A couple of months back Margoq's Lair was released and it was time to do a bit of a deeper dive into the game. I love the skill combos and the roguelike nature of the game. While the game starts slow to ease you into it creatures end up becoming quite challenging after the first few levels.

A game like Margoq's Lair is meant to be played with the understanding that to progress you will have to start over. Even play other classes along the way as you unlock them. I like the fact that playing in hardcode mode permanent death is not the only option.

I could put all the names of people I know who always play hardcore modes in games on a single hand. I am not the biggest fan of games that force that on players. Instead, Margoq's Lair also offers an option for checkpoint saving. Where when you get killed you restart over on a level. Levels are also random so chances are it will be a different outside of boss fights.

The game also has four playable classes. You start only having Sorcerer unlocked. I found this class to be my go-to type of play style anytime I wash pushing progression on getting deeper into the game.

Regardless if you have a crazy long successful run or not. You end up collecting souls from some of the creatures you end up killing in a given run. Those souls then get converted at an Alter of Souls into Soul Dust.

Soul Dust is quite important for game progression. It allows you to buy permanent upgrades that you get to keep on further runs. This is how you unlock the three other classes. Along with things like more health potions, increased damage, energy, and many other amazing benefits.

This also ends up being why you end up resetting even if you are playing in the checkpoint mode at some point. You either end up hitting too hard of a boss fight to move forward. So, you start over and farm more souls along the way to buy even further permanent updates.

During a given run there is also a lot of RNG going on that can make or break a run. I found myself quite a few times deciding after reaching level 5 to just reset and start over. Everything from the stats on gear, blood perks, and the skill combos I ended up unlocking in a run. It ends up playing a huge factor.

Thankfully a lot of gear drops on each level. More times than not I'd end up just dumping my inventory after the first couple of levels. From there on out I'd end up being a little more selective in the kind of item rarity I was even willing to pick up.

With how random the stats on items can be. It was a bit funny sometimes running around with a sword that had higher spells, health, and accuracy on it. Then say when I'd loot a wand that would have high melee damage instead. Other times I'd find some killer wand that was a massive damage upgrade for my sorcerer.

A huge aspect of any run is looting scrolls that contain skill combinations on them. I found myself quickly finding a couple that if I did not have my level 10 I'd consider a run to be over.

The game also rewards you for using a wide range of skill combos as well. You need one hundred combo points to even use an ultimate skill. If all you do is repeat the same two over and over again it’s going to take forever to build up your points. If however, you use quite a few different ones you get a bonus as you cycle through using different combos. I would often save my ultimate for a tough encounter if I was about to get killed.

In my first few games, I ended up just learning any skill combo I'd loot. It seemed like this was the best way to get another skill combo scroll to drop. That or on the first couple of runs I did I had amazing RNG.

Much later on I ended up getting a decent grasp of all the skill combos I'd end up using. I for sure had my go-to use anytime I was about to attack a pack of creatures. I also just had ones I more or less never used.

I thought I would try min and maxing the system. I would only learn the combos I was always using. That is when I either had quite a lot of bad RNG on runs or the game just was not having it. Sometimes I'd only end up looting a couple of total skill combos by level 10. Making each level after that rather challenging to the point I'd start over.

You might be wondering why such a tactic I'd even employ. That is because of the Blood Perks system. Each time you finish a level or find an alter you get to choose one of three blood perks. You can even spend souls to reroll it.

I however did not want to spend Souls on rerolling when I could get Alter of Souls upgrades instead. This rerolling tactic would be something I'd end up saving for when I was pushing for my final largest run. Not something I'd be wasting souls on when just farming for souls at the lower levels.

By not learning crazy about combos. This would force the Blood Perk system to give me a higher chance of getting a perk I wanted on the couple of combos I wanted to use. Along with general upgrades to healing potions, critical damage, and defense.

While clearing levels started to ramp up in difficulty after level 10. More times than not I picked to play in checkpoint mode over hardcore for the boss fights. More so early on when I was learning each of them.

Boss fights tend to have a couple of expected phases. You have a phase of dealing damage to the boss, a phase of evading damage, and a phase of needing to take out adds.

While defeating a boss is not going to shower you with loot. You end up always getting a skill combo scroll and a higher rarity item. Most of the time I'd end up not getting any upgrades from a boss.

Thankfully the game is good at giving the player more than enough time to react and context clues of what to do. Such as red spots on the ground to indicate incoming attacks. This is not one of those games where you need to have an insane reaction speed.

You however will need to avoid damage as most attacks in a boss fight if you get hit full-on by them will take you down to one health. If they don’t just flat-out kill you. Health points are not exactly something you get a lot of. Even if you have some upgrades to increase the drop rates.

Boss fights also made me think a lot about the type of jewelry you are wearing One kind lets you heal yourself for 90%. Another makes you take no damage over a short amount of time. While sure wearing things that give you critical or no energy cost skills was nice.

I often found in boss fights it was more about endurance than just trying to zerg down a boss. The phase switching between being able to attack the boss and not makes you rethink how you would approach such fights.

While I did end up playing two of the other classes the game has to offer. Once I had them unlocked. With how much time I spent learning and getting used to the play style of being a sorcerer. The sorcerer just ended up sticking with me that I would prefer it.

They do however add quite a lot of replayability. I could see myself hitting over 50 hours played if I wanted to properly explore and come up with strategies for each of the classes.

Final Thoughts

It was great to experience this game being fully released now. The early demo version I tested out many months ago did not let you get to see how amazing the combo system in this game is. It is all about the skill combos and looting enough souls for that next Alter of Souls upgrade.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Margoq's Lair.

Disclosure. A review copy of the game was received for free.