Wild Gunner- Rogue Adventure Review

A Long Road Ahead

Enter a fantasy world and become a Wild Gunner, a lone warrior who travels through a mysterious portal to fight a variety of enemies. DIVMOB’s new title, Wild Gunner- A Rogue Adventure, will challenge its players who dare to try. With a great art style and roguelike inspiration, does it live up to what makes the genre great?

Beautiful but Unpolished

Wild Gunner‘s gameplay jumps right in from the beginning. Pick a random power up from three choices and fight through hordes of enemies. With the game needing only one finger to play this game is easy to pick up. As you finish a floor, you can select a new skill that can form a “build” over time until you complete a run. On certain floors, you land in a safe zone where you can collect a skill and the opportunity to choose a mount. This game flow is rinsed and repeated as you play through each level. Although the skills are that of roguelike titles, the world and enemy design isn’t. Each level sticks to one layout and enemy placement which is easy to memorize but can lead to boredom when you’re having to replay due to your character dying.

As you progress through the game’s levels, another issue starts to come up. The amount of enemy health grows to large amounts and the length of floors per level greatly extends. This gameplay loop quickly starts to overstay its welcome as you progress, which is disappointing. Beyond the below average game flow the one thing that stands out about this game is its art direction, which is both simple and beautiful to look at. The characters you play are cute and the enemies follow this aesthetic.

Armor Up?

Another feature Wild Gunner- Rogue Adventure implements are selecting one of three weapons and equipping four armor pieces. All of these can upgrade with armor tiles and gold, which are obtained through each run. Players can also get gear through the gatcha crate or from buying packs that offer some high-quality weapons. The only way to receive these special weapons from my time playing is by luck on the gatcha or purchasing a weapon pack. This breaks into light pay to win territory. The armors themselves are a great concept because they provide bonuses to certain weapons and stats. Sadly, equipment also fails to hold up due to the rate of collecting tiles and the cost of gold per upgrade, plus the increased difficulty of levels make fights still feel just as long.

Adventuring Issues

Wild Gunner- Rogue Adventure is a game that I enjoy, but it’s still lacking at its current state. Missions get overly long, and the overall balancing just doesn’t feel polished. This makes those early levels a turn off since the levels aren’t randomly generated. The one finger gameplay and the art were great. The store itself isn’t intrusive like other titles, but it still feels like it needs to keep up, and ads can be annoying when you want to use mounts or get a free gatcha drop. In time, this game will be at a better place if DIVMOB listens to its players and fixes the issues. I would recommend holding off on this title until these issues get resolved because this game is fun to play and the art is a joy to see but the issues hold it back.