls, its inability to stave off a sense of tedious repetition, and spirit-breaking lack of progression, it feels far less fair and more painful than its rogue-lite brethren.