At first, Ziggurat looks like a strange fantasy RPG taking place from the first person perspective. Its dripping all with the atmosphere of a dungeon crawler, the type you'd expect to normally be seen from a top-down view. You've got dark stony architecture, tons of monsters of various sizes and elements, and the walls are all alight with mysterious and magical things. Magical spirit orbs dance along walls, crystals grow out of walls, and the next door you open may host either a dungeon room filled with spinning blade traps, or it might be an abandoned library with a scroll to read you of your dire situation in this cursed series of arenas. Then with a zap of your wand, you'll notice its firing off to the beat and sound of a machine gun and realize you're in a horde-stomping FPS where waves of enemies come at you to see who can have their face blasted off first by purple wizard bullets. Make no mistake, all the conventional old-school FPS logic is there to greet you. You can carry up to four weapons, each hold an ammo type, run at fast speeds in circle-strafe fashion, you've got a health bar to hold onto, enemies bleed pick-ups, and I was not exaggerating when I mentioned that you'll most likely be firing your fantasy weapons like a machine gun. You'll also find things that could be equated to shotguns, rockets, flame-throwers, and grenades.
Of course if the game was just that, it'd be just a straight off Heretic successor (which wouldn't exactly be a bad thing either) or another case of Serious Sam accidentally falling outside of his time period. This is still far more unique and much of its own thing, because there is the Rogue-like and RPG pieces that fit into place as well. The dungeon arenas you encounter are all randomly aligned and contain a different kind of experience. You may start each ordinary game with 5 floors in mind for your end-goal, but every room on all of those 5 floors is never the exact same as it was the last time you played. The enemies in them will be different, there might be a modifier in place to enhance or tilt the combat balance, you might take a gamble with asking the gods for help, or there might simply be a new treasure you have to reach with the unpredictable tension of whether or not its what you need. Meanwhile along the way you've got random weapons placed before you, selected from a large arsenal of equipment that falls into three categories: Spells (blue mana), Staffs (green mana), and Alchemical (orange mana). Then you've got your trusty wand, which varies by the character you've chosen at the start (alongside some perks and base statistics). The goal is to get from room to room, and uncover the map until you at least find two key points: The key room, and the portal room. The key opens the portal to the next floor/level, however a boss guards each portal and commands their own flock of minions and powers to try and stop you. Defeat, means death, and you're out of the picture for the whole run if the minion of the Ziggurat are able to stop you. However its always recommended not to rush things and run to the top, as you've also got some RPG influence running in the background to help you out. Every enemy or room accomplishment leads to an increase in experience, and every level up lends its to more endurance in health and mana, as well as a choice between two random perks. The perks might be merely small incremental stat boosts that you can slowly build on with time, or they could be grand gifts that save your life in the short or long term. Its all about what your luck in the Ziggurat can do for you, and how well you adapt it to your FPS skills in combat.
Normally I'm a skeptic on Rogue-likes being fun. They just seem like their built in a mean-spirited and shallow way of killing you and having you repeat everything again. They try to entice you with "a new adventure every time", but once you know the core mechanics and see how mean the game is, its worn off that refreshing sense of adventure and becomes just a matter of how long you can find value in repeating the same beginning. Thankfully I stand by my purchase of Ziggurat with the confidence that I entrusted the right Rogue-like to open my views up for the genre. Its hard to recommend to other skeptics since it still depends on how much you can get invested into the basic mechanics, and if you think they're good enough to play from the ground-up more than 10 or so times. Still everything just felt well accomplished with this one. The RPG aspect balances your character to be on par with the chosen difficulty, and to reward you for exploring. No dead-end is truly a dead-end, as you'll always get XP for monster rooms or even lore scrolls you may have already read. Every level up feels exciting, as I press the upgrade button and keep my fingers crossed for just what I need, or some surprise that'll suddenly have me building my character up in one core aspect. One lucky game I had a Cleric who was cursed to lose his health bonus, but then at the very last floor, I started getting constant offers to boost my maximu health dramtically, and then a bonus that even let me go invincible upon taking a hit. Combined with my pre-destined luck of health drops, I suddenly became unstoppable by choosing the right series of perks.
Meanwhile the core combat is just great. If I were to nitpick, the jumping doesn't feel natural at first, but by my 4th playthrough I almost forgot I ever had that complaint. Everything else from the shooting, to the enemy diversity and weapons, feels as great and should be right at home to FPS fans. It also helps in this game's favor that there isn't a lot of competition for a shooter with such mechanics, so seeing someone take the old-school pick-ups, exploration, and circle-strafing gunplay elements and put them in a tense Rogue-like situation is very interesting. However a big theme in Rogue-likes and keeping them alive is the "meta-game", which basically means what you can unlock that can be used in future playthroughs. Well every time you win a game, or die, you get a handful of armory items. These are things that may or may not randomly appear as items or perks to assist you. Basically your chance of discovery and options at luck are opening after even 30 play-throughs. However for the actual challenges and milestones there is the character unlocks, and then unlocking higher levels for those characters by beating medium on each. There are 17 total, with nearly each one redefining some pillar of the basics or coming in with a much different type of luck than another character. As an example, one of my favorites is Leto the Cleric who specializes in health drops, has sturdy base stats, and yet lacks wand power and has to deal with more frequent "champion" (stronger) enemies. So he's fairly ordinary aside from some good perks to start on that may or may not meet your playstyle. By contrast, there's a vampire class by the form of Corvus, who is given the unique gift of consuming XP pick-ups as health, but loses health every second, completely reshaping the way you need to play the game if you choose him as your character. Unlocking and trying out each of these characters is a real treat, and whereas some aren't of my preference, I admire each one for their strong traits and diversity, and felt each one was worth unlocking. Their diversity will add a lot to the game if you're engaged by the core mechanics that ground it. The only problem I have with it is that sometimes their description or role traits are left a bit lacking. Perk cards often help define your character and their stats, but a lot of their being is still left outside of that and may not even be in the description. Some traits hard to even figure out while playing, and you may wind up losing a match or taking the wrong risk simply because you didn't know your own character thanks to the game's lack of explanation.
As a PlayStation 4 game, it handled things in a mixed fashion. Options are pretty good, with everything from FOV + headbob choices, to being able to even turn off motion blur (which also turns off lens flare). There's even button rebindings, which is awesome. The sad bit comes when levels get intense later on. Rooms full of Imps, the last boss battle when cluttered with minions, or rooms full of acidic AoE globes are all moments where the game loses its performance. It feels like playing on a moderat or low-end PC where you can handle the game, only to then encounter a sudden effect intensive room that taxes your machine more than you'd expect... only the sad matter is, there's no settings to tweak to lower that effect. You just have to endure those hiccups, or distortedly slow moments. Otherwise, the game runs fine. Though if I were to nitpick, I do wish the lens flare option was a separate thing. I love the moon rays that come off of the open roof levels when the setting is on, yet the motion blur is distracting with the fast paced combat.
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