Roguelands

I'm on a streak of old(er) games recently and I just feel like mentioning it every time. This time the 13th oldest game left in my backlog - Roguelands. Either games don't age well, I'm on a bad streak of games right now, or I was just more lax with my picks back in the day. (Probably the latter, as there's actually plenty of great old games.)

So, Roguelands promises you a (potentially multiplayer) action roguelike experience. Tons of weapons, tons of equipment, many different areas to explore, and progression for days! It's probably not technically false, but boy does it fall flat on its face. The equipment diversity isn't really there. There's just stat upgrades for the most part. Despite being promised 15 different clases, combined with an allegiance, character types, and more, it's still just stat differences - no unique abilities or weapons. I didn't play it for too long so it was difficult to see all of what the game had to offer, but it's a huge grind to get much anything, and there's no good reason for that.
The different areas are composed of the same large rectangular blocks with the textures swapped. It's not level design, and it's an insult to procedural generation if it is that. There's some difference in enemies, but most of them are either semi-stationary mindless creatures or floaty things which jerkily move towards you, all in a very similar manner. No destructible terrain, but you can "build" your ship... as if that did anything.
And finally the combat, which is all this game really has going for it in terms of gameplay, is floaty, repetitive, and boring. Stamina? That's never going to run out, why even worry about it, just jump and dash endlessly. The game even tells you that you're not going to get anywhere by running, just dash everywhere. Why even add running in? Health though? Well, at first these guys 1-shot you, and if not you don't regen any and are doomed soon enough. But if you survive that you eventually just become basically unkillable and can regen it at will. There's no semblance of balance.

I'm somewhat upset, because this looked like a good idea a la Terraria or at least Starbound (I'd recommend the former), albeit without the mining and building. But the execution of this is just so sloppy and terrible. It's like they kept adding more and more "content" without stopping to consider if any of it was any good, and then just left it in this seemingly unfinished state, as far as polish is concerned. I hate this kind of development. Quality over quantity, every single time, that's how it should be. So no, I can't possibly recommend Roguelands.