The Serpent Rogue review - An experiment in tedium

The Serpent Rogue, from indie developer Sengi Games and publisher Team17 is a familiar game, despite its unique setting. Video game genres come in all sorts of flavors these days, from Soulslike platformers, Roguelike rhythm games, etc., and Sengi Games' recent action-adventure is similarly intriguing with its presentation and premise.

It pairs the exploration and crafting of Minecraft with the unnerving setting and punishing gameplay that fans have come to expect from Souls titles. It focuses on adventure through a corrupted world, emphasizing the joy of discovery and the struggle of experimentation. But does it manage to emulsify its various systems and mechanics for a truly successful brew? The answer, unfortunately, isn't a simple one.

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The Serpent Rogue: A game that is wonderful in its mystery

First, the narrative, which is a simple one. Players control a Warden, a type of being summoned to deal with the corruption spread by the titular Serpent Rogue throughout the game's medieval fantasy realm. Wardens are also alchemists and can mix ingredients to craft potions as well as study nature and its offerings to help in their research.

This is what forms a large part of The Serpent Rogue's gameplay loop: exploration. After a short tutorial that explains how a couple of key mechanics work, the meat of the game starts, kicking in the freedom that is a key positive of the game's myriad offerings.

Before doing anything else, I would recommend going into the 'Options' screen and checking out the controls to grasp the potential of what the Warden can do. After all, there is no handholding in the game, no text pop-ups that will explain any of the non-basic fundamentals.

Explore the sandbox world for items and resources (Screenshot from The Serpent Rogue)

Players will soon discover that the game has a map featuring several interconnecting areas. Three of them will be the most visited ones, especially in the early game.

The Warden has a house where items can be researched, potions can be crafted, food can be cooked, unnecessary ingredients can be stashed away, and attires can be customized. There is also a kiosk where NPCs will leave requests for potions, and will leave gold coins, that have multiple uses, in exchange.

At the core level, the game will require Wardens to scavenge for resources to arm themselves against the dangers of the world. They must also undertake quests to progress in the narrative by clearing areas of corruption.

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Scavenge to your heart's content

Players gain a portable kit that allows them to research and craft right on the spot, no matter where they are. Each area of The Serpent Rogue has something to offer. These primarily consist of ingredients like tea leaves, logs, berries, eggs, and so on.

These ingredients can also come from different sources, like animals that can be hunted or items that are just found lying around. Some ingredients might need additional gear before they can be retrieved, like an ax for cutting trees to collect wood. A few of these ingredients form the basic necessities for potions, and combining different ingredients with these bases will create new results.

Wardens can sneak through small crevices as a rat (Screenshot from The Serpent Rogue)

And yet, there's far more to unearth. Tomes that add entries to Journals, new crafting/cooking recipes, transformation statues that allow players to turn into relevant animals, and more. In a nutshell, everything little feature has some purpose and gives out appropriate rewards for the efforts undertaken to complete them.

The said, rewards can be in the form of money, rare ingredients, etc. Sadly, the way The Serpent Rogue handles these systems is where it loses its footing, resulting in an experience that's as jarring and unpleasant as tumbling down the side of a mountain.

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The game offers freedom of flexibility

Let's address the good part first, which leads us to the arrival at the isle of freedom. The Serpent Rogue allows situations to be approached in various different ways. These can include crafting damage potions to deal with enemies or forging new iron to strike them down.

Players can even turn into various creatures to interact with the environment in new ways and can hire NPCs to ease the burden of the journey as well.

R.I.P. Mary (Screenshot from The Serpent Rogue)

Several areas around the map help in easing the Wardens' burden. The Pier allows for hiring of NPCs who can provide aid in combat or can act as walking inventories. However, it's too bad they have a tendency to walk into environmental hazards.

The Serpent Rogue also allows for stray animal to be fed, tamed, and played with. Besides those that can taken on journeys, other NPCs also exist around the world. These include the Gravekeeper (who can resurrect dead allies) and the Merchant, an NPC who seems to be a literal living house with multiple eyes on its walls.

All in all, it is a simple gameplay loop that allows players to tackle things at their pace and see which direction suits them the best. It respects varied decisions and effort, but unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the mechanics encapsulating the core foundation of The Serpent Rogue.

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Tick tock, tick tock: The storm approaches

The corruption appraoches (Screenshot via The Serpent Rogue)

Let's begin with the key mechanic of The Serpent Rogue: the corruption storms. Periodically, a couple of set areas on the map summon storms that constantly damage players while they are in it. A percentage meter appears at the top of the screen while the Warden is in these areas, which helps to keep track of when to make a run for the exit.

Now, there are several problems that need to be factored in. First, the storms occur way too often - this means all exploration and enemy fights are done under the pressure of a timer.

