City of Brass Reviews
City of Brass looks like a beautiful epic straight out of the tales of the Arabian Nights. Instead, it's a dreadful slog designed to avoid everything that makes a roguelite game replayable and fun.
With an awesome inspiration and some very cool ideas, it's an immense shame that City of Brass game ends up being as dull as it is. With lacklustre combat, enemy design, rooms and movement, City of Brass feels like a chore to play. With the smorgasbord of Rogue-lites to play these days, some of which are among the best games you can play, City of Brass is an easy pass.
There's no doubt that City of Brass is meant to be punishing. But between its ungainly controls, its inability to stave off a sense of tedious repetition, and spirit-breaking lack of progression, it feels far less fair and more painful than its rogue-lite brethren. Its superficial use of the Arabian Nights folklore, combined with its monotonous design and reliance on exotic cliche, make it as uninteresting to experience as it is excruciating to endure.
City of Brass could have been a truly fun game but falls short in its rogue-lite aspirations. The lack of engaging story, frustrating combat, uninspired levels and unsatisfying loot make this a chore.
While there is something to be said about the game’s combat and Arabian setting, the frustrating amount of traps and repetitive gameplay makes City of Brass hard to play, and the lack of upgrades makes it hard to come back.
Good-looking and accessible addition to rogue-lite genre, but with clumsy controls, repetitive gameplay and no sense of progress.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Despite its promises, City of Brass is an ideal game to buy on sale, where the fun will surely be measurable with your investment. It's a shame, but with the Switch building a stronger catalog every year, the competition is fierce and City of Brass doesn’t have what it takes to be a must buy game on Nintendo’s console.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
With City of Brass there's a feeling you're playing a home port of an arcade game, where short spurts of action, strategy, and fun doesn't translate to a sit-down to play for an extended length of time videogame. It looks fantastic but there's not a lot below the surface.
City of Brass brings its mix of challenging roguelite gameplay and Persian fantasy to the Nintendo Switch, but control issues mar the experience.
There's promise to City of Brass that sadly doesn't quite come to fruition. For a roguelike, it commits the ultimate sin in having no compelling hook to keep going for multiple playthroughs. It throws up some fresh and interesting ideas though, and that makes it worth at least a cursory look.
City of Brass is a fantastic starting point for newcomers to the roguelike genre, but those that know a thing or two may leave feeling a little short-changed. The core gameplay loop at its heart is very satisfying, thanks to its experimental nature, and with the genies' perk selection, there's a decent amount of variety when you're in the thick of it, but there just isn't enough here to keep you coming back past your first couple of completed runs. There's definitely fun to be had here for a few hours, but it's nothing you'll remember with a great deal of affection in six month's time.
A novel setting and concept can't hide the game's technical limitations, but this is still an entertaining first person roguelike that does try to do things differently.
City of Brass is a very decent choice for those who want to try a new genre or get familiar with the Roguelike games. But due to some mechanical shortcomings and lackluster rewarding system, City of brass fails to offer a complete experience as seen in the greatest games of this genre.
Review in Persian | Read full review
City of Brass brings some interesting features to the dungeon-crawling genre, but its overly generic style and atmosphere don't break any new ground. It's a game that can be picked up and put down easily, which would make it a good candidate for a Nintendo Switch port. City of Brass' qualities are unfortunately marred by its lack of personality and other technical blunders.
I can't help but feel disappointed in City of Brass.
All that said, there's a fun and entertaining game here. Despite its problems, I walked the scorching sands again and again until I reached the center of the city and completed the game (yes, I did end up using some blessings and portals to do it). City of Brass is a really fun first-person roguelike, but the die-rinse-repeat formula wears thin far more quickly than it should. There's simply not much more to do or see once you've played for a few hours or reached the end. Combat remains largely the same simple fare throughout, apart from intense boss encounters that account for a comparatively small portion of the game. Upgrades earned over time and different ability setups through the genies offer the promise of varied gameplay, but City of Brass does little to entice the repetitive play that the genie's curse asks of you.
I love the look of City of Brass and its combat system, but after only about three hours I felt like I'd seen all it had to offer. It's a great way to kill an afternoon, I just wish it would give me a reason to keep coming back.
In conclusion, City of Brass is a decent game IF you like first-person dungeon crawlers with no turn-based action. While I was enchanted in the beginning, after 5-10 hours, I was sadly disillusioned. This is one city that should’ve lost, like Atlantis kind-of lost.
City of Brass offers plenty of thrills with its Arabian Nights roguelike adventuring, but after beating it once it doesn’t offer much to keep you coming back for more. The genre typically lends itself well to repeated playthroughs and extended challenges, but after completing the game in a relatively short time there wasn’t much there to encourage me to keep playing – a lack of variety as far as gameplay is concerned doesn’t help the situation, either. It doesn’t make City of Brass a bad game nor does it make it one that’s not worth checking out, but players hoping to be whipping their way through malicious genies for hours on end might be left a little bit disappointed by the lack of depth on show.
City of Brass is a fun and swashbuckling adventure that gets seriously hamstrung by its clumsy and sluggish controls. Recommended to any masochist out there who wants to get punished on the go and doesn't mind looking past some issues.