FROGUE – PS5 Review


FROGUE is a rogue-like platformer from Brazilian-based Wired Dreams where you play as a sword-wielding frog as it clears room after room of enemies.   The pixel-art visuals might suggest something a little generic, the usual indie fodder but this game genuinely brings something new to the genre.

If you ever saw the second X-Men movie, you’ll probably remember Nightcrawler, the teleporting assassin character who absolutely stole every action scene he was in.  Well, that’s kind of the vibe with your frog here.

You move around this game by jumping to any surface in range that you have a clear path to.  Time freezes until you move, much like Superhot, and you’ll stick to walls or ceilings with no issue.  The challenge comes from getting into killing range of enemies without them attacking you first.  You’re alerted whenever they are about to strike, at which point you’d better have a safe spot available to jump to, and so it becomes something akin to a chess match as you figure out the best way to safely take out enemies.

Your frog has two ways of taking out foes.  You can either leap at them with your sword in hand, that’ll kill them pretty effectively, or you can throw your sword in their direction.  This can be a little less precise (and it leaves you unarmed for a few turns as well) but it is a good way of keeping enemies from getting too close.

Initially, the controls and action do feel a little clumsy.  That’s maybe because we’ve just not played something like this before.  But when you get used to it, it does start to feel better and when you eventually graduate to making decent combos, the game feels very rewarding.  Sure, you’ll probably always feel like you’re fighting the controls in some way but as you start to master things, it’s definitely very rewarding.

Of course, as a rogue-like, you’ll be earning upgrades and abilities along the way.  From extra invincibility frames, a more effective sword, time dilation and other abilities, the upgrades are usually pretty useful and that helps keep things interesting.  That said, when you die, it’ll be back to the start of the game for you.  That’s the genre and it’s not for everyone, losing all your progress can get tiresome, but progression is definitely satisfying when it comes.

These innovative mechanics definitely help FROGUE shine in an a pretty overcrowded genre.  Whether or not it’s the most fun gameplay ever doesn’t matter when we’re genuinely playing something that we’re not reminded of any other game but to be fair, after a slow-ish start, we did start to enjoy what the game was offering up.

Visually, it’s a bit messy.  As this reviewer’s wife said ‘so, where’s the frog… wait that’s a frog?’ and we get that.  The game isn’t exactly a looker.  The visuals are primitive, a little ugly and kind of chaotic.  But that said, we always knew what was going on and so we can’t complain too much.

FROGUE, thankfully, isn’t a long game.  It’s long enough but it doesn’t expect you to play for hours and then just lose everything.  But even with its short-ish lifespan it can get quite repetitive.  There’s only so much that you can do with the concept without adding more in the way of upgrades.  We’d have loved to have seen some wild and wonderful weapons and power ups.

But overall this was a fun game regardless of how interesting the innovative mechanics were.  There’s probably scope to do something bigger and better with this concept but for now FROGUE offers up some very solid, enjoyable and innovative gameplay.

FROGUE
7 Overall
Pros
+ Innovative mechanics
+ Very playable
Cons
- A bit repetitive
- Initially tricky controls
Summary
FROGUE's unique mechanics elevates it from a glut of other rogue-likes. It's a bit repetitive and clumsy but there's a lot to like here.

 


About Richie

Rich is the editor of PlayStation Country. He likes his games lemony and low-budget with a lot of charm. This isn't his photo. That'll be Rik Mayall.

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