I would recommend hightailing it out of there when the meter is around the 80% mark, especially if an exit is not close-by. This hampers exploration because every storm resets the area the next time it clears, meaning most resources and treasures will be different. It is important to note that clearing the cause of corruption on the map does not stop the storms from occurring.

The map details all areas that can be explored (Screenshot via The Serpent Rogue)

The storm dynamic is especially annoying when trying to hunt down the three Moonstones that are required to unlock a chest that appears on the map. Given the random nature of the world, players will need to run around to find any and all possible locations that may have them - all with the threat of storms looming overhead. And when they do hit, there will be no other option except to wait for them to die down.

Similarly, the Pier has a timer, too. So, players will have to twiddle their thumbs in anticipation of the ferry that brings over new helpful humans and the undead. Overall, the game has many such moments where there won't be much happening, with the game's progress getting grounded to halt.

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A stumble in design

Run for your life (Screenshot from The Serpent Rogue)

If the threat of storms wasn't enough, players will also have to watch out for creatures taken by the corruption. The Warden's adventures in The Serpent Rogue aren't free of peril, as many baddies out there will be looking to take a bite out of the alchemist.

The Serpent Rogue offers a standard melee attack (with a charged variant) and a block button to help reduce incoming damage. With an HP bar that indicates vitality, and a stamina bar, the latter is used for blocking, in addition to running. Sounds simple enough, right?

Not at all. The way survival and combat mechanics have been implemented and balanced, fighting experience gets ruined by a fair bit. For starters, lost health does regenerate over time, albeit slowly, and at the cost of stamina. This process only stops once the HP bar is full. So if the Warden has taken a lot of damage, then it will likely drain their entire stamina bar to recoup health. Of course, no stamina means no running or blocking.

The only way to fill stamina back up is by consuming food, especially some that is cooked. Food like meat, eggs, mushrooms, and more can be cooked, with certain combinations granting more filling meals.

This would have been alright if not for the fact that food is very scarce (particularly due to the RNG), so most of the time the Warden will be moving around on an empty stomach. Other status ailments can occur as well, like poison - which will be impossible to get rid of in the early hours of the game.

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Combat is like waiting for death's embrace

By far, the weakest element of The Serpent Rogue is the combat. The Warden moves sluggishly and the clunky combat makes things worse. The first 'boss' in particular has an AoE (area of effect) attack that is hard to avoid.

I ended up luring him over to a strong NPC who ended up taking him down, so I guess that's another +1 to the game's level of freedom. But basically combat boils down to smacking the enemy once and moving away so their animation plays out, and rinse and repeat until they're dead.

New weapons can be found while out in the wild, or even forged, but the ones with multiple utilities are best saved for their main purpose (eg. ax to chop trees). This is because these weapons break down fairly quickly.

On top of this, even basic enemies have a decent chunk of health, and despite the aid of weapons, it can take 5-8 hits to down a foe. This, of course, becomes much worse when no weapons are equipped and basic melee becomes the only viable option.

Death will drop all of the Warden's items at the very same spot and transport players back near the house. Thankfully, fast travel on the map allows for a walk through areas without taking on the corruption or enemies. However, players will still have to contend with enemies while trying to retrieve their belongings.

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Graphics, sound, and performance are appreciable

Visually, The Serpent Rogue is simple but effective. The graphics are celshaded with a dull overtone, from the gray fog to murky green water. But certain elements still pop, like the dark-and-magenta glow of corrupted entities or the several NPCs that roam around the map. The Serpent Rogue was tested on PC with the following specs:

• Processor: Intel Core i5-8300H @3.9 GHz
• RAM: 8 GB DDR4 @2666 MHz
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 4 GB
• Storage: 500 GB NVMe SSD

The Serpent Rogue runs well enough, performance-wise, and gives around 40-60 FPS at native 1080p. On the audio side, there are various medieval tunes and themes for different areas, exploration, combat, and so on. It is pretty decent and fits the tone well.

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Conclusion

The Serpent Rogue is an admirable attempt at something different. The game vividly succeeds with a gloomy atmosphere, rewarding exploration and a wonderful concept with the Wardens.

But for everything it gets right, the game conversely loves wasting the players’ time and resources while offering minimal compensation in return. All these design flaws come together to strip The Serpent Rogue of any proper challenge or fun factor.

Players who are currently intimidated by The Serpent Rogue can try out the free demo on Steam and see if it's something that they can digest.

Final verdict (Image via Sportskeeda)

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The Serpent Rogue

Reviewed on: PC (review code provided by publisher)

Platform(s): PC, PS5, XSX|S, Nintendo Switch

Developer(s): Sengi Games

Publishers(s): Team17

Release date: April 26, 2022