Crypt of the Serpent King has been around since 2015 on Xbox 360 and has been ported to all current gen consoles. The Switch was the last of them to get a port. I hadn’t played any of the previous iterations of this game so what better than a pair of fresh eyes to give Crypt of the Serpent King an honest review.
Not Daggerfall
When I first laid eyes on the screenshots for Crypt of the Serpent King, it reminded me of Daggerfall. As a long time Elder Scrolls fan, I would love to play a current-gen version of that game. Sadly my hopes were crushed almost immediately. Crypt of the Serpent King isn’t an epic tale of adventures who travel far en beyond in a realm where hopes of survival are slim. Instead, it’s just a rogue-like dungeon crawler with almost no back story at all. The low price point might’ve tipped me off this was not going to be the 100+ hours RPG experience I was hoping for.
Crypt of the Rogue King
In Crypt of the Serpent King, you need to battle your way towards the Serpent King. You need to scavenge every randomly generated level for a set amount of keys before you can battle the level boss and go on to another area. Obviously, each level is filled with enemies who want to stop you from getting all the keys. At the beginning your more or less underpowered to adequately get through the whole level without dying. Factor in the traps around the level and you know the cards are stacked against you. Luckily there’s gold to be collected and each kill grants you some amount of experience.
When you die, which you’ll be doing a lot, the gold and experience can be used to beef out your character and buy better weapons. With random levels, it comes down to getting a favorable layout in order for you to collect as much treasure and gain experience before you die. In the aftermath of you inevitable dying, using your XP to adjust your stats to make you stronger or more durable helped a bit. The thing that helped the most was using the gold to buy a new weapon with a bigger reach and more damage dealt. Once I got that, I managed to go through the levels with much more ease.
Get in the rhythm
I was dying an awful lot at the beginning of this game. Each enemy seemed to strike me way before I could. I went in head first towards each enemy to get an edge on them but that tactic proofed wrong in the end. Each enemy has an attacking animation and learning when they will strike is key to avoid being hurt. Especially since there’s no block command. Once I figured out provoking an attack, stepping back and immediately go in for the kill does the job… I was slaying skeletons, orcs and rats all over the place. Even the level bosses proved not worthy of my time with this simple trick.
Wrath of the absent designer
Crypt of the Serpent King is set in an interior medieval world. Each level has its own dungeon theme. Needless to say, after 7 levels of brown and grey colored dungeons, you’re glad it’s finally over. The textures are used over and over again which makes for an awfully bland looking experience. The fact that each floor has only one type of enemy doesn’t help break out of the constant blandness at all. The fire effects present in certain levels, look like they were made with a shareware version of after effects ’99. I know these type of games are all about the gameplay but these types of graphics shouldn’t exist in 2019.
Conclusion
Crypt of the Serpent King as basic as a roguelike can get. The game functioned like it is advertised but was in no way pleasant to get through. The low price point might convince some diehard roguelike fans. Everybody else should be aware that there are way better options than Crypt of the Serpent King.
