Roguelike Report Card: PokéRogue

It’s been a while, but I haven’t lost sight of my Roguelike Report Card mission! I’ve been swamped with work and life in general, but with summer break at school right around the corner, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to put a few of these out over the next few months.

Originally, my plan was to review a roguelike from each tier before jumping around to whatever game I felt like talking about. I’ve already reviewed games in the S, A, and B tiers, which leaves just C and D... but I’m having a hard time motivating myself to dive into games I didn’t particularly enjoy. So instead, I’m going to review a game I’ve been very much enjoying over the past few months: PokéRogue.

PokéRogue is a fan-made game that turns Pokémon into a roguelike. The structure is simple: you draft a team of Pokémon at the start of your run, and the rest of the game is essentially Pokémon battle after Pokémon battle. Most of these battles take the form of wild encounters where you can catch additional Pokémon to add to your team, but there are also trainer battles that test your team composition and your ability to make strategic switches. After each battle, you choose one item from a small pool that benefits your party in some way. Many of these are healing items, but you’ll also find Poké Balls, stat boosters, evolution items, TMs, and more. The game features several major boss fights, including recurring battles against a villainous team leader (think Giovanni from Team Rocket), your rival, and a two-stage final boss fight with Eternatus.

PokéRogue isn’t a game where you can grind out several runs in one sitting. I find that successful runs typically take at least two hours—even with game speed turned way up. But despite the time commitment, PokéRogue is incredibly sticky, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself trying to complete every optional challenge the game throws at you.

Failure is Inevitable: A– (8)

You will almost certainly fail during your early PokéRogue runs. While you start with access to all the starter Pokémon from every generation (which are usually among the strongest in the games), it’s hard to out-level your biggest challenges. You’ll likely hit the same walls repeatedly until you hatch or catch a Pokémon that helps you push past them.

Frustratingly, those walls come very late in your run. The game has 200 stages, and roughly 185–195 of them contain battles of some kind—but those fights don't become difficult until around stage 145. Experienced Pokémon players with a good sense of team-building and battle mechanics will likely breeze through the early game once they’ve learned the basics, meaning they could sink 90 minutes into a run before hitting their first true challenge.

That can be demoralizing, but for roguelike veterans, it can also light a fire under them, prompting a reassessment of your team and a renewed determination to break through next time.

Rewards Experimentation: A+ (10)

If you’re familiar with competitive Pokémon, you know that different team members fill different roles: sweepers, walls, set-up mons, pivots, status spreaders, revenge killers, and more. There’s no set formula for success, which leaves tons of room to experiment with team compositions. With over 1,100 Pokémon available, the possibilities are practically infinite.

As you play more, you’ll unlock rarer starters, hidden abilities, and shiny forms (which play into a luck mechanic in the game), which naturally encourages experimentation. I was lucky enough to unlock a shiny Pinsir with Moxie early on, and it quickly became a staple of my team. Because Pokéroge allows mons to keep their stat boosts between battles with wild Pokémon, my attack boosted Pinsir helped me avoid damage and status effects during those easier fights—keeping my team healthy and ready for tougher trainer battles.

Figuring out which Pokémon compliment each other is a crucial part of this game

Requires Variation in Playstyle: A (9)

One of the core appeals of Pokémon is building your perfect team. In the mainline games, you have time to explore, catch what you want, and slowly build your ideal squad. In PokéRogue, you don’t quite have that luxury. At the start of each run, you draft your team using a point-based system: each Pokémon is assigned a value based on its strength, and you only have 10 points to spend. So if you want to bring your shiny new legendary that costs 8 points, you’d better be ready to pair it with something like a Caterpie and hope to round out your team later.

The pre-run team-building menu

You’re also limited by RNG. In traditional games, you can hunt in tall grass for hours if you’re looking for something specific. Here, you’re at the mercy of encounter rolls. There are ways to increase your odds of seeing specific Pokémon, but you can’t just sit around waiting—you may have to settle for what’s available.

This forces you to make compromises and find ways to maximize limited resources. Maybe Quagsire wasn’t your first pick for a Water-type, but if your rival’s Fire-type starter is waiting at the end of the run, you’ll be glad to have something that can tank a hit and force a switch.

This kind of improvisation becomes critical in the late game when you know you’ll face huge threats like Mega Rayquaza or Eternatus. At that point, you need not just damage dealers, but also status spreaders, tanks, and support Pokémon that can help create openings.

PokéRogue leans into the natural diversity Pokémon already offers and arguably makes better use of it than any mainline title ever has. By forcing players to adapt to changing circumstances, it rewards deep understanding of the franchise’s mechanics and systems.

Nails the Difficulty Curve: C– (2)

The biggest weakness in PokéRogue’s design is its difficulty curve—or lack thereof. As mentioned earlier, the game doesn’t really challenge you until well over an hour into a run, and that’s far too late.

The first 144 stages often feel like pure farming: you’re grinding levels, collecting items, and building your team. But if you don’t know what’s coming at stage 145 (a fight with your rival with a greatly improved version of their team) you could get completely blindsided. When that happens it makes all that grinding feel like a waste of time.

Nothing is more deflating than spending nearly two hours on repetitive gameplay only to hit a wall you had no way to prepare for. Unfortunately, this is a common experience in PokéRogue.

Stickiness: A+ (10)

I have found this game ridiculously hard to put down both from moment to moment and from day to day.

On a minute-to-minute basis, it’s easy to say, “Just one more battle,” then, “Just one more stage,” then, “I’ll stop after the next boss.” Even though a full run takes hours, the game’s short-term milestones make it easy to lose track of time as you continually progress.

On a longer timeline, PokéRogue gives Pokémon fans plenty of reasons to keep coming back. There are over 570 starter Pokémon available. While beating the game with all of them is an insane feat that I haven’t even considered (though I’m sure there are some diehards that have done it), it’s hard to resist completing a run with your personal favorites or give a test run with a new Pokémon that you unlocked.

Then there’s all the special challenges: complete a run with Pokémon from a single generation or of a single type or with their stats flipped. The single type runs were my latest obsession as I tried to cover my weaknesses with secondary typings (some were easier than others, but the mono-fighting challenge was brutal). The game also provides daily challenges and, for those who really can’t get enough Pokérogue, an endless mode that you can play for literally days on end if you’re good enough at the game.

Evidence of an additction

Art Design: 1

This game has the good fortune of being able to lift almost all of its art assets right from the Pokémon games, and half of the appeal of Pokémon (maybe more) is the brilliant design of the titular Pokémon. There are a few assets that are unique to the game such as the player character and your rival, and those are fine and fit with the general theme of the game, but otherwise it’s almost entirely just basic Pokémon assets. The game deserves a point just for giving you more time with the colorful world of Pokémon designs, but it’s hard to award it any more than that given how little of the visual design is original.

Narrative: 0

Not much to talk about here. There is some narrative with your rival, but I found it really cheesy. Otherwise you’re just fighting one battle after another on your way to beating a final boss for no discernable reason. You can turn dialogue off, which I recommend because it will make the game go a lot faster.

Unique Twist: 1

It’s Pokémon, but a roguelike! I think that striking a balance between rogue elements and Pokémon turn-based combat is a pretty impressive feat.

Total: 41

Pokérogue might not be the pinnacle of roguelike design, but there’s no denying that it’s a tremendous amount of fun for fans of the Pokémon series and roguelike genre. The ability to construct dream team after dream team and take them into genuinely challenging battles is something that you simply cannot get with the mainline Pokémon games, and a variety of self-imposed challenges gives you plenty of opportunities to keep Pokérogue fresh.