Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy from Big Sugar and Ludomotion is a procedurally generated open world roguelike RPG on PlayStation 4. Learn more in our Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy review!

 

Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy from Big Sugar and Ludomotion is a procedurally generated open world roguelike RPG on PlayStation 4. You’ll be taking on a journey where you intend to be the hero the world needs, but that doesn’t mean that your destiny will align with that path. When one of your heroes dies, it’s dead for good, but you can at least decide to return to the same world with a new adventurer, learning from your mistakes as you go, carrying onward with the story. Or you could decide to start all over again in a new world.

You’ll learn all of the basics during a short tutorial segment. You’ll move your character with the left analog stick, changing the direction it’s looking – and aiming at – with the right one. You can interact with the X button. You can draw your weapons by pressing down on the D-Pad. Combat is intuitive since you’ll use your right hand weapon with the R2 button and your left hand weapon with the L2 button. You could be dual-wielding attack weapons or have a shield equipped to block incoming attacks.

Some enemies will be able to parry your attacks – and your character can also parry attacks. To prevent this from happening, you can press and hold down the R2 button to unleash a heavy attack, which you can then follow up with a regular attack to deal some extra damage. Some enemies might block close-range attacks, so you’ll have to use a long-range weapon, such as, say, a dagger, to gain the upper hand. Just be sure to equip some daggers from your inventory and then let them fly!

You’ll certainly receive some damage as you take on the many enemies that aim to stop you from completing your quest. You can recover some of your lost health by eating food at camp or by using healing herbs and potions. The good news is that healing potions will be automatically consumed when your health drops under a specific threshold, which you can configure as needed. If your character’s condition drops below 25%, then it will be wounded, which lowers its max health by 75%. Be sure to use a bandage, healing herbs, or receive treatment from a healer to quickly remove this. Your injured condition can eventually be healed over time.

 

Challenges with uncertain outcomes will need to be resolved through a fortune test. To pass a test, you need to draw a success fortune from the pool of possibilities while avoiding failures or negative effects. Most of these tests won’t start with success fortunes in the pool, so you’ll need to first play other fortunes to be able to add one or more successes to increase your odds of succeeding. Any fortunes you haven’t selected will be returned to the pool for the next round so that you can continue to improve your odds.

As each area is created, Sparks will be left behind. Sparks are residual expressions of elemental magic, and by absorbing them, you can gain inspirational insights. During fortune tests, you can spend 5 sparks for an extra draw, which can make a big difference if you’re just one step away from being able to draw the fortune you need to successfully complete that fortune test.

Using magic does come at a price since it will increase your character’s Presence. Presence will directly affect how quickly you risk an enemy encounter while camping, and it will also increase the odds of there being Imperials hunting you down. Using magic is something that will end up being part of the gameplay cycle, but you must not abuse it. By traveling to new locations, you’ll be able to lower your Presence, so don’t be afraid of using some magic here and there to survive!

You’ll find traps that will try to trick you into making the wrong choice. To make it possible to, for example, find out which one of two pressure plates is the one you need to step on to open a door, you will need to enter cautious mode. This is done by pressing the Square button. You’ll notice that your character will change its posture, will walk at a slower pace, and the word cautious will constantly pop up on the screen. Cautious mode will also be useful for hiding when close to walls, cliffs, or bushes, which will help you to move unseen as long as you don’t step too close to enemies or sensors. As expected, if you’re being observed, then you won’t be able to hide.

 

As mentioned before, camping will allow you to eat food to recover some of your lost health, repair items, and rest to recover from fatigue status. There will also be some skills that can only be used once per day, and resting while camping will reset those skills. Since your actions will advance time, you can only take four camping actions per full day. You can start a fire to help your hero recover from the cold or wet conditions or use the fire to cook! Just be sure to check your current camping conditions so that you don’t try to rest at a spot with a high risk of an enemy encounter interrupting your rest.

Sure, starting a fire and cooking a meal makes sense, but this will also make it easier for enemies to find you due to the light from the fire and the smoke. But a fire will help your hero feel more comfortable, which is very important. Discomfort will lead to your character losing some of its Hope. You can check your current Hope thanks to the diamond in the lower left corner of the screen that is next to your health bar. Once the Hope bar is depleted, one Hope Trait will be lost, and they can’t be regained.

Hope Traits are selected when you create your character. But before doing this, you will need to select one of four difficulty settings to play through Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy: Adventure, Standard, Wayfarer, and Elder. For Adventure, combat is sparse and easier, allowing you to explore at your own pace. Standard is the regular experience balanced for gamers of all skill levels. Wayfarer is more challenging and less forgiving, aiming for more of a roguelike experience. And then there’s Elder, which is reserved for veterans who are ready for anything the game throws at them.

The game offers a generative storytelling experience. What this means is that, while the main goal for each adventurer will remain the same – that is, to destroy the Staff of Yendor before it’s too late – how each character gets there will be different. Each one will have different story beats to experience, will end up with different sidequests, and might meet other characters. And while the Staff of Yendor needs to be destroyed, it can also be used to control magic sources as needed.

 

Since the game’s content is procedurally generated, there’s a small chance that you run into an instance where you won’t be able to progress due to something blocking your path or because a feature you need is not available. If you run into this, you can Pray for Help so that Raaf can intervene on your behalf. Just free up your hands and press and hold down the R2 button for a bit… and something good might happen! Previously closed doors might open up, or you might be teleported past a barrier. When all else fails, give this a go!

What can you select to further adjust the difficulty? You could add extra health, make it so that hazards can damage you but not kill you, reduce the chance of encounters spawning when camping, or start each run with 25 sparks. There’s also the option of making things more difficult for you by starting a run with fewer sparks, increasing the strength of enemies, making it harder to find more sparks, or having the game just add two random options to make your journey extra hard.

You’ll only have The Raafi as a potential Wayfarer for your journey but will be able to unlock other characters as you progress through the game. After selecting a character, you can then select its race (Grus, Human, or Tlinga Klong), a background for potential skills and equipment, and select Hope Traits. There are several options for Hope Traits, so you do need to choose wisely. Some examples include Elemental Insight, which gives you one extra redraw on magic fortune tests, Endurance, so that your character suffers fatigue less often when traveling, or Spirit Link, which gives you an extra redraw on fortune tests involving spirits and elements.

You will also select from additional skills to help you on your adventure. Archery will increase your damage with bows; Barter will allow you to get better deals when trading goods; Pack Rat reduces the encumbrance of each non-combat item by 1, Silent Steps makes it possible for your character to move more silently and remain unseen; Throwing Technique can increase damage from throwing weapons; or Empathy so that you can gain an extra redraw on social fortune tests. The last step will be to select the equipment your character will take, between the gear it’s carrying and the available extra items. The actions of previous heroes will have an impact on those that follow in their footsteps, so be sure to make the most of the legacy of other Wayfarers to improve subsequent runs.

Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy is a fun procedurally generated open world roguelike RPG on PlayStation 4. This one is more of a slow-burner, so the more you play, the more elements you’ll unlock, making it possible to get further and further into the lore and overall story arc for your characters as you try to destroy the Staff of Yendor. Give it a chance, and you’ll find a colorful and charming world to explore that will grow and change with your victories and defeats. Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy is out on PlayStation 4 with a $24.99 asking price.

Disclaimer
This Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Big Sugar.